Brain Food

Get your 2025 off to a hot start with a little intrigue for your little grey cells.

Thank you for reading The Garden of Forking Paths. This edition is free for everyone, but if you’d like to support my work and fully unlock all 170+ essays from the archive, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for just $4/month. Alternatively, consider buying my new book, FLUKE, which is imminently out in paperback globally.

The items below intrigued my brain; I hope they will intrigue yours too.

---

Netflix is Deliberately Making Shows Dumber

When I was a kid, I remember spending Friday nights browsing towering stacks of VHS rentals at the long gone “Title Wave” video store in Minneapolis.

It was an occasion. Even in Minnesota’s winters—with the kind of lung-squeezing cold that would make a walrus wish it could knit—we would bundle into our 1986 Volvo station wagon, skid across frozen roads, and jointly pursue a night of popcorn and memorable cinema. There was bickering, there was turn-taking, but then, once the selection had been made, something magical happened. We sat down as a family and we watched together.

By the time I was an undergrad, Netflix had arrived, whisking DVDs through the mail. I would browse, contemplate, then choose—all with the knowledge that in a few days, a disc in a crumpled little white and red sleeve would arrive, like magic, in my university mail slot. I would always watch with friends.

Now, much of that communal magic is gone. Cultural consumption is less of an occasion; we spend more time solo, browse haphazardly, click on whatever, then receive a little dose of instant gratification. For many people, including myself, we find ourselves tempted to check a different screen while watching a screen. Attention overload has reduced us to dopamine-addled primates, ever-searching for that extra little hit.

We know that this is true—and not just the curmudgeonly cerebral fantasy of yours truly—because Netflix is reportedly responding to it by giving a grim nudge to those who are making content for the streaming service: make it dumber so people who are barely paying attention while they doomscroll through life can still understand what’s going on.

Okay, okay, that’s not exactly what they said, but it’s not far off. According to this excellent exposé of Netflix culture, content guidelines are shepherding writers to include dialogue in which characters announce precisely what they are doing, so you can half-listen, half-watch, and still feel clued in.¹ For viewers with the attention span of a gnat, the proven storytelling mantra of “Show, don’t tell” is dying. The new era of dystopian cultural production takes its new cues from the elementary classroom: “Show and Tell.”

For example, I will admit that I have not watched the Netflix-made film Irish Wish, starring Lindsay Lohan. I have, however, deeply researched the reviews of it, in which one critic from The Times negged it by saying that it is “genuinely terrible, but also oddly watchable.” Some top comments from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes include:

1/2 Star from “Hudson H”: My great-grandma could act better than Lindsay Lohan. Oh wait, she’s dead…”

1 Star from “Paul S”: I created an account to rate this movie, I thought it was that terrible.

1 Star from “Ohla P”: I'll never get these 90 min back. I would recommend pouring bleach directly into your eyeballs instead of watching this.

Perhaps most appropriate for our purposes, one called it a “background movie.” As Will Tavlin writes:

Such slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model, since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.”

(“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James, in Irish Wish. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.” “Fine,” he responds. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”)

Now that’s some natural dialogue, perfectly mimicking how actual humans talk!

(If you’re interested in reading more about why this lowest common denominator cultural gunk continues to ooze forth through your internet tubes, it is, I fear, part of a broader trend to cater to what I call the “surefire mediocre”).

Our brains did not evolve to deal with such sensory overload and the rise of “passive viewing”—what a dystopian term!—is only the latest canary in the digital coal mine. If we’re not careful, modern life will detach us from the miracle of our own humanity, as we all try to gorge on maximal soma, drifting distractedly toward our Brave New world.

The After Dark Bandit

In 1979, banks across the rural outskirts of southern Australia were hit by a string of seemingly impossible synchronised robberies. Police were baffled. The same bank robber was striking within minutes at two banks that were sometimes dozens of miles apart.

In one instance, police tried to re-enact the crime—like Sarah Koenig in an episode of Serial—and they couldn’t. No matter how fast they floored it, a car just couldn’t get them from point A to point B in time to commit the second robbery in the time frame the outlaw had achieved. How had he done it?

Even stranger, the bank robber’s mood and personality could be completely different from one job to the next. Even if the robberies were just minutes apart, it was as though the robber was teleporting from one job—and undergoing a personality transplant before hitting the next bank.

Because this prolific criminal tended to strike right before the banks closed—once the last rays of the Australian sun were disappearing on the horizon—he was nicknamed the “After Dark Bandit.”

Eventually, after a stroke of detective luck, police managed to arrest the robber. They searched his property. As Andrew Dubbins writes in Atavist Magazine:

The most shocking piece of evidence was a black-and-white photograph. It showed Morgan [the bank robber] in a posh restaurant, smiling while seated beside another man. The two had matching shirts, matching mustaches, matching sideburns, and matching faces.

Finally, it was clear to police how the bandit had managed to be in two places at once: he had an identical twin brother.

The moniker needed to be plural: these were the After Dark Bandits.

The whole essay is a wonderful ride, of twins exploiting their identical appearance for criminal gain. But it also provides me with an irresistible opportunity to raise with you my favorite criminal justice thought experiment.

Imagine the following scenario: conjoined twins, brothers joined at the hip—quite literally—commit a crime. But only one of the twins is the true perpetrator. The evil twin grabs a gun, and while holding his attached brother at gunpoint, robs a bank. The good twin loudly protests the entire time, struggling, but failing, to stop the crime.

Should both go to jail—or neither?

Well, it turns out that this isn’t just a thought experiment. In the 17th century, Lazarus and Joannes Baptista Colloredo were conjoined twins, though only Lazarus could really speak and interact with the outside world. Joannes Baptista could move his eyes and lips when prodded, but not much else.

A contemporary depiction of the conjoined twins.

Contemporary accounts suggest that the parasitic twin, Joannes Baptista, dribbled saliva and had astonishingly bad breath. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the unforgiving social customs of the time, Lazarus typically draped a cloak over his brother, leaving most who encountered him none the wiser that there were two people, not one, within.

After a particularly rousing game of handball (it is unclear in the historical record whether they counted as two players or one), Lazarus once boasted that he murdered a man during a fight in a pub. According to his tale, he was initially sentenced to death before explaining to the judge that a death sentence for him was a death sentence for his innocent brother, too. The judge reconsidered and let them both go free.

(Lest you think this was a one-off occurrence, something similar happened in 1929 in Los Angeles, when the guilty half of conjoined twins was let off the hook for making an illegal left turn—precisely because the innocent twin would have been unavoidably and unjustly incarcerated, too).²

The Original Facial Recognition

If you’ve traveled recently, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ve found yourself subject to security checks that rely on facial recognition technology, ensuring that the person who went through security and the person boarding the plane are, indeed, the same person. These may seem like new-fangled technologies, yet another symbol of our looming techno dystopia.

But since Ecclesiastes reminds us that there’s nothing new under the sun, it turns out that facial recognition has been used as a security tactic for almost exactly 700 years. Ibn Batutta, the world traveler from modern day Morocco who was very much the 14th century’s less humorous version of Bill Bryson, records seeing the practice used in China, captured in his travel writing:

“In regard to portraiture there is none, whether Greek or any other, who can match them [the Chinese] in precision, for in this art they show a marvellous talent. I myself saw an extraordinary example of this gift of theirs, I never returned to any of their cities alter I had visited it a time without finding my portrait and the portraits of my companions drawn on the walls and on sheets of paper exhibited in the bazaars.

When I visited the sultan’s city I passed with my companions through the painters’ bazaar on my way to the sultan’s palace. We were dressed after the ‘Iraqi fashion. On returning from the palace in the evening, I passed through the same bazaar, and saw my portrait and those of my companions drawn on a sheet of paper which they had affixed to the wall. Each of us set to examining the other’s portrait [and found that] the likeness was perfect in every respect.

I was told that the sultan had ordered them to do this, and that they had come to the palace while we were there and had been observing us and drawing our portraits without our noticing it. This is a custom of theirs, I mean making portraits of all who pass through their country. In fact, they have brought this to such perfection that if a stranger commits any offence that obliges him to flee from China, they send his portrait far and wide. A search is then made for him and wheresoever the [person bearing a] resemblance to that portrait is found he is arrested.”³

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Most people who have come across Kurt Vonnegut’s books know him from Slaughterhouse Five—and nothing else.

To my mind, he’s a titan of literary history, easily one of the most insightful and interesting writers of the 20th century. I lament deeply that our time on Earth fortuitously overlapped—and yet I failed to meet him.

I could slap some lengthy prose onto your screen to highlight the zany, playful intellectual treats laced through this book, but instead I’ll simply say this:

Cat’s Cradle is my favorite book.

It’s not for everyone, but it might be for you.

(Plus, you’ll learn to spot the difference between a karass and a granfalloon—a particularly important skill now that our politics are largely comprised of warring granfalloons).

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Imagine it’s the late 1980s. You’re a big shot publisher having a meeting with a prospective author. Here’s my dramatic recreation of my imagined version of this conversation:

AUTHOR: “It’s a thriller.”

PUBLISHER: “Oh good, thrillers sell. What kind? Serial killer? Terrorist? Spy?”

AUTHOR: “Um, well…it’s a thriller about building a cathedral in 12th century England.”

PUBLISHER: “Oh. I see.”

AUTHOR: “I’ve come up with the perfect name for one of the main characters. It had to be the perfect blend of unique and memorable. He’s a builder—he builds cathedrals.”

PUBLISHER: “What’s his name?”

AUTHOR: “Tom…Builder.”

Awkward Silence

AUTHOR: “But you haven’t heard the good bit yet! Ask me how long it’ll be.”

PUBLISHER: “Okay, now we’re talking—a slim little number? 200 pages? Quick airplane read?”

AUTHOR: “It will be…1,076 pages long.”

But here’s the thing: Pillars of the Earth is gripping. Even though it’s long, I zoomed through it. It’s one of the best historical thrillers I’ve ever read, though I am slightly biased as a history nerd/cathedral enthusiast. But if you’re willing to stick with a long novel that warrants the page count, give it a shot. (It sold 175 million copies, so the plot and prose constructed around Tom Builder clearly did something right).⁴

Captain Fantastic (2016)

If you only like the whizbang cinema of an ever-larger universe of superheroes or, say, 2 Fast 2 Furious, it is improbable that you will have the patience for Captain Fantastic—a film about the rewards and pitfalls of trying to escape from modern life. But if you’re interested in indie films that are nuanced, beautifully crafted, and emotionally resonant, then this is one to check out. Viggo Mortensen is, indeed, fantastic—and it offers a thoughtful exploration of how attempting to escape from the grip of modern consumerism brings its own unanticipated risks.

Only the Brave (2017)

Sometimes, a film can be great by just doing exactly what it says on the tin—with few surprises or flourishes—simply executing its task nearly perfectly.

Like many, I’ve been horrified to see the wildfires ravaging Southern California, part of a worsening suite of natural disasters that are swiftly becoming the new normal as our climate warms. While reading about them, I got sucked into the Wikipedia vortex, clicking through pages while learning about the horrors of wildfires and the brave people who risk their lives to fight them. Wildfires have long had a disturbing pull on me, as I remember being deeply affected by reading about the Mann Gulch fire, mesmerized by my Dad’s copy of Young Men and Fire as a boy in the early 1990s.

Only the Brave, starring Josh Brolin and Jennifer Connelly, is a moving, beautifully shot film about the Yarnell Hill fire, which killed 19 firefighters in 2013.

Boy (2010)

If you’ve enjoyed the work of Taika Waititi—perhaps through his shows on vampires or his anti-hate satirical film about the Hitler Youth—then you should try watching one of his earlier works, Boy.

It’s a funny, poignant film about a young boy in New Zealand, estranged from his father, who concocts a fantastical mental image of his absentee parent. When the Dad himself finally shows up in the flesh, his son—named Boy—has to learn the hard way that adults aren’t always the ones who know best.

Thanks for reading The Garden of Forking Paths. That’s all for this week—I’ll be back in your inboxes next week with a full essay. Some of my work is for paid subscribers only, so please consider upgrading for just $4/month to ensure you don’t miss out, and to fully unlock all 170+ essays that are available in the Forking Paths archive. You can also now buy the paperback version of Fluke—named by several outlets as a “best book” of 2024.

1.

Erik Hoel

also wrote about this here.

2. If you’re interested in more analysis of this conjoined twin crime spree thought experiment, here’s an amusing explainer from Slate.

3. I was tipped off to this when perusing an old post by Tom Whitwell.

4. Just a heads up: if you’re put off by abusive sex scenes—the kinds that were tragically common in the time period of the novel—there are a few in Pillars of the Earth.