This is The Nooner, a short daily (Monday - Saturday) newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
Every Sunday, I publish the Dispatches Weekly Digest (DWD), which lets you binge all the Nooners from the previous week. It also includes a meaningful song recommendation, and a short segment I call TMI, where I go off script to bring you backstage, so to speak.
Two more things about the DWD:
It goes on on the main Dispatches channel, so if you’re looking to spare your inbox from the daily emails without missing out on anything, you can specifically unsubscribe from The Nooner section, and still get the Digest on Sunday.
It’s only available to paid subscribers.
The Dispatches Weekly Digest is a labor of love, and I’m really proud of it, and if you want to hear it, I want you to hear it. So, if you can afford it…
And if you can’t, but you still think of yourself as one of my true fans, let me know and we’ll work something out.
Deeper than brain, deeper than body
In most great science fiction, the revelation of new ideas is almost more important than the resolutioin of any character-driven dramatic tensions.
The focus on these new ideas is what made the genre incredibly popular in the decades of the 20th century so dominated by materialism. It was an era in which people believed we really could figure everything out, and reading the work of sci-fi legends like Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov (among *many* others) felt like sitting at the feet of prophets.
In the 90s and early 2000s, Neal Stephensen’s book releases were treated like a national holiday in the tech world, because the man had been shockingly prescient about so many new technological trends.
Insatiable curiosity might be the core attribute that best defines and distinguishes our very humanity. We want to know. It’s in our blood and bones. Our thirst for knowledge is nearly as irresistible as our thirst for water, and perhaps more so. How else can we explain the universal modern experience of disappearing down Wikipedia rabbit holes for hours on end, with no hope of the spell being broken but by some outside force, like a work deadline, or a pissed off spouse?
You could say that this tireless drive to discover is an evolutionary advantage, bestowed upon us long ago by the unthinking processes of natural selection, and you might be right.
But even if that’s the case, can we agree that this quality is hilariously over-indexed?
This is one of the reasons I believe that every human being is a larval form of the divine. An embryonic god. A future creator of brand new universes.
If so, it would certainly explain the way in which we experience hunger for truth, deeper than body, deeper than brain. Indeed, I believe it is one of the fundamental animating energies of the soul.
And I don’t know, but it seems like if anything could keep a soul alive after death, it would be our indomitable force of curiosity.
Notes on the Shooting
Occasionally, I take to Substack Notes to share my thoughts. It’s frankly the only social media platform I trust or enjoy using, but I also understand most of you don’t spend time over there.
So here’s what I posted about what happened on Saturday:
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