Detectives Who Box, Baseball Players Who Stop Playing, Tarot Cards That Aren't Spooky
Everything is upside down ways!
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Jonathan Ames on the podcast
It’s a great interview. I was a little nervous about interviewing Jonathan Ames because I haven’t always known… what… he was. Novelist? Yeah. But also the creator of a tv show about a novelist named Jonathan Ames. But that character is also a detective. So is Jonathan a detective too? No, he writes novels about detectives.
Oh and he’s a boxer too. Or was.
He used to be a monologist in the style of Spalding Gray, which is also a form of writing but not a form of boxing or detective work.
Anyway. He’s on the show.
We mostly talk about detective stories.
Ames says we relate to detective stories because we’re all constantly trying to solve our own mysteries. That’s hard in real life, to put it mildly. But when we know a book has 250 pages, we also know that by the time those pages are read, we will have some answers.
Get your copy of Jonathan Ames’ latest book, The Wheel of Doll, out TODAY, wherever books are sold.
Doomscrolling will make you sick and crazy
Ignorance, on the other hand? Yep: bliss.
The Guardian reports on research that says you’ll feel worse in your body and mind (which aren’t really all that separate, of course) if you’re constantly sucking from a vast vat of the worst news imaginable. Go figure.
While some readers can comfortably receive news updates without any tangible psychological effects, others demonstrate a more compulsive obsession with the media, and struggle to detach themselves from the bad news they’re reading.
These respondents scored high on five problematic news consumption dimensions listed by the researchers: becoming absorbed in news content, being preoccupied with thoughts about the news, attempting to reduce anxiety by consuming more news, finding it difficult to avoid the news and having news consumption interfere in their daily life.
And those with higher levels of problematic news consumption were “significantly more likely” to experience poor mental and physical health, the survey found, even when controlling for demographics, personality traits, and overall news use.
Not much better for you: DoomSTROLLING:
Austin Meadows takes care of himself
I don’t follow baseball all that closely in recent years but I gather that Austin Meadows is not some rolling green fields in Texas but, in fact, a player for the Detroit Tigers. And he’s done for the season because of his mental health, which is part of oh what’s the word HEALTH.
What I have told very few people is that I also have been struggling with my mental health in a way that has extended my time away from the game that I love so much. I've been dealing with this privately with a great team of professionals, but I need to continue to put in the hard work off the field towards feeling mentally healthy.
While I've been back in the clubhouse the past few weeks, and plan to remain with the club through the end of season, I am still not ready to return to the field. I am so grateful for my family, my teammates, and the Tigers organization for supporting me through this. I can't do this alone, and I hope in sharing my experience I can touch at least one person who might be going through their own struggles and encourage them to reach out to someone for help.
The team is very supportive of him in a way that sure seems sincere.
What I find interesting - and great - is that no one is pushing him to spill more about what exactly the problem is mentally. Depression? Anxiety disorder? Something else? There are hints here and there in his full description but there doesn’t seem to be a demand to share any more than he already has. Which is classy and good.
This video doesn’t really belong here but eh. I’ll refund you your no money:
I think it’s a guy in a gorilla suit. Good suit though.
Tarot reading by me on Facebook
A while back, my wife gave me a deck of tarot cards. She thought it might be a fun hobby for me. I quickly realized that, despite the semi-mystical imagery and associations, these cards were essentially conversation prompts. Maybe they’re mystical to other people, more power to ‘em, but for me they are pieces of paper with words on them, meant to bring about conversation.
You have a question in mind, you draw cards, then the challenge is to address the question using the angle indicated by the card. So the cards force you to look at your question/issue in a different way than your regular pattern.
That seemed like a really interesting way to look at things, especially for people who tend to fall into patterns of thinking that aren’t working out so well. And it seemed to dovetail nicely with the literally decades of interviewing I’ve done over the years. Often in interviewing, I try to get a guest to take something they’ve talked about before and think about it in a new way, because I like hearing fresh discoveries that result.
So I want to try doing some tarot readings from this group on Facebook Live. Happening this coming Friday at noon central.
Here’s what this will NOT be: fortune telling, therapy, mystical, a solution to all your problems.
Here’s what it will be: me interviewing people, hopefully some discoveries being made.
Guests on the webcast will have a question about life that they want some insight on. Maybe it’s “Should I move across the country?” or “Why is my job so frustrating?” or “What can I do about my difficult relationship with my mother?”
Then I’ll draw three cards: past, present, and future. Each card has some broad, general meaning. And then we’ll talk about how those three cards relate to the thing the person is trying to figure out.
So it’s not ME answering your question, and it’s certainly not some cards. The cards are just non-magical objects and cannot talk. It’s YOU answering the question through some creative interviewing.
I did this already once for a Max Fun donor event and it went well. I think there may be something there and I want to explore that.