TLP Weekend Edition (May 3-4, 2025)
What we're reading and checking out.
Editor’s note: This week we’re recommending five of our favorite Substacks that put out consistently excellent and interesting work. Please give them a look and subscribe if you can.
🌍 Yaw's Brief: Guns, Trade, Cobalt & Africa Beyond Colonialism, by Yaw Asamoah. Unbelievably detailed posts from Asamoah on African development and more general geopolitics and economics. This publication features tons of maps, tables, and detailed history in lengthy posts about specific countries like a five-part series on the economic and geopolitical history of Tunisia, a four-part series on the economic and geopolitical history of Sudan, and a four-part series on Uganda. Mali, Burkina-Faso, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia. Incredible stuff. If you want to get up to speed on what's happening—and what has happened—in African countries, this is a terrific Substack to put on your list.
😡 Defusing American Anger, by Zachary Elwood. This Substack is a must-follow for anyone who cares about America's growing polarization. Zach digs into the roots of this long-festering problem, examines current-day conflicts, and offers readers suggestions for how to help ameliorate them, both at a macro level and in their personal lives. He encourages both sides of the political divide to reflect on the ways in which their attitudes and behaviors might needlessly polarize their political opponents against them and thus be counterproductive to achieving their political goals. Americans who are tired of constantly bickering with their friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors about politics will find plenty on Zach's page worth their time and thoughtful consideration.
🚶🏽♂️Chris Arnade Walks the World, by Chris Arnade. This ex-bond trader turned journalist and chronicler of poverty, drug addiction, and destitution in the U.S. now does just what he says—he goes to different places and walks....and walks....and walks. Arnade talks to people, he observes, he ventures down streets and through areas tourists never get to. This is what these places and people are really like. Phenomenal. Right now he’s in Lombardy. Before that in Seoul, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Xi’an, Beijing, Shanghai, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Ulan Bataar, Tashkent, the Faroe Islands, Warsaw, Nairobi, Kampala, and the list goes on. Astonishing work.
🙏🏼 Graphs About Religion, by Ryan Burge. A political science professor at Eastern Illinois University, Burge is one of the few data analysts today who possesses deep knowledge about religion trends in our society. Burge regularly analyzes wide-ranging datasets about both religious and non-religious people, such as their voting habits, church attendance, core beliefs, and much more to help the public better understand the role of religion in American life. His in-depth posts also occasionally touch on related topics, such as the culture wars, relationships, and the country's growing epidemic of loneliness. Some of his work is paywalled, but much of it is not. A good place to start might be this piece examining the religious differences between Democrats and Republicans.
🎸 Starship Casual, by Jeff Tweedy. Music fans will love Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s weekly musings on songwriting, gear, touring, Chicago, family, and all the great artists he loves and respects. Tweedy usually publishes unreleased recordings of his own music plus diverse covers of artists including Radiohead, Joy Division, Daniel Johnston, Bill Fay, Woodie Guthrie, J.J. Cale, Kim Deal, Elliott Smith, and the Meat Puppets among many others. Starship Casual recently hosted one of Substack’s first performance streams live from the Wilco Loft.
thanks for the suggestions - I added a few.
The following quote is a great observation about happiness. It also could be about polarization. "It is easy to tell how happy someone is to see another person enter a conversation. There is happy, and there is polite, and they look very different. Polite has a mechanical quality to it, like carrying out all the right movements to replace batteries in a remote. Happy has a boundless quality: unpredictable, even when it is at a low level. There is an openness, allowing another person to surprise and delight them. The easiest way to say this: there is no script for happy. It tumbles out of the body. Polite comes from the mind—it is restrained and calculated—measured lines and pauses. There are reinforcing loops in a polite person and a happy person. A person closed to the possibility of delight finds less of it. A person open to it finds more."