bonus podcast lightning round:

In Our Time was all-around amazing as usual, but i particularly enjoyed the episodes on Angkor Wat (listened-to in a car on a highway in nevada), Berthe Morisot (in a kitchen peeling potatoes) and Peter Kropotkin (on a couch in san francisco feeling miserable).

spy books:

A Small Town in Germany

The Constant Gardener

both by John le Carré, so they're not spy stories so much as (in his words) "political ghost stories," people digging through papers to uncover what others have been rewarded to forget. there are lots of papers. also, some of his most and least likeable characters.

dog books:

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (Alexandra Horowitz)

Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon (Bronwen Dickey)

a beautiful exploration of dog umwelt -- sniffy, licky, low-to-the-ground subjective experiences of the world. and, a cutting look at how humans treat (mythologise, abuse, and legislate on) dogs, as a sort of microcosm of the way they treat each other.

consider the intersecting beliefs that such a method is at home in --

that there's a certain relation between language and its users,

that a key challenge in administrative interactions is assessing a citizen's worthiness,

that the words people say can and should be used to make inferences and decisions about them, in settings such as the criminal justice system.