​
​Friday Inspiration 529​
​

If you watch this video, be warned that a) there are a couple verbal mentions of male anatomy and also an animation of male anatomy, b) that it won Best Nonfiction Short Film at Sundance in 2024, and c) you might cry a little bit. (video)

If you had “Read a brief but wonderful poem about holding an iguana like a baby and feel a tiny bit better about everything” on your to-do list for today, go ahead and cross that off after you click here.

Since I 1) am running a lot right now and 2) have a preschooler who has had a runny nose and a bit of a cough earlier this week, I was interested to read this article on newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration’s website: Does exercise weaken your immune system? The answer is: It can, but. [Reminder that clicking the above link will give you 15% off your first 2026 purchase of Precision stuff)

I appreciated this lovely exploration of Robert Redford’s identity through the lens of the movie Jeremiah Johnson, and also appreciated the deftness with which writer David Gessner addresses the fact that yeah, the movie/screenplay/history of the American West is a bit problematic, as is the origin of the character of Jeremiah Johnson. (PS: I only know about this article because of my friend Ed’s Good News from the American West newsletter, which you would probably enjoy too)

I don’t know how much I need to set this up, but this guy got his photo on the front page of the local Lewiston, Idaho, newspaper twice on the same day! But in one of the photos he was committing a crime, so … (via Kottke)

So I co-host a podcast for UltraSignup, which is a trail and ultrarunning company, so you might think our podcast would focus on people who run ultramarathons. But you’d be mistaken! We focus on interesting people who we believe will say things that are relevant to ultrarunning, or at least endurance. And we got a lot of that out of our interview with University of Utah philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen, who sort of backed his way into studying games (which include, for him, rock climbing and fly fishing). Zoë and I had a blast picking his brain, and at one point in the interview I did compare fantasy football to Dungeons & Dragons, which seemed to go over OK.

Niko Stratis, in this essay, masterfully uses The New Radicals’ 1998 hit “You Get What You Give” to contemplate shitty jobs: “I don’t believe it’s important for your first job to be good, as if there might be some perfect kind of charming labor that teaches valuable life lessons while building sturdy character. I would argue it’s more significant that whatever your first job is, it should be some Pantone code of total shit. It should wear you down a smidge, weigh heavy on the spirit in benign and harmless ways to inspire rebellion against the monotony of life’s tedious little battles. As an introductory course to the lessons of the world, a good and terrible first job is an ideal opportunity to see just how much weight the branches of your sturdy frame can hold before they break.”

Apparently Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconsuelos is super-famous, and heavily photographed, and super-famous for being heavily photographed, but I had not heard of it until someone posted photos of it on the r/cassettefuturism subreddit last week. I found a website with way more photos here just in case you, like me, get a special warm human feeling from an absolutely beautiful library.

Finally: March 31 is the final day to sign up for my Running to Stand Still running + writing workshop in June (and tomorrow, March 28, is the final day to apply for scholarships). I have been trying lots of different ways to get the word out, and someone’s Instagram comment inspired this short video I titled “What’s a ‘Real Writer’?”