Episode 60: With Michael Heald (On Grief, Family History, Hyphenated Names, Anxiety, Mortality and What it Means to Read Books)

Jonah Asks

Music:Wilco "Jesus, Etc." David Bowie "Changes"Jackie DeShannon "Bette Davis Eyes" original (1974) Q. How are you doing? When was the last time it was acceptable to reply "I'm great!"? We conclude somewhere around the summer of 2016. Pre-Trump, Pre-pandemic. 7 min Michael talks about his early experiences with books 12 min Our last tennis match in San Francisco (Summer, 2007) Michael moves to Nicaragua for a year. 15 min A Drive North from SF to Portland, Oregon (March 2014) 20 min Dealing with Grief Michael's mom died of cancer in 2014 and his dad died of cancer this summer. 25 min The Holidays 36 min Family Games The computer game The Oregon Trail has biblical overtones. 38 min Michael's dad worked as a computer engineer at IBM The family moved from Westchester, New York to Portland, Oregon in the early 1990s. 45 min Hyphenated Names 50 min Depression - Overt Depression versus Covert Depression 54 min Michael's Grandfather Michael describes his father's father. Michael thinks about his dad's upbringing and how it impacted his dad. Michael has letters from the 1970s, written by his grandfather, annotated by his grandmother. 63 min Michael's Dad, near the end of his life. After 14 months and four rounds of chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, Michael's Dad chose the "Death with Dignity" option (Oregon law) that allows a person who is suffering with a terminal illness to end their life. Michael describes the experience of getting the news of his father's choice. 68 min Death with Dignity Michael describes the process of his parents dying and the "Death with Dignity" option for terminally ill people and talks about the end of each of his parents lives. 79 min Life is Fragile 89 min Perfect Day Publishing Michael is publishing the tenth book under Perfect Day Publishing, a small press he started in 2012. The next book to be released is: Staring Contest: Essays about Eyes by Joshua James Amberson https://joshuajamesamberson.com music clip: "Bette Davis Eyes" original by Jackie DeShannon (1974) 95 min Copy-Editing, Publishing Process 98 min What Does Reading Mean Today? We discuss different types of reading and writing and how our culture is changing around reading habits. Podcast recommendation - On Reading and the Brain Ezra Klein with Maryanne Wolf https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-conversation-about-the-reading-mind-is-a-gift/ Maryanne Wolf is a researcher and scholar at U.C.L.A.’s School of Education and Information Studies. Her books “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” and “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” explore the relationship between the process of reading and the neuroscience of the brain. In Wolfe’s view, our era of information overload represents a historical inflection point where our ability to read — truly, deeply read, not just scan or scroll — hangs in the balance.