Kerim’s Triptych for Sunday, June 11th, 2023

Welcome to Kerim's Triptych, a free newsletter that delivers 3 items to your email inbox, 3 times a month. If you didn't intend to subscribe, or you don't want to receive these anymore, there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. And, if you like it, please direct your friends to the signup page so they can get it too.

Item 1: Our Similarity to Apes Was Never a Secret

Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks now has his own YouTube channel! In this episode he talks about the scientific revolution from the standpoint of human origins and diversity.

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that our similarity to the monkeys and apes was never a secret.The people of Borneo call orangutans the man of the woods. An ancient Roman poet named Quintus Ennius, whose work is now lost, wrote How similar to us is the monkey, the most horrid beast . . . By the mid 1600 European Sailors were returning with tales about creatures that were kind of like people, but lived either in West Africa or Borneo, and maybe were hairy and maybe they walked erect, and maybe they communicated in whistles . . . Finally in 1698 one of these creatures finally makes it to England.

Item 2: The (Weird) Girl From Ipanema

In honor of Astrud Gilberto, who died this past week at the age of 83, I wanted to share this video essay about the weirdness of the song that made her famous: The Girl From Ipanema is a far weirder song than you thought, which explores the question of American hegemony in Brazilian music. I barely understood the music theory — though he explains it well— yet I still found it fascinating. I think you will too.

Item 3: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The History And Philosophy Of The Language Sciences is a wonderful podcast for those interested in intellectual history and language. Even though I’ve read a lot about the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I still learned some new things from their exploration of the historical background and intellectual context of Sapir and Wharf’s work.

Endnote

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Thank you!