The Bear Got Me In My Feels

Plus, the best show nobody's talking about and Science Corner!

This week we’re talking The Bear Season 2, Silo on Apple TV+, a terrifying new Serial Productions podcast, space news, deep-sea news, and an incandescent piece of science writing.

I want whatever this is. (source: screenshot)

It’s July! The defacto month of “Barbenheimer” — a celestial convergence of two equal-but-opposite cinematic forces, Barbie and Oppenheimer, appearing the same day in our movie-theater night skies.

[Waiting for the public to turn on this, though, since we’ve still got so much time until July 21? Watch this space!]

It’s also the July 4th holiday! Ben and I are celebrating by:

• Ben getting two new tattoos!

• Watching the only Pride and Prejudice that the Lord or I recognize, the five-hour 1995 BBC miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth! Because what says “patriotism!” more than five hours of Regency Era Britain?

• Observing my sacred annual rewatch of Independence Day, the most perfect movie ever made, and what I will be telling my kids was the American Revolution.

Growing up, every 4th of July, Dad would make homemade vanilla ice cream and we would watch The Music Man. I can still hear the low hum and crush of the ice cream maker churning in the background of a rousing “Seventy-Six Trombones Led the Big Parade!”

How about you? What are your favorite 4th of July traditions? I’d love to hear! Or share your new traditions for Juneteenth, the official true Independence Day for all Americans. <3

In the News - Science Corner!

• Today is World UFO Day! Great timing! Last month a former military intelligence official named David Grusch, who is considered credible, said the military has aircraft of “nonhuman origin” and remains of extraterrestrial beings!?? Not to be an Independence Day Truther, but In-His-Pretty-Era Jeff Goldblum tried to tell us!
  Question for you: Do you believe? I WANT TO BELIEVE, but in my gut I think I’m a Skeptic Scully. I asked Ben what he thinks and he said, “Aliens have landed,” then showed me his latest golf stats and said, “Could a human do this?” So there’s also that.

• Humans are doing a dress rehearsal for Life on Mars! NASA selected four volunteers to live for 378 days(!?) in a locked(!?), 3D-printed(!?) simulation of the planet Mars! A little nightmare fuel for you: communication with Fake Mars will take 44 minutes round-trip because that’s how long it would take from Real Mars. Good luck to anyone with an Anxious Attachment style!
  Question: Would you volunteer for this?

• Over at the other Final Frontier, check out this mind-bending visual of just how deep the Deep Sea¹ goes (!!). My friend Kayla texted this to me on Monday and talk about a workday derailed!

  Question: [This may be “too soon,” but I’m gonna go for it. Her last words before she was summarily canceled!] Which sounds worse to you, dying in space or dying in the deep sea? I say space. Ben says deep sea. Your turn.

• In other Ocean News, dolphins do baby talk!! Scientists found that mom dolphins use higher and longer whistles when talking to their babies!!! Meanwhile, the Mean Girls of the Ocean Orcas are still organizing against Boats. Honestly, for the UFO investigation, I’d start with these ocean geniuses!

Anyhoo, I hope we, as a species, keep exploring both Sea and Space! They are magnificent and terrifying. [I also hope somehow that exploration doesn’t come at the cost of, like, kids having food? I want so many things!]

Watching - The Bear Season 2 on Hulu

I was going to title this email “The Bear Season 2 is Prestige Ted Lasso (But Better!),” but it was too long according to my free subject line preview tool. How to describe the ebbs, flows, and riptides of something so moving and delightful in just 60 characters?

I loved the first season after getting over the panic. Season 2 is even better. It’s like Ted Lasso in the sense that its foundational belief is that people can help each other. Without losing its characteristic chaotic energy, this season is softer while also digging deeper into family trauma. The chaos is warmer, with a safer place to land.

A few random thoughts:

• The Copenhagen episode was so simple, so exquisite. [Directed by Ramy Youssef and starring the impossibly transformed Will Poulter, who is so hot here it defies logic and makes Neville Longbottom’s glow-up look like child’s play!?]

• The Christmas Dinner episode was jaw-dropping and stuffed tighter with celebrity cameos than those Christmas cannolis with ricotta!

• Olivia Coleman’s magnificent cameo in episode seven! The way she so quietly puts out her gravitational pull.

• Each episode just keeps getting better. Bravo, creators, you did it!

[Of Note: Manic Pixie Dreamgirl Love Interest because the show — with its Wilco/TSwift/Decemberists soundtrack — is nothing if not Millennial Nostalgia.]

Also Watching - Silo on Apple TV+

BEST SHOW NOBODY’S TALKING ABOUT!!!!

I love a post-apocalypse “how-did-we-get-here” story, and I also love a story where the main character is a brainy female mechanic! [Looking at you, Atlantis: The Lost Empire!]

Without giving too much away, it’s about a dystopian future where humanity lives in an underground silo because presumably the air outside is toxic. But is it?? And is everything exactly as it seems??? The ruthlessly beautiful lady from Dune and Mission Impossible ~investigates.~

Also, Rashida Jones is here! And David Oyelowo, Common, Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones, the mom from Succession, and Tim Robbins!

This week was the finale, and I can tell you that it absolutely delivered. GIVE US SEASON 2 NOW!

Listening - The Retrievals

I was eating a sandwich when I started listening to the first episode of The Retrievals by Serial Productions and This American Life. Five minutes in, the sandwich lay uneaten on the counter, and I was sitting on the edge of my couch staring at the floor, muttering “no-no-no.”

Without risking any spoilers (though the first episode lays it all out), it’s about women who went to a Yale fertility clinic for medical services, and things went — really bad. Like, invasive-medical-procedures-with-no-painkillers bad.

Not to sound annoying, but women’s pain should be believed!

I AM LISTENING!!

Reading - More Science, but Make it Poetic

“Scientists Found Ripples in Space and Time. And You Have to Buy Groceries.” -Adam Frank (professor of astrophysics), The Atlantic

An excerpt:

"Every proton and neutron in every atom from the tip of your toes to the top of your head is shifting, shuttling, and vibrating in a collective purr within which the entire history of the universe is implicated. And if you put your hand down on a chair or table or anything else nearby, that object, too, is dancing that slow waltz…

…After you finish reading this, take a look around you. Ponder how the solid-seeming ground beneath your feet is quietly shaking with the force of billions of years of cosmic collisions. Go outside, if you can, and watch the wind blow through the trees. Perhaps the experience will be different now that you know how the rhythm of giant black holes in distant galaxies also beats out a time in the trees’ gentle swaying...

Wellp, I’m off to buy groceries!

That’s all for this week—I’m so glad you’re here! It’s such fun to explore the world with you. Drop a comment with thoughts, ideas, opinions, recommendations, whatever! And a 🖤 helps me keep on growing my audience, which is exciting. :)

1. A question about the Deep Sea: Who was on duty the day we named the BLOBfish? When the insanely named “Headless Chicken Fish” exists!? “Blob” is all you could come up with!? [Though, to be fair to the scientists, nothing has ever looked more like a blob than the blobfish.]