Welcome to another edition of Substack Reads, your weekend digest of some of the best writing from across Substack.
Regular readers know we attempt to showcase a range of writers, including many you may never have read or heard of before. This week, we also uncovered some podcasting gems, audio posts, and voiceovers for your aural pleasure.
And thanks to those who suggested a number of writers and their writing last week. A few of them made it into this week’s digest. Please do keep sharing what you’re reading in the comments.
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In his new Substack, baker and author Edd Kimber lifts the lid on everything you wanted to know about the world’s favorite baking show, of which he was one of the first-ever winners
Beyond the tent on the first season of Bake Off (via The Boy Who Bakes)
The second thing that stands out is the blood. Along the way there had been a fair few cuts and light burns, but the very final challenge was where I came a cropper. We were making bread for the afternoon tea, and I clumsily managed to stab the palm of my hand with a metal bread scraper. It wasn’t some razor-sharp knife, so the jagged bit of metal really made itself known. My hand started bleeding, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I continued kneading with one hand whilst they tried to patch me up, offering me sugary drinks to stave off the fainting spell that seemed likely considering how pale I was looking. Whilst I was trying to knead the bread, I’m convinced some blood ended up in the dough (disgusting, I know), and we were told the dough would be taken by the home economist and baked off for us, my accident delaying the schedule so they needed to give us a helping hand. When it came to serving the afternoon tea, finger sandwiches were sent out for us to use and, while they denied it, I am 100% convinced that our bread that was supposedly used for these sandwiches actually ended up in the bin and the sandwiches were instead brought in from an outside caterer. The bread felt and looked like fluffy commercial bread, and not a spot of blood could be seen. I also doubt the production company would take the risk of serving my bread to anyone.
About 75 percent of 18-to-35-year-old zoomer graduates in Britain plan to vote for liberal left parties at the next election—Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the greens, the SNP, or Plaid Cymru. Just one in five plans to vote Conservative (though they remain about 30 points less likely to vote than the much larger boomer generation). As I wrote in a previous piece, about three-quarters of zoomers want to “re-join the European Union,” while two-thirds think Brexit was the “wrong decision.” In Scotland, at least six in 10 want to live in an independent Scotland. In America, only 22 percent plan to vote Republican in the midterms.
Clearly, these views and loyalties may change over time—and research suggests they will. But even if zoomers do become more conservative as they age, they are still starting from a much more liberal position than any other generation on record.
There was a time when many front yards in America could be seen sporting a certain plastic decoration. But how did Don Featherstone end up making the pink flamingo, and why were they so popular? Plus: a secret fact about twinning
Flamingos were all the rage in the 1950s—but live ones were harder to come by than ducks in Massachusetts.
“It was tough to find one around here to use as a model,” [sculptor Don Featherstone] said.
“But as luck would have it, National Geographic came out with a story titled ‘Ballerinas in Pink.’ ”
Don selected two images from the magazine—one flamingo with its head up and the other with its head down—because he knew the flamingos would be sold in pairs.
He then sculpted the bodies in clay and finished his creation in “about two or three weeks.”
A pair of Don’s flamingos were offered in the Sears catalog for $2.76, along with the instructions:
Lauren Wolfe posts original dispatches from the Ukraine war and shares a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. This week, she writes about reporting on rape in Ukraine
There are many ways to build a case showing that rape has been perpetrated as a crime against humanity. One lesser-known puzzle piece can come from what women and men have heard soldiers say during their assaults. There can be a repetition of phrases, which can indicate that there is a command to rape coming from above. One good example of this was in Zimbabwe in the mass violence during the 2008 election. The New York-based nonprofit AIDS-Free World found that 96 percent of 380 women raped later testified that the men who had assaulted them had made similar political statements.
As I’ve begun to tap into Ukrainian sources on this issue, I’m realizing that every investigator I speak to, including Yuri Byelousov, head of war crimes at the Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office, is considering whether rape is haphazard—a crime of opportunity—or systematic. Is it widespread? Some have also told me that the International Criminal Court is gathering evidence for a possible case, although no one at the ICC would either confirm or deny that.
To a culture obsessed with talk, obsessed with language and disclosure as the basis of intimacy—what therapist Esther Perel calls the “feminization of intimacy” or “talk intimacy”—naming can feel like a natural way to express closeness. We give our lovers pet names and shiver when they call us by our full, government names. We try to get close by telling each other secrets, or by being linguistically precise about what it is that we want from one another. But as the lexical mind busies itself with talk and its attendant fantasies, the body forms its own conclusions through the careful dance of touch, proximity, risk—and the passing back and forth of feelings through pheromones, tension, heat, and shape.
It is important to me to have a linguistic marker for the closeness I share with Randall, and that marker happens to be a name—a name so human, it usually strikes me as funny. Thus I can say, “I’m going to go see Randall!” when really, what I need is an exit from conversation altogether. To “see Randall” is not to tell him about my day or to ask him about his—I know Randall experiences time in a very different way than I do—but to work my fingers into the groove of his trunk, waiting for my presence to be registered, and to feel presence pulsing back like a warm flood of life: generous, omnidirectional, and assuring.
In his new podcast, Business Studies, writer Graham Ruddick speaks to Archie Norman, one of the most influential business leaders in Britain and the current chairman of 138-year-old retail brand Marks & Spencer
Luke Howard was a self-taught artist who grew up in England in the 1700s and was totally obsessed with clouds.
In fact, after years and years of careful study and hundreds of drawings in his weather notebook (he kept a weather notebook—like a sketchbook for weather!), Luke Howard created the cloud classification system we still use today.
From the wonderful book The Man Who Named the Clouds, written by Julie Hannah and Joan Holub with illustrations by Paige Billin-Frye
The awesome website for the U.K.’s Science Museum has Luke Howard’s original cloud studies to explore. Here are a few of his gorgeous sketches:
Cloud study by Luke Howard, c. 1803-1811: Cumulostratus, with possible sunken nimbus. Pencil with blue and grey wash, touched with white, 17x31 cm
Cloud study by Luke Howard, 1808: Nimbus against light of sun, low in sky. Pencil and blue wash
Cloud study by Luke Howard, c. 1803-1811: Nimbus showing anvil with cumulus and water vapor streaming out. Blue, grey, and buff wash with white, 13x26 cm
If you need more Luke Howard in your life (honestly, don’t we all?), be sure to check out The Man Who Named the Clouds.
Infinite Noise Project creates custom audio files for every aspect of daily life. This episode features a spectrum of static noise (which might even help you read Substack Reads!)
Full Spectrum is a delight—a romp through noise static—designed for the intellectually wandering mind.
This digital audio file was recorded in a “dead room”—out of loudspeakers—to stationary microphones. This method creates a subtle feedback loop that the listener can detect if they concentrate hard enough on the sound itself.
The feedback loop is then sent to an entirely different “dead room” that has a drastic, slow left-to-right panning. This effect is nearly imperceptible at first but becomes more apparent as the listener focuses on the white noise entirely.
When listening to Full Spectrum with headphones, the listener should begin to sense subtle left-to-right movements as the white noise takes you…
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
Thrilled to see Michelle Jia's Substack included here. I met her at the Substack meet-up in Toronto a few weeks ago and have been enjoying her writing a lot - a fantastic writer.
Thrilled to see Michelle Jia's Substack included here. I met her at the Substack meet-up in Toronto a few weeks ago and have been enjoying her writing a lot - a fantastic writer.
Here's a nicely nuanced piece on authors and income:
https://shush.substack.com/p/authors-against-incomes?publication_id=10344&isFreemail=true
And a good piece on liberal democracy:
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/a-concrete-vision-of-the-liberal?utm_medium=reader2
And a really nice piece on the historical philosophical origins of certain strains of contemporary political thought:
https://damonlinker.substack.com/p/philosophy-and-the-far-right3?utm_medium=reader2
I think pieces bear the weight of rereading.