The Potato People, now on the ABC

World Famous Essay About Potatoes Now In Podcast Form

I recently joined Radio National’s Science Friction to tell the story of The Potato People, an essay I first published here at Kitchen Counter.

Listen to the story here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I write about a lot of different subjects. The Palestinian student protest movement and the neoliberal university. The role of art in a world of AI reproduction. The bizarre reaction against polyamory. What sort of life becomes a human being. I’m now completing a book: a suite of personal essays about gender and masculinity. I hope you’ll buy it when it’s out.

Of all those topics it is this story, the potato story, that has been the most challenging. On one level, its deepest level, it is a story about what science is and what it should be. At another level it is a story about particular epistemic claims, particular models of metabolism, particular hypotheses about chemical mechanisms in the body.

Reporting this story required both a capacity to arbitrate the plausibility of claims made in nutritional science and a considered understanding of epistemology itself. My background’s in philosophy, so the latter came more easily than the former, and I am now better at both.

My point is that I think this is the type of story that is worth doing. You’ll know that I haven’t, and don’t, publish particularly often via this Substack. That comes with costs—my audience doesn’t grow fast, and I don’t expect to monetise any time soon.

But what I gain from irregularity is worth more to me. I gain the chance to not fill your inbox with shit.

Our inboxes are filled with shit. Our ears and our eyes and our mouths are filled with slop. The oversupply is part of our malaise. Good work does not always cut through. We are drinking from the firehose of content, and the water has lead in it. The situation will only get worse from here.

I said, starting this blog, that it would feature a breadth of writing that is not found anywhere else, I believe that’s turned out to be true. At the very least this particular mix is unique. Work will only appear if I consider it worth doing. I hope you’ll stick around.