Paris, post-hope and the pause letter

a few updates and bafflements

Today, a laundry list of things you can scan and decide if you want to read/opine on, and a few updates from me to anchor things for The Going Forwards.

I’m in Paris and it’s just great

I landed at 6am and was into my new apartment by 8am. The apartment is as quiet as my obsessed research indicated it ought to be, and so I’m sleeping well and, thus, functioning like a normal person. I’ve signed up to French classes that are way too advanced for me, but I prefer to stretch than to shrivel from boredom “Go to where you want to be”, right?

I’m about to head to dinner with AC Grayling to discuss some existential quandary he has on his agenda, wearing this Post-Hope T-shirt (gifted by subscriber Tessa, see below). AC has asked that we meet at the oldest restaurant in Paris, Le Procope. It was here that Voltaire drank 40 cups of coffee on the regular, Robespierre and the Revolutionaries plotted over lunch, and Rousseau got, I dunno, romantic.

I finally met the two fathers from Apeirogon

A few weeks back I shared this sliding doors story involving a Palestinian and an Israeli father who’d both lost their daughters in the conflict. This particular story transpired against the horrific back drop of what’s happening in Gaza. And it loops in a Hollywood actor (who is a subscriber here) who reached out to me while I was camping in remote Western Australia, a second-hand book find and so much more.

Anyway, I tracked down the two Dads - Bassam and Rami - and we had a Wild chat the night after I arrived in Paris. It was touch ‘n’ go making the chat happen and the podcast release was delayed because Stef who does the sound production on Wild had to do a lot of extra work to make our recording… listenable (thanks Stef 🙏). Bassam had been held for 12 hours at a border crossing in Jericho during Ramadan but he slipped away to an echo-y (“hot”) hotel room in Jordan to do the chat. Both men were returning from Italy where they’d been to meet the Pope (!). I had a cold and jetlag. The internet dropped out. But we cover some big, true, challenging ideas and I’d love you to listen because, well, it was a lot of work to bring it to life and Bassam and Rami would really like you to hear their story.