Rebecca is that weird person reading a book by herself in a restaurant. She’s a parent, an atheist in a very red state, an amateur pianist, a student of the German language, and curator of a joyfully bizarre music collection, with room for everything from grime-punk to metal to Bach cantatas. She is curious about so many things, but particularly cognitive science, music, language, parenting, the history of medicine, and psychology and mental health. Rebecca has degrees in English and Linguistics and has held a variety of writing jobs over the years, including grant writing for nonprofits, copy editing for a publishing company, and most recently, proposal writing. Email: brannicr [at] gmail.com
by Rebecca Baumgartner A seat by the fire I remember listening to President Obama’s first Inaugural Address fifteen years ago because of something Obama said which, according to the political pundits, had never been expressed in a Presidential speech before. This was the moment in question: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a…
by Rebecca Baumgartner For a while now, the slogan “Trust the experts” has been a liberal shibboleth meant to imply endorsement of scientific consensus. Despite agreeing, in principle, with what the phrase is meant to signal, I’ve always been bothered by this slogan. Part of it is that as I get older, I realize more…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Carpets…chairs…shoes…bricks…crockery…anything you like to mention – they’re all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories – well – they’re just another product, like carpets and chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Several years ago, I trudged through a baking hot evening in July to go to my first-ever tennis lesson, offered by my city’s Parks and Rec department. Against a background of lightning bugs, cicadas, and a lingering heat despite the lateness of the hour, I started to learn the basics of tennis.…
by Rebecca Baumgartner The transformation of bringing a child into one’s family is conceptualized differently by different folks. It is rare, however, to encounter a parent who questions whether parenthood is any kind of transformation at all. This is the provocative stance taken by Anastasia Berg in her piece “What If Motherhood Isn’t Transformative at…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A little over a year ago, in Allen, Texas, we saw the precise moment when a “good guy with a gun” became a “bad guy with a gun.” It turns out that the line between these two different types of people (and there are only two, we’re told) is as slight as…
by Rebecca Baumgartner The short stories in Kindergeschichten (Children’s Stories, 1969) by Swiss author Peter Bichsel are not actually for children. True, they are short, easy to read, and feel a bit like spare, minimalist fairy tales. But the moment you think you’ve grasped what they’re all about, they slip away. In the introduction to…
by Rebecca Baumgartner It feels like every week tech journalism brings us a dispatch about the “end” of something: we’re told now that we’re reaching the end of foreign-language education due to advances in AI translation. It’s true that no field of study is immune from journalistic swagger about our AI-saturated future, but this seems…
by Rebecca Baumgartner During the recent Christmas shopping rush, I had to park at the very back of a crowded Target parking lot. By the time I trekked across the lot and reached the door of the store, my knees felt a bit achy. Not a big deal. After about half an hour of walking…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I never intentionally set out to read what one critic referred to as “landfill nonfiction,” and yet it seems harder than ever to avoid falling into such a book by accident. The term is a bit harsh, but you probably already have some idea of what kind of books I’m talking about. …
by Rebecca Baumgartner I’m currently reading The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in translation, and it’s got me thinking about how much we rely on translators to bring us literature from around the world, and how important it is to be able to trust what they tell us. I can only imagine the patience and creativity, the…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A few months ago, I was eating dinner at a restaurant and the manager stopped by to see how I was doing. When he saw me reading War and Peace, we got into a conversation about what the book was about, why it was so long, and whether it was worth it…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I was looking at a grammar worksheet my fourth-grader recently brought home, and the instructions said to “Underline the predicate of each sentence.” I paused for a moment. What exactly is a predicate, again? Is it a fancy way of saying verb phrase? Or direct object? Or…what, exactly? You might think I…
by Rebecca Baumgartner “So why are you learning German?” I don’t remember who first asked me this, but over the following two weeks, it was a question I’d answer about 60 times. And each time, I struggled to come up with a satisfying answer – and not just because of the limits of my intermediate-straining-towards-upper-intermediate…
by Rebecca Baumgartner In the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” (2013), two romantic partners, Martha and Ash, move into Ash’s childhood home together. As they’re settling in for their first night in their new home, Ash finds a photo of himself as a little boy, one of the few left out after his mom…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Imagine someone sitting cross-legged on the floor and breathing deeply. Now imagine someone sitting on a couch and playing a video game. Which of these is mindfulness and which is escapism? What differentiates them? Why does one seem healthier or more virtuous than the other? And what assumptions about human cognition and…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Do you watch TV with subtitles, even when watching something in your native language? I never used to, but over the past 10 years or so, it started to feel more and more necessary, and now if I try to watch something without them, I inevitably miss a few bits of dialogue…
by Rebecca Baumgartner I don’t want to write this and you don’t want to read it. But this is the world we live in. As I write this, it’s been three weeks since a man without a criminal record legally purchased a trunk-full of guns, opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets mall and killed…
by Rebecca Baumgartner Last year, I watched a Kurzgesagt video about the science of how gratitude practices can make you happier, so I decided to start a gratitude journal. It could only help, right? I started jotting down a variety of things I was grateful for: my family, my piano, my cats and dog, my…
by Rebecca Baumgartner A Conversation “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” –Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1791 “Many others … say that it is dangerous and absurd to base modern public safety on…