Welcome! Start Here.

Here's the game that's afoot.

Jun 19, 2022

Hello! Welcome to Everything Is Amazing. a newsletter about curiosity, attention and wonder that goes out one or two times a week to around 31,000 people.

Since a few of those terms (a) need a lot of unpacking and (b) still don’t give you any clear idea about what this thing is about - let’s take a really big step back.

This is, at its heart, a science newsletter. It’s driven by the discoveries and the research into the ways we perceive the world, all the things that get in the way (inside & outside of our minds), and the amazing benefits for your health, your mood and your ability to think clearly - for truly, there are amazing benefits - that come from living a life more curiously, as suggested by all the current research.

That’s the theoretical side, of which there’s plenty of. But it’s also about the act of curiosity: the wonder and awe that results from opening your eyes to everything that’s out there, including the things you had no idea about. It’s simultaneously a how-to-do-fun-stuff and a WOW I NEVER KNEW THAT newsletter.

(And regarding that fun - it’s also about the value of doing things on a seemingly pointless whim! This is a great way to work around what I call the tyranny of usefulness - where the value of doing a thing has to be rationally quantified in advance in order to make it a socially acceptable endeavour. That’s a way of thinking that hurls serendipity and spontaneity and all the subtle gifts of uncertainty right out the window - and it kills your curiosity dead, because if you think you know exactly what you’ll find along the way, well, why bother doing it?)

One of the things I do here is to go explore how little I actually know about the world, to search of a good source of those “wow!” moments that make you feel more wide-eyed and hopeful about everything - and to try to uncover, for both of us, things that we both never knew we didn’t know.

(I’ll also give you a few challenges, so you can propel yourself in search of your own moments of revelation and awe. If you want to, obviously! But I promise they’ll be fun - or at least mildly diverting. All the science says so.)

"I’ve been happily rootling through the archives of Mike Sowden’s Everything Is Amazing, a truly excellent newsletter...it delves deep into topics that inspire wonder and curiosity- and this season, it’s focusing on colour."

- Katherine May, author of the Sunday Times & New York Times bestseller “Wintering,” the just-published “Enchantment,” and the popular newsletter The Clearing.

If you’re still unclear about what this is and why you’re reading this, check out the About page, which may not bring the clarity you need, but there are some soothing photos of some places I’ve been, which I’m told are quite calming.

At the time of writing, there are six seasons of this newsletter - covering four years, so far - and it’s getting a bit difficult to know where to point you first.

You could work your way through each season, using the headings in the centre-top menu on the homepage - and I’d be thrilled if you did that!

But this page (when it’s finished) will be a short-cut to the really good stuff, plus a few suggestions on lots of interesting things to read, around the topic of scientific curiosity, awe, wonder and everything I’m mentioning as I go along.

Hope it helps / that’s you warned.

“Everybody needs to subscribe [to] Everything Is Amazing. We need to be reminded now, more than ever, how much there is in the universe to be in awe of."

- Mary L. Trump, psychologist, bestselling author of “Too Much & Never Enough” and “Who Could Ever Love You” and newsletter writer of The Good In Us.

THERE’S ALSO MUCH MORE!

Most of this newsletter is, and always will be, free for anyone & everyone to read.

However, some of it is only available to paying subscribers. This includes:

exclusive paywalled deep-dives, going out roughly every other week…
multi-part “mini-seasons” where I throw myself at some big science questions with all the enthusiasm of a clueless beginner. (In the current season, I’m digging into human memory: the latest research into how it works and the best ways we can improve our own)…
access to my upcoming non-fiction storytelling course…
chapters of my first book as I assemble it…
personalised one-to-one ‘curiosity calls’ via phone or video, to hopefully give you a few ideas about chasing your own specific nerdy obsessions with or without a public audience…
my eternal thanks (THANK YOU!), because this newsletter is now my fulltime job (AAAaaaaAAAaaaaAAAaaaaa!) - and with every new supporter, I can shriek in existential terror just a tiny bit less.

Check out subscription options

“Everything IS amazing, and this newsletter points that out with glee. Lots of very cool facts about, well, everything.”

- Phil “Bad Astronomer” Plait, astronomer, writer, author of the Bad Astronomy Newsletter, popular science communicator (Bluesky), and formerly part of the Hubble Space Telescope team.

“Mike’s deep dives into the fascinating stories behind everyday things make him a compelling guide to the world.”

- Jodi Ettenberg, lawyer-turned-curiosity-writer, author of the award-winning Legal Nomads and the newsletter Curious About Everything. (Read more about Jodi at CNN Travel.)

WHERE TO START

“Oh To See, To Truly See” - my original introduction, on how China Mieville’s thrillingly weird 2009 novel The City & the City is a great metaphor for pursuing a more curious life.
“Three Ways That Kindness Fixes Everything” - an attempt to mix hard science with some grounded optimism.

“Avoid Reading Clickbait Hogwash With This One Curious Trick”: why we click sensationalist, twaddlesome garbage, why we incorrectly blame ourselves for it every single time, and what a fun and meaningful antidote to this lunacy might be.

SEASON THEMES

(Every season, I pick a big topic that I’m interested in but fairly ignorant about, and go in search of as many Wows as possible, writing up the results into newsletters and big Twitter threads.)

SEASON TWO: Fake and Unreal Maps

“The Great San Serriffe Hoax Of 1977” - how The Guardian newspaper ran a fictitious travel supplement as a joke, fooled so many people that its telephone switchboards were overwhelmed with people refusing to believe these islands didn’t exist, and made a ton of advertising money in the process. (Twitter thread.)

(PAID ONLY) “A Map Of The Internet, Part 1: The Lies Of The Land”: What does the Internet actually look like, from inside and outside it?

SEASON THREE: Optical Illusions

“The Best Virtual Lightshow You’ll Ever Not See”: the weird and wonderful world of light pillars - which simultaneously do and don’t exist. (Twitter thread.)

PRACTICE

“In Search Of A Prince Of Serendip”: “Using an online mapping tool, I drew a circle a mile wide around the apartment where I was living in Scotland, and began hunting for serendipity within it.”

“4 Stupid Ways To Have A Better 2022”: I’m a big fan of the right kind of stupidity, and this newsletter explains why.

(PAID ONLY) “50 Stupid Ways To Discover The Unknown”: a huge pile of curiosity prompts to get you out the door, having great fun and looking like a bit of an idiot (if you’re doing it correctly).