HeyJaredTrying to Understand the World
A newsletter devoted not to polemic, but to trying to make sense of today's world.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Jul 15, 2026
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Useful Shadows. (opens the original)
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I don’t know what ideas Festival of Humanity would conjure up in the mind of the average Anglo-Saxon. Happy-clappy guitars, perhaps, peace and love? Desmond Tutu and Ursula von der Leyen? In fact, it’s all to do with a newspaper.L’Humanité was founded by the great French Socialist Jean Jaurès, and was the Party’s official newspaper until 1920, when after the Congress of Tours, the departing Communist faction took it with them. From then until reality dictated otherwise in 1994, it was the offici
No Nukes? (opens the original)
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Nuclear weapons have been much talked about recently. The interest comes in waves, often sparked off by individual incidents in the war in Ukraine, and now the conflict with Iran as well. I really can’t remember how many times in the last few years we have been told by excitable pundits that “nuclear war is now inevitable!” only for the excitement to die down again shortly after. As I write, the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran is still being canvased by people who should know better. In
Hiatus. (opens the original)
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I was travelling for a lot of the last month, and my essays were consequently written in disconnected paragraphs in curious and improbable places and situations, and stuck together with virtual glue. I hope the joins were not too noticeable. I’m away this week as well, part business, part not, and I thought I’d take advantage of the Substack rule that entitles me to a week off every now and then. (I’ve written thirty-five 5000-word essays this year, which is the equivalent of several decent-size
Signs Are Not Wonders. (opens the original)
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I was born in a time of miracles and wonders, or so it seemed, at least.Motor cars were still quite rare, especially in working-class districts, but televisions were slowly becoming more common, with their fascinating if disconcerting ability to project pictures of the outside world onto a small screen in a gigantic cabinet. Newspapers printed stories about aircraft with jet engines taking glamorous people to glamorous places, although the number you might actually see in the air was minuscule b
The Road Not Taken. (opens the original)
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I began writing these essays some four years ago, because I felt that there was far too much polemic and bad temper on the Internet, and not enough informed analysis. I had no desire to shove a begging bowl under the noses of people who already thought they knew what they thought, and who just wanted someone to confirm their prejudices in grammatical prose, preferably flavoured with a few vulgarities and obscenities and with solicitations for bad things to happen to people they didn’t like. I co
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