It feels like only yesterday I sent out the fortnightly issue.. oh wait, it was! Aren’t you lucky - two issues in two days.
As always, if you’re enjoying Solidaritas, paid subscriptions are available for US$5/month or much much cheaper at US$40/year. Have a lovely weekend!
-Kate
Read
Another phenomenal and rather terrifying piece in the Fire, Flood and Plague series of essays in The Guardian Australia: climate scientist Joelle Gergis on planetary collapse:
We are being forced to come to terms with the fact that we are the generation that is likely to witness the destruction of our Earth. We have arrived at a point in human history that I think of as the “great unravelling”. I never thought I’d live to see the horror of planetary collapse unfolding.
There was a Washington Post piece I shared earlier in the week on Twitter that I can’t stop thinking about: it’s about a young man who dismissed and denied the threat of COVID-19, until he held a small party with his family and they all became horribly ill.
Rukmini Callimachi’s Caliphate podcast series has been widely-acknowledged as one of the best of the last five years. I also greatly enjoyed it. But now allegations are coming to light that perhaps not all that was reported was accurate, primarily as a result of NYT editorial pressure to create an interesting and accessible podcast.
Watch and listen
The newest episode of Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway’s HomeCooking podcast is, as always, hilarious, but even more so because their special guest is Jason Mantzoukas, who is nuts, particularly when he asks Samin and Hrishi what vegetables he’s received in some delivery box.
Point of Origin, a food podcast I should probably listen to more often, just did a fascinating episode on how avocados are seen as ‘green gold’ in Mexico, to the point where even cartels are involved because avocados are so profitable.
Years and years ago, my brother and I watched Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman go around the world on motorbikes in Long Way Round and Long Way Down. They’re now back with a new series called Long Way Up, in which they use electric motorbikes (really fascinating!) to travel from the tip of South America to Los Angeles.
Eat
Technically this is a ‘drink’ rather than an ‘eat’: I’ve been exploring Australian gins recently, and am currently loving Giniversity’s London Dry Gin. It’s from the Margaret River area of Western Australia and tastes wonderfully citrusy. It has a native botanical called meen in it, which is related to kangaroo paw apparently, so I went down a rabbit hole about local botanicals in gin.
A quick snapshot of my lunch the other day: Haldiram’s masala vada, Mother’s Recipes lime ginger pickle, and some quick stir-fried eggplant with chilli flakes and garam masala. The eggplant was surprisingly delicious for such simplicity.