Culture Corner: May 2025

Reading, Watching, Listening, Playing, Doing.

Hello, it’s been a while. I’d love to say that there’s an exciting or romantic reason why I’ve not written anything since last month’s edition of this same column. There have been some small things: namely, a few more demands on my time, and the annual struggle to muster motivation when the clocks go back and the temperature drops. But mostly, I just felt like the rhythm wasn’t quite working. I enjoyed writing Roundabout – and I especially enjoyed the discussions I had with readers online. However, I didn’t enjoy rushing to scrape together writing that I wasn’t necessarily that proud of. I would read Ricky Mangidis’s work on The Shinboner, or Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson’s pieces for the ABC, or the shared labour of footy nerd love that is This Week in Football, and frankly feel like they were accessing depths of tactical knowledge that were a bit beyond me, and that finding the time and motivation to write Roundabout was getting a little harder each week.

I want to participate in the conversations about how modern footy is being played. But I think there’s a more sustainable way to do it. So, for the time being – probably for the rest of the season – I’m going to move away from Roundabout and reflect on how I can better incorporate real-time analysis of teams, players and tactics into the newsletter. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, I totally understand (and, to every reader, apologies for this impromptu therapy session). Instead, I’ll orient the newsletter back toward the longer, more speculative pieces I published last summer. Not only did they tend to resonate more with readers, but they resonated more with me. It felt like I was exploring an underserved niche.

Anyway, this is all to say that One Percenters is going absolutely nowhere. In fact, I’ve got a deep dive piece in the pipeline. I’m excited to share it with you soon. From there, I’m excited to find a new rhythm. Apologies for the disruption to normal programming, and sincere thanks to the readers who reached out. Here’s the bit you came here for.

Reading

Books

I and Thou (Martin Buber, 1923)

I and Thou isn’t a long book, nor is it one that obviously demands your attention. But still waters run very deep. Martin Buber, whose work deeply influenced not just the more esoteric edges of Jewish thought but 20th century intellectual history (and, most clearly, modern therapy) splits the world into two kinds of relationships: I-It and I-Thou. We spend most of our lives mired in the former. We use others. Treat them as instruments. Means to ends. But it’s the latter, those fleeting moments of true mutual presence, that light the soul. Buber wrote this dense, poetic little book more than a century ago. He knew nothing of the anomie and alienation that so many of us live through. Instead, he invites us to seek out and embrace those moments of connection. Because those moments are how become ourselves. “All real living is meeting.”

Articles/essays

Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you meet (Escaping Flatland, April 2025)

I don’t know anything about Henrik Karlsson. But, after reading this essay about his close friend “who spent 15 years as one of the extras in my life before I realized he was one of the main characters”, I feel like I do. His love for his friend is palpable, and his self-reflection about what he truly values in a person is admirable. This essay is especially but by no means solely suited for those people who fret about how to maintain and deepen friendships with people as life pulls them down different paths.

“If someone seems boring to you, or a bad fit, it might be that you don’t know how to prompt them, that you haven’t seen them react to the context that brings out their full being. You probably don’t know how much beauty lies hidden in the people around you.”

50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics (Construction Physics, April 2025)

Since Brian Potter began his substack in September 2020, he’s written 186 essays and approximately 600,000 words. This is a list of the most important things he’s learnt in those four-and-a-half years. The list is US-centric, but broadly interesting. My favourite facts:

• Bricks haven’t gotten cheaper since the mid-19th century, despite massive improvements in brickmaking technology.

• A bottleneck in semiconductor manufacturing is high-purity quartz, most of which comes from a single town in North Carolina: Spruce Pine. Chip manufacturing could probably absorb the costs of switching to non-Spruce Pine quartz, but this would be much harder for solar PV manufacturing.

The Department of Everything (The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2024)

For four years in the mid-1980s, Stephen Akey worked in the Telephone Reference Division of the Brooklyn Public Library. He and his colleagues took calls from members of the public who wanted to know answers to their questions. What questions? Any sorts of question. The lifespan of the California condor. The GDP of Morocco. Akey didn’t have access to Google or ChatGPT. Instead, he helped their callers by “consulting reference books, indexes, catalogs, almanacs, statistical abstracts, and myriad other printed sources”. A fascinating and amusing sketch of a world that might as well be Mars.

Watching

A Man on the Inside (2024)

Michael Schur (writer on the American version of The Office, co-creator of Parks & Recreation and apparently sole creator of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place) probably didn’t need to convince anyone that he knows how to make a sitcom. But he went ahead and did it anyway. A Man on the Inside follows Charles Nieuwendyk (Ted Danson, reaching unprecedented heights of dapperness), a recent retiree and widower who’s searching for purpose in the autumn of his life. Hijinks, laughs, and – believe it or not – some tears duly follow. If I sound slightly cynical, it’s probably because A Man on the Inside follows the Schur blueprint to a tee; it’s very earnest, a little saccharine, a little maudlin. But you know what? It’s pretty good.

The Mission Impossible movies

Following a discussion where we both admitted we were puzzled and a little curious about the persistence and popularity of the Mission Impossible films (and Tom Cruise’s apparent reprieve in the court of public opinion), my wife and I decided to… watch the Mission Impossible films. We’re three deep. The first is a kitschy homage to spy flicks of the 1960s and 1970s. The second one – set in Australia and featuring Richard Roxburgh as a… South African (?) henchman – is very bad but in an interesting way. The third is an order of magnitude more competently made (and features some top-class Cruise running), although otherwise it’s slightly less memorable. We’re in no great rush to watch the rest of them, but I suspect we’ll get there.

Listening

Field Music – Tones of Town (2007)

Skip this paragraph if you don’t like twee pop music. But if your one complaint about The Shins was that they weren’t quite pastoral enough, or that The Decemberists were American whimsy when really you wanted English whimsy, you’ll probably love this. I do. I hadn’t thought about this band or this album for many, many years – until I was reminded of their existence while browsing Spotify. It’s warm, pretty, intricate (Field Music’s, uh, music, has been likened to “mini prog pop”) and has that rare quality of sounding like something you’ve heard before, even if you haven’t. “A House Is Not A Home” is probably my favourite song here, but they’re honestly all good.

John Michel & Anthony James – Egotrip (2025)

In the fine tradition of people who think that the culture peaked when they were young (i.e. everyone), my knowledge of hip-hop has been frozen in amber for more than a decade. My tastes are very mid-thirties former Pitchfork reader-coded: Madvillain, GZA, Dave, Joey Bada$$ (specifically his first mixtape), Illmatic, Boy in da Corner, etc. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting much when I clicked on a r/hiphopheads post proclaiming this collaboration between rapper John Michel and producer Anthony James (apparently they advertise a fair bit on TikTok?). But it’s brilliant: James’ soulful, jazzy production blends perfectly with Michel’s flow and lyricism. I guess it’s another way of showing my age: one of my favourite albums of the year thus far sounds like it could have been made by The Roots.

Los Cedros Cloud Forest, Cosmo Sheldrake, Robert Macfarlane – Song of the Cedars (2024)

Can a forest write a song? Musician Cosmo Sheldrake and esteemed travel/nature writer Robert Macfarlane think so. As the two men were walking through Los Cedros, a protected “cloud forest” in Ecuador, they listened to the streams, birds and bugs that rushed, whistled and buzzed around them, and realised they were listening to music. So they “collaborated” and, together – man, man, and forest – wrote this song. It’s more curio than banger, but it’s a lovely distillation of a communion with nature that, as someone who spends most of time staring at some kind of screen, I very rarely experience.

Macfarlane, one of those Englishman who seems to find writing books as easy as the rest of us find waking up in the morning, wants Los Cedros to be recognised as the “moral author” of this song. I don’t know what the long-term implications of success might be. But at least we have this.

Playing

Every three years or so, I am briefly gripped by the desire to play one of the main series Pokemon games. So, earlier this month, I spent around 15 hours in the course of a week playing Pokemon X, the most recent game I own (and therefore, according to millennial bias, the last good one they made). I’m relieved I came to my senses fairly quickly: not only were the games beginning to show cracks even then, but it’s getting harder to shake the sense that a man nearing his mid-thirties shouldn’t be playing children’s video games anymore.

Aside from that, I didn’t game at all in May (growth!). So consider this a secular recommendation for Slay the Spire. It’s not just the best deckbuilder/roguelike ever, it’s one of the best games ever, flat out. I’ve never encountered such a deep and satisfying gameplay loop. If you haven’t already, just play it – especially if you don’t mind sinking hundreds of hours into something.

Doing

Bumping into footy players in the wild

A very exciting thing (at least by my mundane standards) happened lately: a new Lebanese bakery opened at our local shops. The excitement was compounded when, on my first visit, I saw a high-profile current player standing sheepishly in the corner, trying to remain incognito while waiting for his halloumi wrap. After it came out, the player ambled into a nearby Jeep, and I proverbially patted myself on the back for resisting the urge to talk to him. No one needs to be disturbed when they’re hungry.

Baking things

My wife and I had two social engagements last Saturday – we had friends over for lunch, and then visited a separate set of friends for dinner. I listened to the little voice which was nagging me during the week to bake something with an Oreo crust. And lo, it was good. Here’s the recipe. Listen to the voice that tells you to try something new in the kitchen – good things usually follow.

Texting old friends

An old Uni friend first recommended the Field Music album I wrote about above. He obviously liked ornate English pop, because he also introduced me to (the utterly fantastic) Wild Beasts. We’re still very friendly but, partly as a result of now living in different cities, we’ve drifted apart. Listening to Field Music reminded me of him, which in turn prompted me to send him a text. If there’s a friend you want to reconnect with, or even just reach out to, don’t hesitate: do it. Oh, and while I’m at it: buy some designer-label second hand clothes from my excellent friend’s excellent shop.

Voting in Polish elections

There is only one venue in Victoria where people can vote in Polish elections. It’s the Syrena Polish House in Rowville, an outer south-eastern suburb that’s 90 percent of the way to Dandenong (and also, apparently, where Jake Soligo went to school). I was in Rowville 13 days ago to vote in the first round of Poland’s presidential election. Because no candidate won a clear majority, I will be there again tomorrow to vote in the second round. It is a privilege to be able to do so – one that neither I nor, I suspect, most Poles take for granted. I’m nervous about the outcome, only partly because I don’t think there’ll be democracy kiełbasy.

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What have you been enjoying, or at least trying to enjoy, lately? Let me know!