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The Grokkist letter Once a month. Danu's letter, what's alive in the community, the Snackables. The Press New writing as it's published, and letters from the editor.

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The Grokkist letter is Danu's monthly letter about the whole Grokkist community: what people are making and thinking about, gatherings coming up, and a handful of Snackables, small good things worth your time.

The Press sends you new writing from this site as it's published (essays, talks, stories, books in instalments), plus a monthly letter from the editor. You can narrow it to the Realms you care about.

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Make senseSoma IslesSnackables

🗣️ Why We Say Um

A well-produced short talk on the social function of discourse markers, filled pauses and other hesitation phenomena in language. They're not necessarily just filler, or a kind of mistake — they do real work in conversation.

Grokkist Press

1 September 2022 · 1 minute

Why do we, like, hesitate when we, um, speak?

ted.com

A well-produced short talk on the social function of discourse markers, filled pauses and other hesitation phenomena in language. They're not necessarily just filler, or a kind of mistake — they do real work in conversation.

In good company

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Keep reading

Nearby on the shelf.

Surprise meWild Margin

🗞️ The Myth of the Informed Citizen

Nicholas Carr traces a recurring fantasy of modern life: that each new communication technology, from the telegraph to the internet, would produce wiser citizens and healthier democracies — and how each expansion of information instead bred new forms of confusion and overload. At its centr

Grokkist Press · 1 min

GroundedSoma Isles

🎨 Sculpting with Tree Sap and Time

A 15-minute documentary following Kyoto artist Mine Tanigawa as she creates sculptures from urushi lacquer, a material used in Japan for over 7,000 years. Less a 'making of' than a portrait of attention: raw tree sap transformed through layer upon layer of colour, polishing and curing, eac

Grokkist Press · 1 min

GroundedEntangled Vale

👁️ Iris Murdoch and Love as a Way of Seeing

Matthew Crawford revisits Iris Murdoch as a philosopher pushing back against thin, hyper-rational models of human life. For Murdoch, morality isn't mainly abstract reasoning but attention — the difficult practice of seeing the world, other people and oneself more clearly. Her radical claim

Grokkist Press · 1 min