It is a strangely nice thing that putting up a post containing the link to that week's episode of The Distraction has become part of my Thanksgiving observance. Most of it still amounts to going up and down the stairs of my parents' home, and doing hours of oafish expediting and cooking in their kitchen while everyone in my family yells "What?" at each other from different rooms. But we've been doing this long enough that the collision between the undisputed king of Thursday holidays and our podcast, which comes out on Thursdays, barely even registers as jarring anymore. It wasn't until this week, after all that cooking and eating and a hard-won 10 hours of sleep, when the podcast really felt as if it was getting back to normal. We talked about climate change, the NBA, and fantasy sandwiches.
Joining us was one of the few people who can speak with real authority on all three topics: returning guest Peter Brannen, author of The Story of Carbon Dioxide Is the Story of Everything. The book is a history of carbon dioxide's complicated and vital role in shaping life on Earth, told across many millions of years. It is only during the very last bit of that span when humans had the chance to start messing around with everything, and while we talked about that part, a lot of this first segment was spent with Drew and I asking Peter very basic questions about carbon dioxide, and him giving very interesting and detailed answers. We learned of a rising theory about the role that deep sea hydrothermal vents, and the carbon dioxide they emit, played in shaping life on Earth; how impossibly inhospitable Earth was for the first 4 billion years it existed; and considered life as the result of a disequilibrium in the Earth's carbon chemistry.
If the numbers are hard to parse, the fact of it is plain enough: Too little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we freeze to death; too much ... well, you probably know that part. Beyond talking about the extent to which humanity can impact all that, we discussed the literary and more elementary perceptual challenges in reckoning with the scope of human evolution against the time scale of the Earth's history.
This was bracing stuff, which made it something of a relief when we hit a hard pivot to NBA chat after the break. We talked about the Boston Celtics' ongoing gap year, the Experience Abu Dhabi Giveaway T-Shirt Era we're living in, and the guys you talk yourselves into as a fan when times get tough. We also discussed the competitive problem that the Thunder present, marveled backward at David Stern vetoing the Chris Paul trade, and marveled more generally about how remarkable a failure this year's Clippers have been.
Then we gave Peter a very complicated sandwich question. It gave me a chance to celebrate the deli sandwich consumption of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, and gave all of us a chance to think about how Abe Lincoln would handle a meatball sub. The episode concluded in under an hour. It wasn't on Peter Brannen's usual time scale, but all things considered it was a pretty good journey.
If you would like to subscribe to The Distraction, you can do that through Apple Podcasts, wherever else you might get your podcasts, and Spotify if absolutely necessary. Thank you as always for your support.
