The Mind Remains Undefeated

And Chicago’s Bean has officially been renamed “the Giant Butt”

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Our Sunday posts are usually paywalled, but if you’re in the shit and need a lift, email me here and I’ll hook you up: ajd@thesmallbow.com

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Hello friends — filling in for A.J. again on a big week for me. My newsletter’s over this way, and A.J. will be back next week. —Ben Gaffaney

My favorite podcast ended this week. Book Fight was a literary podcast that ran for 13 years, hosted by Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister, two writers who met in graduate school, then taught at Temple University together. They had excellent chemistry and managed to provide writer/technical/teaching perspectives on the book-of-the-week, with humor and perception. It was my favorite parasocial relationship, and while I wasn’t sad about the end, necessarily, I will miss it.

Their last episode dropped on Monday while I wrangled J, my seven-year-old son, following a night at my brother’s big-ass house outside Chicago. We were in town so J could finally meet two of my brothers before driving to South Loop to visit all the museums I hadn’t seen since my days of field trips. I lost track of the days while we visited Sue the T-Rex, walked under the Bean (which J called “the Giant Butt”) and learned to control the weather at the Museum of Science & Industry. I didn’t think to make time for Mike & Tom’s farewell.

I did, however, crush it at Mindball. For those who don’t visit multiple educational museums per year, Mindball is a game where you and a foe velcro sensors to your foreheads and consciously produce the brainwaves associated with relaxation and calm. When J and I played, the ball rolled his way, prompting a 20-ish woman to challenge me to a calm-off. I out-calmed her, her boyfriend and a man in his 60s. It’s not really meant to be a ladder competition, but I went 4-0, on such a roll I could have beat Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön.