Friday Inspiration 548

Cillian Murphy is your DJ, new journal for new moms, an oral history of Will Ferrell's sports movies

In the early 1980s, a shipping container carrying between 15,000 and 20,000 Garfield phones was lost at sea near the western tip of Brittany, and ever since, remnants of the phones have been washing up on the beaches. (video)

Please permit me a proud husband moment here: After growing and birthing an entire human in 2022, Hilary bravely dove into the first months of postpartum, with a new baby to take care of, and a new identity: Mom. As she struggled to keep her head above water, she wished for something to help her transition into motherhood, and also to help her hang on to who she was in addition to being a mom. So she started taking notes, creating the first sketches of the book she would have loved to have. Now our little guy is four years old, and Hilary’s book is finally finished. It’s a guided journal for new moms called How to Stay You When Your Name Becomes Mom, and it’s available in paperback and as an email subscription—75 short prompts delivered daily to your inbox. Both options and more info are here, and Hilary’s newsletter essay about the making of it is here.

Over the past summer, I have noticed how much better cold drinks taste after I exercise (this often happens when I am standing in front of a beverage cooler at a grocery store or convenience store). I’ve never questioned why this was—or if cold beverages would actually help me perform better. But, Andy Blow, founder of newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration did, and wrote a great piece about it: Does drinking cold drinks in hot weather improve performance? [<--- this link will give you 15% off of your first 2026 purchase of PFH stuff—as far as beverages go, I recommend the PH 1000 drink mix]

Solid modern art social media joke right here.

I used to sit through newspaper editorial meetings, during which we’d all go through our ideas for stories, so I like to imagine the meetings that must go on at The Ringer, in which someone must have said, “Hey, the 20th anniversary of Talladega Nights is coming up—I think we should do an oral history of Will Ferrell’s sports movies.” And someone else says, “Great idea, get on it.”

Boy do I love it when we find crazy stuff that changes our idea of history, like this, ahem, “sprawling ancient civilization much bigger than researchers expected” in the Amazon rainforest, maybe up to 3 million people. (via Kottke)

Thanks to next week’s My Favorite Things podcast guest, I now know that Cillian Murphy (yes, Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy) had a BBC radio show in 2020, 2021, and 2023, in which he shared some of his favorite music. Thanks to my research, that podcast guest now knows that the episodes are available on the Cillian Music Archive Project, which is not only doing a service by providing access to these episodes, but is also one of the most amazing websites I’ve seen in a long time.

I am not necessarily a Knicks fan, and I don’t of course live in New York, but all the same, I loved this 3-minute video + poem about how it felt for the city when the Knicks won the NBA championship.

Last week I got to catch up with my friend Ian McLeod, who has composed music for a bunch of my films since 2016, and has of course made music for much, much bigger clients. I had him on the My Favorite Things podcast so we could talk about Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Midnight Marauders, Tinker Hatfield’s sneaker designs, Songs In The Key of Life, and Keith Haring’s paintings—which led off with a fantastic story of a less-than-humble teenage Ian getting humbled at a jazz jam in Washington DC, and using it as fuel to become a better musician.

Books I’m Currently Reading:

• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Raden Keefe

I forget who recommended this, but I’ve been listening to this one as I crank out endless laps on an indoor track as the AQI hasn’t been below 100 for a couple weeks now here in Missoula. The laps are boring but compared to the hunger strikes IRA members did in prison in the 1970s, the indoor track is quite pleasant.

• Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future by Alan Weisman

A friend recommended this (last summer I think?) and it’s ostensibly about people who are working toward solutions to adapt to climate change, and there is quite a bit of hope, but of course to tell those stories you have to tell the stories of what’s happening right now, which can feel a bit grim some days.

• The Size of Your Joy by Elise M. Powers

Totally forgot how I found out about this book of poetry or when I ordered it, but it showed up in the mail a few weeks ago. I had been enjoying reading a few poems every night when I finally read the back cover out loud to Hilary: “For every woman who’s ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone.” So I guess I’m not the primary target market—but I’m still loving the book!

• Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

AND SPEAKING OF BOOKS:

I have finally re-stocked signed copies of all the books I sell in my DFTBA shop, so they’re all available again: