estimated reading time: 10 minLike many memoirs, J. D. Vance’s book misses a few details, some of which complicate the story upon which he has based much of his politics.

This is the text of an address I (Marika) gave recently as part of the KU Leuven annual Thomas Feast on the theme of theology, art, and decolonisation.

For several years now I’ve been haunted by a piece by Étienne Balibar about the relationship between politics and knowledge in the university. Balibar wrote that, ‘We realise now that our ruling class is no longer a bourgeoisie in the historical sense of the world. It does not have a project of intellectual hegemony, nor an artistic point of honour. It needs (or so it thinks) only cost-benefit analyses, ‘cognitive’ educational programs, and committees of experts. That is why, with the help of the pandemic and the internet revolution, the same ruling class is preparing the demise of the social sciences, humanities, and even the theoretical sciences. To accelerate the process, why not have the victim become the culprit (‘Islamo-leftist’, ‘activism’, ‘ideology’…)? It will make things easier.’[1]

It’s a strange time to be reflecting on the relationship between theology, art and decolonisation, as both theology and the arts are struggling for survival in a global war waged ‘on wokeness’ – which is to say, on the side of white supremacy. When things that we love – or that we depend on for our salaries, stipends, or future job prospects – are threatened, it can be tempting simply to knuckle down, to try to cling to what we still have for as long as we can. But I want to suggest that we take our cue from Cedric Robinson, who writes in Black Marxism that his goal in writing the book was not simply ‘a question of outrage or concern for Black survival’ but ‘a matter of comprehension.’[2] How can we understand the relationship between theology, art, and empire?

Two things are often missing from contemporary attempts to grapple with this question, which are frequently both too abstract and not abstract enough. Our conversations often get stuck at the level of theological and artistic content – questions of who or what is represented or talked about. What this misses is both the very particular and material question of the institutions and resources which make theological and artistic expression possible, and then the more abstract question of theological and artistic form. So I want to spend some time sketching out some thoughts on these two areas.

Both the arts and academic theology in the Western world take their shape in large part from the huge social transformations which took place within Europe over the late medieval and early modern period along with the emergence of slavery, colonialism, and racism. I’m going to focus here on the role of universities, both because that’s what I know most intimately and because that’s where we currently are, but the other institutions on which theology and the arts rely – churches, galleries, concert halls, philanthropic and government funding bodies  – were also transformed with or emerged out of these same processes. Universities were born from Christian Europe’s encounters with its others, out of the wealth of cultural, scientific, and philosophical materials which became available in the wake of the fracturing of Andalusia; out of European encounters with the Arab and Ottoman worlds through the Crusades; and from the age of European discovery, conquest, and slavery. They emerged in ways which reflected the needs of growing European nations for clerical and economic administration of emergent European nation states and empires, for legal and theological justifications for new forms of property and dispossession and, connected to all of this, for new frameworks of nation, race and history within which all of these could take place; frameworks created and sustained by theology, art, and culture.

I’ve come to think that theology, art, and the institutions in which these are done, can be best understood in terms of social reproduction. For the most part, that is, theology and the arts tend to function both to repeat and to re-inscribe the hierarchical ordering of the societies which produce them, along with the spiritual and aesthetic values which sustain these hierarchies; and also to rework these values as the societies which they organise encounter new challenges. As Sylvia Wynter suggests, we see within the Western world a gradual shift from ideas about racial hierarchy which were justified in the late medieval period on theological grounds, to a justification of racial order through reason – the predominant frame of the 16^th through to the 18^th centuries  – followed by a hierarchy in which evolutionary and economic success come to measure eugenic perfection from the 19^th century onwards; the belief that economic success indicates not only intelligence but also racial superiority.[3]

Universities exist both to reproduce the forms of knowledge which justify and re-make interconnected distinctions of race, class, and gender and also to reproduce the people who will in turn re-make the world which relies on these distinctions. The crisis we find ourselves in, then, can be understood as the result of the ongoing shifts by which racial and colonial order remake themselves. The second part of the twentieth century can perhaps best be grasped through the framework of neo-colonialism globally and multiracialism in the imperial core: a form of racial order in which, as Denise Ferreira da Silva argues, white Westerners invite non-white people to enter into the supposedly secular sphere of universal values and human rights, both failing to recognise the particularity of our own sense of what is universally human, and relying implicitly on the figure of the inhuman, fanatical or unassimilable other: the barbaric and homophobic Hamas fighter; the misogynistic, violent, immigrant; the drug addicted and welfare-dependent black mother.

Much of what passes for decolonisation in this period, then, can be better described as diversification. The West allows for formal desegregation and decolonisation, welcoming diversity into its ranks precisely in order to maintain its imperial power. We see this reflected in the paradoxes of contemporary theological and artistic institutions: the galleries showing work by black artists with the help of funding from oil companies; universities who refuse to take down statues honouring slave-owners whilst advertising their diversity schemes, running workshops on decolonising the curriculum next door to departments partnering with arms companies; or working to widen access whilst closing off our students’ future possibilities by delivering them into debt. This conjuncture has created challenges for those of us seeking to confront the historical entanglement of theology and the arts with racism and colonial violence. The university is asking us to talk about these things, but not too much; as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney wrote twelve years ago of the subversive intellectual: ‘the university needs what she bears but cannot bear what she brings.[4]’

And of course, all too often we choose not to confront our institutions but to hold back; to limit what we say and do for the sake of our jobs, our connections, or our future employment prospects. To live in the university is to be formed by its systems and structures in ways that I do not think we are very good at reckoning with, and so it is often our undergraduate students who are able to see with the clearest eyes and speak with the bravest voices. I think we’ve seen very clearly in the wake of October 7^th the limits of the neoliberal university’s commitment to decolonisation. The violence with which universities have shut down even the mildest demands for disinvestment from the machinery of destruction throughout the ongoing genocide of Palestinians has been revealing. I wonder whether we will look back on these protests as a turning point: the absolute failure of liberal institutions to defend free speech, the capitulation to pressure from donors and governments perhaps the death knell for the Western commitment to the multicultural ideals of diversity, equality and inclusion; and perhaps for the university as such.

What comes next of course, looks to be worse. What does it mean to confront the possibility that, as Balibar suggests the golden age of the university is over? The destruction of the university may look like what is currently taking place in the US, where an attempt is underway to systematically dismantle both universities and the arts, or in the UK, where instead of the wrecking ball of Elon Musk’s DOGE, a purportedly left wing government is overseeing the gradual death by starvation of both the university and the arts sectors. What does it mean to recognise that these changes are happening not, whatever politicians, consultants, or vice chancellors claim, out of economic necessity, but out of a groundless insistence, a kind of pure faith in the superfluity of the arts and humanities?

Let’s talk about abstraction. Jacob Taubes suggests that the fundamental shift which takes place between the medieval and the modern world can be understood, if not explained, in terms of the shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican cosmology.[5] Medieval Europeans understood themselves as part of the great chain of being, a cosmic order reflected not just in the ranked ordering of humans and other creatures but in the very universe itself, a hierarchy both literal and figurative leading from the chthonic darkness below the earth up to the celestial spheres and the heavenly beings.[6] This cosmic and metaphysical order gave both theology and art a firm anchor in the universe.

To speak of God, to make art, was to reflect an order of goodness, truth and beauty in which what was said and done on earth corresponded in a very real sense to what was done in heaven. The Catholic Church was right, Taubes says, to see in Copernicus not just a new scientific theory but an existential threat to the metaphysics which grounded both ecclesial authority and artistic representation. After Copernicus, unable to ground spiritual or ecclesial authority in the external order of the universe, Taubes suggests, both philosophy and theology turned inwards: a shift which we see both in the Kantian turn to human categories and in the ongoing struggle of Christian theology to reconcile the now antithetical poles of God and human being.

 This turn inwards is reflected too, I want to suggest, in an inwards turn which we can see in both Catholic and Protestant piety: a new emphasis on inwardness, on intention over action, on self-examination; a proliferation of new mysticisms of internal ascent leading not from heaven to earth but up the stairways of the interior castle to the darkness of God. But art, too, is unmoored, and comes to find its bearings within the individual mind and imagination. Stephen Prickett connects this process both to the spread of literacy and the newly emergent European divide between the public and the private spheres, suggesting that this internalisation of imagination and speculation is seen first in the newly emergent art form of the novel, but appears also in the visual arts and in poetry in tendencies towards realism, idealism, and perspectivalism.[7] Along similar lines, Victoria Nelson has traced the transposition of ancient ideas about underworlds into what she calls ‘psychotopography’, the literary and visual depiction of the underworld as an image of the inner depths of the mind and imagination; an allegorical rather than analogically artistic vision which, she argues, shapes the emergence of the grotesque, the fantastical, and the science fictional in artistic representations in the West.[8]

But these transformations are also racial transformations. As Willie Jennings writes, the emergence of racial slavery and European empire is characterised by a forcible deracination of enslaved and colonised people; the destruction of their relationships with one another and with their particular places and contexts in order to place them instead within a racial scale which runs not from heaven to hell but from white to black.[9] This racial logic is also a logic of property. Enslaved people, Jennings argues, are relocated both into Christian identity and also into ‘the market’. New European notions of the interior self are themselves tied to new orders of property. Balibar finds in John Locke the first full expression of the notion of self-consciousness; a notion which, he suggests, cannot be separated from Locke’s understanding of personhood as property.[10] It’s the opening up of inner space which makes it possible for Locke to understand personhood as self-possession, and this relationship of self-possession which in turn opens up new forms of possessive relation to the external world. It is this understanding of personhood which allows Locke to claim ownership not only of the ore dug up by his own hands, but also of the grass that his horse has eaten, and the turf cut by his servant. It is this interiority, this self-possession which, Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano argue, smuggles ‘a racial anthropology of the human’ into the very heart of Western ideas of personhood, the self-conscious, rational, imaginative and self-possessed person contrasted with racialised non-persons, understood to be lacking in self-consciousness, irrational, and trapped outside of history in the realm of nature.[11]

The racial frame within which this new interiority is mapped is also a historical frame, an account of progress in which the gradual abstraction and spiritualisation of all things which was once worked out along the great chain of being comes now to be mapped across a historical scale. Here theology is placed as one stage along a developmental scheme within which, in its classical form, the pagan deification of nature gives way to the outward law of Jewish monotheism, then the inward law of Christianity, and finally the spiritualisation or internalisation of theology’s claims; the realisation that it is not God but reason which drives forward history.

A similar process of interiorisation and abstraction is at work in narratives of the development of art over history. The novel is placed towards the end of a process of development which begins in myth and fable.[12] What is modernity if not Don Quixote, awakening from a dream of chivalry and romance to discover himself, the protagonist of a work of fiction? The modern art gallery removes works of art from religious, ritual or social function and places them into a blank white box. Something similar can be said of the museum, which marks its difference from the gallery precisely by placing the works it holds into context, thus marking them out from art works proper, at the same time as it insist on the relegation of these contexts to the past. Recent conflicts over the fate of the Benin bronzes, for example, looted by British soldiers from Nigeria, have included contention both over the appropriateness of displaying the bronzes as separate works, rather than within the altars for which they were originally made, and also over the practice of removing them from the daily life of the communities from which they were stolen.[13]

In Black Marxism, Cedric Robinson says that his work began from the recognition that the theories of history which he encountered in Western radicalism were insufficient; that ‘something more than objective material forces were responsible for “the nastiness”’. But this need to understand was ‘not simply a question of outrage or concern for Black survival. It was a matter of comprehension.’ We are talking, then, about a double excess; two forms of desire, of pleasure, connected to the acquisition of knowledge. One thing that has happened with the shift from formal and explicit logic of segregation and empire to the less tangible and explicit order of neoliberal multiculturalism has been a shift towards the language of culture and religion as a justification for racial violence under the banner of the threat to Europe’s Christian heritage, or the decline of Western culture.

This shift implicates both theology and the arts more deeply, at the same time as it has heightened the attacks on both insofar as they have resisted these attempts to weaponise them. I wonder whether this has to do with the ambivalent role of pleasure which is more explicit here than in the sciences, precisely because both theology and the art deal with that which is not quite graspable or containable; precisely because both open up the space to confront what cannot quite be contained within the logic of racial order, alongside the pleasures which sustain it. Both theology and art have to do both with beauty and with suffering, and with the slippage between the two. Both know how to redeem the suffering of others, how to turn it into profit. The cost of interiorization and abstraction is sometimes described as ‘disenchantment’; the reward of centuries of violence and dispossession has been, for both art and theology, a certain kind of crisis of confidence, a loss of faith in the reality or value of what we do. What certain kinds of theological or artistic diversity work have in common with the violence of reactionary politics unfolding around the world is perhaps a need to witness certain kinds of suffering in order to restore a sense of reality or urgency or pleasure to the world. What is the difference between a White House video of immigrants being deported to Guantanamo and the keffiyeh-wrapped baby Jesus in the Vatican nativity scene?[14] In Heidelberg, recently, I went to an exhibition about the history of Orientalism in German art. I found myself in a room full of people looking at racist art, wondering whether we were there to enjoy the racist art, or to enjoy feeling superior to the people who made the racist art, or to enjoy feeling bad about being part of a society that had made so much racist art. What is coming for us now, I think, is a movement of reaction which both feeds on the pleasure of racial violence and very much does not want to think about those pleasures. Perhaps that is a place for us to start.

---

[1] Étienne Balibar, ‘Politics and Science, One Vocation or Two?’ in boundary2, 15 March 2021 https://www.boundary2.org/2021/03/etienne-balibar-politics-and-science-one-vocation-or-two

[2] Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism (The University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

[3] ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument’ in CR: The New Centennial Review 3.1 (2003), 257-2337.

[4] The Undercommons: Fugutive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013).

[5] Jacob Taubes, ‘Dialectic and Analogy’ in The Journal of Religion 34.2 (1954), 111-119.

[6] Cecilio M. Cooper, ‘Fallen: Generation, Postlapsarian Verticality + the Black Chthonic’ in Rhizomes 38 (2022).

[7] Stephen Prickett, Secret Selves: A History of Our Inner Space (Bloomsbury, 2021).

[8] Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Harvard University Press, 2001).

[9] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press, 2010).

[10] Étienne Balibar, Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, translated by Warren Montag (Verso, 2013).

[11] Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, ‘Race, real estate and real abstraction’ in Radical Philosophy 194 (2015).

[12] Atesede Makonnen, ‘Romanticism and the Novel(ty) of Race in Manu Samriti Chander, The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2024.

[13] Barnaby Phillips, Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes (Oneworld, 2021).

estimated reading time: 96 min

This piece was edited on 12/3 at 10:29am to add additional information on the DNA profile, explain the grand jury decision, the handwriting analysis, a few interviews with detectives and FBI investigators, and findings in JonBenet’s room the night of the incident that hint at Netflix and Berlinger manipulating the truth. I also added clips from the Dr. Phil interview because clips are being removed.

I edited it again to add info on the duct tape, Ramsey PR machine, screenshots from their 1997 website.

This case has likely been solved, but will never see justice. The real mystery is why.

A new Netflix documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey case came out last Monday. Prior to its release, the media hyped this new doc as something that would break open the case. The director, Joe Berlinger, did interviews saying he believed the case could be solved with new DNA evidence and couldn’t believe he previously thought conspiracies the parents did it could be true. People who have watched every doc on the case, read books and pored over the released grand jury papers thought this might be the doc that would finally bring new information to light.

In fact, it doesn’t do that at all. Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey presents no new information and is created by someone who seems more enamored with the fact that he got an interview with John Ramsey than anything that points to him being a serious suspect. Of course, without John, there’d be no family or personal involvement and we probably wouldn’t be watching this on Netflix.

What this creates is a terribly one-sided documentary that does a disservice to everyone involved by leaving out crucial information that points to anyone but an intruder. In fact, the documentary uses the idea that the Ramseys did it as a playful twist designed to trick the audience. The first episode highlights how complicated the house was, how the police noticed odd behavior. It leads you to believe it’s the parents before episode 2 comes in and says, well wait, there was DNA!

The problem is, the first episode doesn’t actually get into the evidence that made the police consider the Ramseys. In fact, they repeat a lot of the lies that are in the Ramsey’s book and have been disproven to make the cops look dumb. For example, the Ramseys say the cops focused on them immediately because they said there weren’t footprints outside in the snow. The Ramseys and Berlinger’s doc point out that there were no prints because there was no snow and show photos of the back of the house. This, to them, is evidence that the cops were trying to make them look bad from the start! The thing is, that’s not what the original police report says.

James Kolar was a detective who worked the case. He started working on it in 1997 when he was asked to stake out one of the Ramsey’s friends at a ski resort. In the week after JonBenet’s funeral, the cops couldn’t find the Ramseys and they wouldn’t share their whereabouts. Kolar worked for the Boulder Police Department for 17 years, but had transferred to Telluride when the murder took place. They asked him to head to the ski resort to see if they were there. He didn’t find them, but this pulled him into the case.

By 2005, he was lead investigator. By 2006, he left the case to go back to Telluride, discouraged by what he witnessed from the DA. In 2012, he released a book with his findings called Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet?

Kolar’s book is considered one of the best on the subject, though the Ramseys disagree. We’ll get to why, but he mostly does a great job of compiling all primary sources. You see the child abuse report, the photos of the spiderwebs in the grate, the failure to recreate stun gun marks on a pig. He also points out where the cops made mistakes. So, you remember how the Ramseys said the cops tried to pin it on them from the start by making it sound like there was snow everywhere and no footprints when there wasn’t snow?

Kolar’s book is the first time we find out that’s not true. The cops said exactly what the Ramsey’s said in their initial report: there was some snow on the grass and no snow on the rear patio:

The photo of the clear rear patio the documentary uses as a gotcha to prove police incompetence doesn’t do that at all. It matches exactly what the first officer on the scene wrote in his report. There was no attempt to make it seem like the lack of footprints was suspicious, he just wrote down what he saw. The Ramseys, however, saw a narrative that helped them prove bias and ran with that.

This is what the case of JonBenet has become, sadly. A millionaire family with power and PR behind them, a DA with ties to that family and a police force that did make mistakes, but who also were hindered nearly every step of the way.

Netflix’s Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey tries to hide or simplify details to present a clean cut, TV-ready conclusion: we need the police to do more DNA testing, we need to focus on the DNA! They hope, with advances in technology and additional DNA from scraping the additional evidence, some day, they’ll be able to link this DNA to a relative of the killer.

Meanwhile, experts have said this probably isn’t a DNA case from the start because the scene was so contaminated and the sample was so small. This remains true. The evidence has not gotten less contaminated over time.

The current DNA profile is actually too small to use genealogical testing, even though this is what the documentary presents as the solution. Again, it is an example of a documentary that is eager to present the truth as black-and-white. DNA must be the solution! How can DNA be wrong? Well, we will get to that.

First, I just wanted you to know, whether you’ve watched the Netflix doc already or not, it is far from the entire story.

I watched Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey as soon as it was out. I’d been waiting for it to drop because, well, this case is the case to me. Am I proud to be a true crime person? Maybe? No? I don’t know? I am aware of the ethical issues and all the bad things it does to society to have 800 podcasts that oscillate between horrific murder details and discounts for Squarespace.

Still, I will put on the latest episode of Evil Lives Here to fall asleep at night. Let’s blame my mom, like I do for most things. She’s the one who raised me on CourtTV! She’s the one who showed me you could read police reports and autopsies online! When I got my first laptop in 2003, I was 12 and ready to become Harriet the Goddamn Spy, okay?

JonBenet was 3 months older than me and like most girls born in 1990, I was obsessed with the photos of her that were all over the news and tabloids. How could something like that happen to a girl my age? At 6, I wasn’t into the details of the case, of course, I was just struck by this pretty girl who suddenly made me realize the world may not be such a nice place for little girls.

By 2003, there’d been a grand jury non-indictment, multiple books on the case released and still no trial or justice. I wanted to know everything. I dug into Angelfire websites, forums, Geocities websites, sketchy transcriptions of police tape interviews and radio interviews. I read Steve Thomas’ 2000 book, JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, from an illegal .pdf someone shared and that changed everything for me.

Steve Thomas is featured heavily in the Netflix documentary as a bumbling idiot. The Ramseys sued him after the release of the book and the doc features discrepancies he was caught in. Some of these discrepancies are fair and do point to a man guessing at motive and some details, but he also shares facts on the Ramseys removing items from the crime scene with the permission of the DA.

He mentions leads he wasn’t allowed to follow that would point to the Ramsey’s, like the fact that beaver hair was found on JBR’s (JonBenet Ramsey) panties and the duct tape. The police noticed Patsy wore black furry boots to an interview and asked to test them for beaver hair, but she never turned in the boots. In fact, Patsy and John don’t turn in their clothes from that night until over a year later according to Thomas. Why was this allowed? Why doesn’t the Netflix documentary mention this? Thomas does:

It’s a fair question for Thomas to have while he worked the case. Netflix doesn’t think this is worth mentioning, despite mentioning the many unidentified fibers on JBR’s body. If the parents wanted to clear themselves and help provide a better profile of the killer’s DNA or clothing, why not turn your stuff in immediately so it can be excluded? Instead, the Ramseys waited a year, when these clothes had been washed and mingled with other things to turn them in. It’s almost like the Ramseys don’t actually want a DNA or fiber sample that isn’t compromised.

Take, for example, their actions after receiving the ransom note. Patsy says she didn’t read the entire note, but saw the beginning, went to check on JBR, she wasn’t there, she called for John and then went to call 911. John says he heard Patsy scream, met her on the backsteps, took the letter, laid it out on the floor and started to read it.

This is a bit odd, since Patsy mentions details from the end of the letter on the 911 call, but it is possible John read it aloud or was relaying this info. What’s odd though is that the letter says they’ve been watching the family, they’re related to John’s businesses and if the Ramseys tell anyone about this, they’ll kill JBR.

It makes sense to call the cops immediately, even though the letter says not to. What doesn’t make sense is Patsy calling her four best friends to come over because there was an emergency and she needed them. Barbara Fernie, John Fernie, Fleet White and Priscilla White head over to the Ramsey house without knowing JonBenet has been kidnapped, Patsy doesn’t say this on the phone according to Foreign Faction, pg. 45. At this point, it’s possible someone close to the Ramseys has done this or is involved and they invite friends who know personal details from the letter over?

If Patsy had told them a kidnapping with a ransom note occurred, these friends probably would’ve acted like they were arriving at a crime scene. Instead, they thought JonBenet might just be missing in the house and proceed to get their DNA everywhere. A year earlier, Fleet’s daughter, Daphne went missing and was eventually found hiding in their home, so this instinct makes sense.

Fleet thought JonBenet was doing the same and went to search the basement, calling out JonBenet’s name, despite there being a ransom letter. John Ramsey would later point to this as suspicious behavior when he added Fleet White to the suspect list. Well, how unfortunate you invited a possible suspect to roam the house and contaminate the scene before the cops even got to your house.

Not that Fleet was a viable suspect. Someone would’ve noticed if he left his own party the night JBR was murdered. In the time since, White has sued to get the grand jury documents released, as he believes this will clear things up for the public. He cooperated with police and got in a fight with John after the funeral because he felt the Ramseys should talk to the police immediately. It’s unlikely he’s involved if he’s doing everything he can to get information and evidence released. The Ramseys still have him on their suspect list, however.

And while the Ramseys take a year to turn their clothes in from that night, their friends, staff and others are happy to do so immediately. People at the White’s party turn in their clothes to clear themselves and find the person who did this. Because the scene was so contaminated, the officers who arrived also had to turn in their clothes from that night. Trace DNA from all of these people could be eliminated from the trace DNA on JBR fairly soon. The Ramsey family’s was not.

When the documentary discusses the Ramsey’s odd behavior when cops arrived, they talk about John seeming distant or going through the mail, but this when the cops start to suspect the Ramseys. They don’t take their clothes that night and they try to interview them but agree to wait. The Netflix doc fails to mention that it’s their shifting stories in the ensuing weeks that raise suspicion. For example, John tells two officers he read to JBR then went to bed. When he finally does his police interview in April, 4 months after the murder, he says they misunderstood him and that he said he put her to bed and he went to read a book.

The two officers felt like he’d been clear and there was no misunderstanding. Patsy also changes her story. The day of the kidnapping, she says she put a red turtleneck sweater over JBR’s white top and white longjohns. It was winter and cold, so she put two layers on top of JBR. That morning, Det. Arendt (the female officer the documentary depicts as crazy) wrote in her report that she noticed a red garment in the laundry area next to JBR’s bedroom.

When JBR is found she’s wearing a white shirt and white longjohns. In April, Patsy changes her story and says she only put JBR in the white longjohns and she always had a white shirt on. In the interrogation, officers push this and she says she can’t recall when or why the red turtleneck was put in the laundry. Maybe, these are two frazzled parents who can’t remember details, but here’s another bit of info the documentary leaves out:

The Ramsey’s lawyers refused to let them be interviewed unless they could have access to police reports and the previous reports of what they said. Their lawyers were essentially given everything they needed to get their story straight. If JBR was wearing a red turtleneck, how did it end up off and in the laundry? Certainly an intruder didn’t do that. Officer Thomas sees this lie as a red flag. JBR’s longjohns were stained with urine, she had a history of wetting herself, maybe she’d wet the bed and stained the red turtleneck, angering her mom and forcing her to put it in the wash. In a 2015 AMA, Lead Det. Mark Beckner confirmed her long johns and the bed had urine stains.

This is why Officer Thomas is seen pushing the “Patsy lost it because JBR wet herself” theory so hard in the documentary. The doc tries to make it seem like a ludicrous idea with no backing that shows how dumb he is, but he’s led to this conclusion because of Patsy’s lies.

People often say this is a case of he said/she said between the Ramseys and the police, but what you’ll find is that, most often, the police take their lead from the Ramseys changing their story and saying conflicting things. Yes, it is bad the police tried to bait the Ramseys into talking by leaking fake information to the media, but remember, these are the parents of their victim and they can’t even find them after the funeral. They’ve failed to answer questions. They’ve failed to turn over crucial evidence. By this point, it’s been two months since JonBenet was murdered, is it so odd they start to take a focus on the parents by February after such behavior?

The doc leads you to believe the focus on the Ramseys was a quick, lazy decision made by bumbling cops that hindered investigations into an intruder. This isn’t true. The Ramseys became suspects after their own lies and behavior couldn’t be written off. Also, officers did investigate intruder theories immediately! Officer Thomas lists all the steps they took: they used cameras from a business in the area to track every car that turned onto the Ramsey’s street that day (a car is the only means of transportation that makes sense if you’re kidnapping a 6 year old).

They interviewed everyone who’d been at the White’s party the Ramseys attended the night before. They took every lead seriously! This is mentioned in both Foreign Faction and JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, but Netflix make sit seem as though this leads just sat until Lou Smit joined the case.

Shall we get into the Lou Smit of it all? He’s often considered the Best Detective and Smoking Gun in the JonBenet case. He didn’t solve it, but he dedicated his life to it and even passed his work on to his kids, as the Netflix doc tells us. Lou was brought in as the case stalled by the DA. From the beginning, he made it clear he didn’t think the Ramseys were capable of committing such a crime; this is why the DA liked him.

He went to work on beefing up the intruder theory. Smit would eventually leave the case when a grand jury was put together that focused on the parents. He was certain they’d be indicted because of the media treatment they received and the facts other officers shared. Some point to Smit’s work as the key to stopping the indictment since the defense was allowed to present the intruder theory to the grand jury.

Maybe, Smit did help. He presented two main theories that made sense of things the cops could never understand:

1. How the hell did someone get her from her room to the basement without making any noise or disturbing the scene? JonBenet’s room was pristine, it looked like someone just got out of bed, not like an attack occurred. Nothing from her room to the basement was out of place, meaning she wasn’t kicking or screaming on the way down. How was she subdued?

   
   Smit suggests: a stun gun. You see, there are two sets of bruises equal distance apart on the right side of JonBenet’s neck and lower back. Smit believes they look like the pattern of a stun gun. If you’ve watched the doc on him, JonBenet Ramsey: What Really Happened (2021) you’ve seen the clips of him recreating stun gun marks on dead pigs to see if he can recreate similar bruises to JonBenet. He sort of does, they kind of look like the same distance, but they’re burn marks instead of bruises.

   He was also only able to recreate it with one brand of stun gun, an Air Taser, and the maker of that stun gun said they’d never had a case where a stun gun renders someone completely unconscious and created bruises rather than burns. He also couldn’t get the dimensions to match JonBenet’s abrasions exactly. The train tracks police initially thought caused them though? A direct dimension match. This reddit thread has information (and sources!). The below images are from Kolar’s book (pg. 241 and 354, respectively):

   

Why does the doc spend so much time convincing you the stun gun could be possible when it was debunked years ago? Because it helps the Ramseys and is the only thing that could explain how JBR was removed from her bed by an intruder. If it’s the train tracks, an intruder wouldn’t make sense. Why would he decide to poke her with a child’s toy once in the basement?

2. The Window Well/Grate Theory

   Perhaps, Smit’s biggest help to the Ramseys was finally giving them a potential entry point for the intruder. The morning of the kidnapping, police and the Ramseys found all the doors locked as they had been. When asked about the broken window in the basement, John said he broke it months prior when he was locked out. John said that he and Fleet found the window open and a suitcase under it just before they found JonBenet’s body in the wine cellar at 1:05pm.

   John said this before he knew Fleet told police he was in the cellar at 6:40am, the window was closed and he moved the suitcase there to investigate the window. When asked about this discrepancy, John said he was in the cellar before 6:40am and had found the window open, but closed it because he “wasn’t thinking” (his daughter had just been kidnapped, there’s a ransom note and he doesn’t think the open window matters?). He then changes his story to say he reopened the window at 1pm with Fleet to see if there was any new glass.

   
   Why does this matter? The window with the suitcase under it seemed like an obvious exit for the intruder before John was caught in his lie in April, during his interrogation. Once it was established no one could say for sure if the window was open or if the suitcase had been moved by Fleet or the intruder, the likelihood of the window as the entrance/exit became a little less likely.

   That is, until Lou Smit joined the case. He said it was totally possible that someone had moved the grate above the basement window, jumped down into the window well, opened the window through the hole and gained entrance. He even makes a video showing that he could do it. This has become a huge piece of evidence people turn to! Look, he got in that way and he got out using the suitcase! See, this is a plausible entrance/exit!

   
   There’s just one problem: the window well and grate were covered in spiderwebs. Like, so many that the officers initially thought, well no one could’ve gone through there without disturbing the spiderweb or getting dirt/dust everywhere. From crime scene video taken that day and published in Kolar’s book, we can see this spiderwebs were not disturbed at all:

   

   

   

   This is how Kolar describes viewing this evidence against Lou Smit’s famous window well video. It took until 2005 for a lead investigator on the case to debunk this theory with crime scene video and until 2012 for the public to know this theory was debunked.

   

   And if you’re thinking, well maybe the intruder got out, destroyed the cobwebs and then the spider rebuilt his web by the time the video was taken? Well, Officer Thomas can speak to that in his book. They had a spider expert at University of Colorado Boulder come in and look at the spider/web. He confirmed these spiders go into hibernation in November and the web couldn’t have been rebuilt that morning.

Despite Lou Smit’s two biggest theories being debunked in the years after they were shared publicly, the Netflix documentary still acts as though these are legitimate theories that haven’t been tested. They still present Smit as an expert and an authority on the case, even though his intruder theory falls apart without the stun gun or the window.

Okay, at this point, maybe you think I’m trying to convince you that the Ramseys did this. I’m not! I mean, I definitely think they did and will lay my theory out at the end, but what I love about my theory is that I came up with it from my own research. I really just want you to know that in this modern media landscape, where it’s easy for streamers to sell narratives via documentary, that you have to be discerning. Dig into books, documentaries and interviews! I encourage everyone to do the same.

So, if the Netflix documentary just offers one part of the story, what else should people watch or read? Hit up the below!

I’m Just Curious

1. This DNA Explainer - Despite everything you will read in this, people still see all of this information and go “Well, the DNA.” There’s a lot of science behind why this DNA sample is most likely useless. If the Ramsey’s were staging the scene, they could easily plant unidentified DNA by rubbing different items from the house on the body (unidentified fibers were found on JBR - navy and tan cloth, beaver or rodent hair - the coroner thought it seemed like someone wiped areas of her body, Kolar and Thomas).

   When the FBI and Boulder PD say this is a DNA case, it’s because they think the DNA won’t point to anyone. They think if this DNA eventually does match something, it will be innocent trace DNA that has nothing to do with the murder and, if it matched other fibers or trace DNA on items in the house at the time, would point to a cover-up. This would be the final nail in the coffin for the Ramseys. This is unlikely, as you’ll see below. The Ramseys removed a lot of items from the house the day after the murder.

   However, people who believe an intruder did it think the evidence needs to be scraped again for additional DNA to create a better profile of the suspect. Interestingly enough, if the Ramseys had left those items in the house or turned in their clothes from that night sooner, it would’ve allowed the police to exclude fibers and touch DNA to create a better profile from the start!
   

   As long as this DNA remains “unidentified” the Ramseys can always point to an intruder. If the cops figure out it came from items in the house or people with alibis, they know it’s unrelated to the crime, thus narrowing in on the Ramseys. So, in a way, this is a DNA case, but probably not in a way where AncestryDNA is going to find a match or something.

   
   That the documentary and John Ramsey act as though a better DNA profile could point to John Mark Karr points to how ridiculous this notion is: Karr was in Georgia at the time of the murder and knew no new details. That they even present Karr as a viable suspect shows how little integrity this project has. Most likely, John knows this DNA will never match anyone and that’s why he pushes for a genealogical match as the key to the case.
   

2. Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey (Netflix) - What, I’m recommending the doc I just trashed? Well, how else will you know what the discrepancies are!! Also, while this doc is very Pro-Ramsey Family, it inadvertently throws their biggest defense out the window by ending on the fact that the DNA profile used to exclude intruders and the family is contaminated and probably invalid so no one previously excluded can be. That includes the family.

3. JonBenet Ramsey: What Really Happened (2021) - This is Lou Smit’s take, it is very biased. Still, if you want the parent’s side of things, this is the closest you’ll get.

4. The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey (2016) - This is the first documentary that presents The Brother Did It theory. It’s based on Kolar’s book which comes to a similar conclusion. The Netflix doc acts as though this doc is ridiculous and invalid because Burke sued CBS and settled, but it actually has legit interviews and science. Also, despite the lawsuit, the documentary is still publicly available.

   A lot of the questions this doc brings up have never been addressed by the Ramseys. “Burke Did It” is considered the most “out there” theories by people who only sort of know the case, but it makes sense when you consider that’s the theory presented to the grand jury after the murder (along with the intruder theory) and dig into some of the stuff below.

I Want To Solve This Thing

1. r/JonBenetRamsey - Do I believe reddit is a legit source for information? No. Do I think incredibly dedicated true crime nerds have created a great subreddit that maintains primary sources, interview transcripts, and photos? Yes. If you have a question about anything in this case, you can probably find a detailed thread that looks into every possible answer. This subreddit explained that the DNA was too degraded to provide a legit suspect DNA profile 4 years before this Netflix doc! So, yknow, dive in, but do your research.

2. Lead Det. Mark Beckner’s Reddit AMA. It’s verified! He makes it clear Burke was involved, the parents staged a cover-up, this will never go to court or be solved without a confession and BPD and the FBI both believe there was no intruder.

3. Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? by James Kolar - Kolar’s book is a must-read to me. He lays out the scenario that would be necessary for an intruder to make sense in the first chapter and you can understand how ludicrous it would be for a kidnapper to get so lucky. He then starts diving into the debunked myths he was sold by the DA and lies he catches the Ramseys in.
   

   By the end, he suggests there was an incident involving Burke and JBR, he hit her and the parents covered it up. He points to Burke’s swiss army knife and boot print being found in room where JBR was found. Oh, yeah, that thing in the Netflix doc where they say the Hi-Tec boot print was from the cops? It also could’ve been Burke. Investigators knew when Patsy was interviewed that Burke had a pair of Hi-Tec boots with compasses on them and asked her about it. She claimed she couldn’t remember what shoes she bought him.

   

4. JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas - Netflix and the Ramseys don’t want you to read this book, so you probably should. He comes to the conclusion Patsy did it because there are signs she, like Burke, lied about being asleep that night. Her fingerprints are on the bowl of pineapple, she most likely put JBR’s red turtleneck in the wash and there were open suitcases upstairs because the family was going on a trip early the next day and she was still packing when the family came home from the White’s.
   

   This is his theory. He thinks Patsy lost it in an act of rage when JBR wet the bed, I think his theory falls apart there. Also, the only evidence we see of Patsy in the basement is that her palm print is on the wine cellar door where JBR was found twice.

5. The Death of Innocence - This is the book the Ramseys wrote. It is…interesting. It’s mostly about John feeling like he lost this innocence.

6. The Bonita Papers - In 1998, Boulder PD brought in three lawyers to help assist the case because they felt the DA wouldn’t let them properly investigate. One of the paralegals who worked with these lawyers gathered all of her unedited notes for a book. The notes were leaked to the press by her nephew and uncovered some lies from the Ramseys and confirmed a lot of what Thomas wrote in his book.

The JonBenet Ramsey case is one of the most researched and investigated out there. It isn’t hard to dig in and find a theory that works for you and the evidence you find. This is why it’s easy for one documentary director to manipulate the narrative.

So, at this point…you probably want to know what I think happened. I’ve been tweeting about it in a lot of threads that are hard to follow, so I’ll break it down below based on my take on reading/watching the above. From the jump with this case, I believed the Ramseys did it. When the Lou Smit stuff came out in the early 2010s, it was the first time I really believed an intruder could be possible.

When Kolar’s book came out in 2012 debunking the Smit stuff, I went back to Ramseys Did It. When the 2016 CBS doc and Burke’s Dr. Phil interview came out, I joined Team Burke Did It. With the most recent Netflix documentary, I once again became convinced of the intruder theory, until I revisited Kolar’s book and the other info left out of the doc.

Oh, let me introduce you to some online nerd case terms:
-RDI (Ramseys Did It)
-BDI (Burke Did It)
-JDI (John Did It)
-PDI (Patsy Did It)
-BDIA (Burke Did It All Except the Cover-Up)
-IDI (Intruder Did It)

You will see people in online forums use IDI, PDI, RDI as badges to denote their favorite theory. You’ll see people who go from IDI, RDI to BDI or BDI to IDI to RDI. Whichever your choice, each one comes with a certain set of facts that those theorists believe. Are you IDI? You probably believe in the stun gun. RDI? Your focus might be the fake ransom letter. (Yeah, the BPD and FBI both think the ransom letter is fake, despite the Ramsey civil suit.)

Where am I on this now? Well, I am back to my 2016, Burke Did It All belief. Even more now that the Ramseys are pushing a new documentary that seeks to bolster the intruder argument again while leaving out facts and promoting debunked evidence. After watching the doc, I reread Foreign Faction and re-watched Burke’s Dr. Phil interview. I’d forgotten about the boot match and Burke’s reveal in 2016 that he hadn’t been asleep all night like his parents said. In fact, he was up after everyone went to bed according to him. Let me lay out how I got here.

The Ramseys Lies

They lie about a lot. Whether they put JBR straight to bed or read to her, whether Patsy noticed JBR was missing and then saw the note or saw the note and then went to her room. Whatever, these are things that could be explained by frazzled parents. It’s just odd that their biggest lies all revolve around Burke, his whereabouts, and his belongings:

1. The Pineapple Lie - The Ramseys say JBR and Patsy went to bed immediately. John played with Burke for a bit, then put him to bed. He read for a bit and then he got in bed with Patsy, took a melatonin and went to sleep. According to them, everyone in the house slept soundly and heard nothing until Patsy woke up to make coffee, found the ransom note and screamed. The scream alerted John, but according to the Ramseys, Burke slept through this, the 911 call and police arriving.

   Here’s the thing: JBR ate pineapple at 11pm/midnight, 2 hours before she died. They estimate she died at 1am or 2am. How do we know this? They found undigested pineapple in her stomach. They know it is not from earlier in the day or from the dinner at the Whites because the food from earlier was further along in her digestive tract. Also, officers find a bowl of pineapple on the dining room table. It is a bowl of pineapple in milk next to an empty cup with a tea bag in it.
   

   The Ramsey’s maid said this was Burke’s favorite snack. And, in fact, only Patsy and Burke’s fingerprints are on the bowl of pineapple (see below) and the cup. But, we know JBR ate some from this bowl because they collected it into evidence and tested it against the pineapple in her stomach: it was the same pineapple. Patsy tried to say she had no idea where it came from and someone must’ve left it out in the morning, but how can that be possible if JBR ate some?

   

   Burke and John say they have no clue either. Well, someone fed that girl pineapple 2 hours before she died and it’s very unlikely an intruder did that. It’s unlikely she could’ve prepared a bowl of pineapple with milk alone at 6 without making noise and waking someone. It’s also unlikely she was eating at midnight with her brother at midnight and an intruder could’ve committed the crime in a 2-hour timeframe without anyone hearing anything.

   Below is Burke acting weird about the pineapple in 2016 on Dr. Phil. It’s interesting he says he can’t remember if they ate pineapple and how could anyone remember something that happened so long ago, but when asked about the 911 call, he says he couldn’t forget something like that.
   

   With the pineapple evidence, it is clear she was awake at midnight, allowing 1-2 hours for an intruder to do everything. The Ramseys need to say they all went to sleep as soon as they got home because that opens the window of opportunity up from midnight to 10pm-2am and allows time for an intruder. If it’s as simple as “oh yeah, the kids wanted a snack when we got home,” why not say that?
   Of course, there’s another reason Patsy and John may not have known about the pineapple: Burke made it himself and JBR went downstairs when she heard him getting a snack and playing with his toys.

   The maid said the kids would often go play or get food after bedtime because the house was so large their parents couldn’t hear them. Burke said in his interview he could hear the fridge open from his room. We also know JBR and Burke would share the same room sometimes. If JBR would wet the bed, she’d change herself and go sleep in Burke’s extra bed. Each child had 2 twin beds in their room (see below). Burke would sleep in JBR’s room sometimes because his would get cold, he says this in his first interview.

   The Ramseys say the kids never did that. But, Burke even says JBR slept in his room on Christmas Eve because he wakes up before her and she wanted to him to wake her up for gifts. Basically, there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the two siblings being together without their parent’s knowledge, which would explain the pineapple.
   

   

   The Ramseys say this isn’t possible and Burke was asleep all night. In 2016, Burke goes on Dr. Phil and admits he was up after everyone went to bed for the first time, giving the pineapple theory more credence. Also, you’ll notice the bedroom light is on in the above bedroom picture. The bedroom is the only scene at the crime that we know was actually secured. It’s fair to assume, this is how it was when the incident occurred. If the intruders had a flashlight, why would they enter the room, walk around the bed and turn on JBR’s bedside light?
   

   In addition to that, it would’ve taken someone with inside knowledge to know that was the only working light in her room, according to the Ramsey’s maid. How would a kidnapper know about the light switch and, again, why would they need a light if they have a flashlight? It seems more like JBR woke up in the night, turned her light on, got out of bed and possibly went to go see who was in the kitchen.
   

   

   The pineapple lie confuses a lot of people and they dismiss it as a red herring, but it is probably the most important piece of information. The medical examiner is able to determine that JBR died shortly after eating the pineapple. Whoever gave her the pineapple knows how she hit her head:

   

   Here is how Patsy explains the pineapple. It’s all we have since Burke doesn’t remember and won’t answer questions. She thinks the kidnapper fed JBR pineapple right before hitting her. Why would the intruder need to hit JBR then if they’d already subdued her enough to get her downstairs to the table to eat? Why stop to feed her pineapple? You supposedly have a stun gun and duct tape, why not use them and go? Oh, also, if she was stun gunned and dragged from her bed like Lou Smit says, did the intruder wake her up to feed her pineapple in that case?

   

   One more thing about the pineapple? One of the few witnesses in this case is Scott Gibbons, he’s the neighbor to the immediate north of the Ramseys. According to Kolar he tells detectives, “He had been in his south-facing kitchen around midnight on Christmas night. He observed that the upper lights in the Ramsey kitchen were on, but dimmed low. Gibbons didn’t observe anyone inside the residence at the time, and noted that it was not unusual for lights to be on in the home at night.” (Foreign Faction, pg. 101)
   

   That means the light was on in the kitchen around the time she ate the pineapple. If it was the intruder, why would they turn a light on? They have a flashlight. Why risk being seen? Clearly, there are witnesses close by.
   

2. The Enhanced 911 Call Lie- Patsy and John swear that Burke was nowhere in the vicinity the entire morning they realized JBR was missing. They do not wake him up for information, they just check on him, see he’s sleeping and leave him alone. They say he didn’t wake up until Fleet White went to get him and take him to the White’s house. Well, that is a lie.

   
   Kimberly Archuleta was the 911 operator who took Patsy’s call. Almost immediately, she felt like something was off about the caller. At the end of the call, when the caller thought they’d hung up, Archuleta heard a change in tone and someone said “What do we do?” This was suspicious to her. She immediately went to her supervisor and noted this. After JBR’s body was found, she went back to her supervisor and said the 911 call should be enhanced because she swore there was more said at the end.

   
   The FBI and Det. Trujillo thought she was right. They sent the tape to the Secret Service and Aerospace. The Secret Service wasn’t able to pick up on anything, but Aerospace, which had better recording equipment, could. The first two experts wrote down what they thought they heard independently. The third, a detective on the case, also wrote what she heard independently. All three of them wrote the same thing:

   

   The enhanced 911 call is considered such legit evidence, we learn when the grand jury papers are unsealed in 2013, that it was presented to the grand jury. In fact, they asked Burke about the voices on the tape. He said to the grand jury, as confirmed by the 2016 CBS documentary, “It sounds like my voice on the tape,” but he still said he couldn’t remember if he was awake or not. Burke will later lie in his Dr. Phil interview and say he hasn’t heard the 911 call, but he has heard about it. However, we know the enhanced version was played for him at the grand jury and he said it sounded like him.

   John and Patsy swore Burke was nowhere in the vicinity and slept the entire morning. The enhanced 911 call proves he was in the vicinity. If he did wake up and was curious about what was going on and awake because of Patsy’s scream, why hide that? On Dr. Phil, Burke and John say again that Burke was in bed asleep during the 911 call, despite the tape.
   

   After Dr. Phil and the CBS lawsuit, Burke’s lawyer put out a statement saying that Burke never said he was asleep all morning, his parents did and he may have heard the commotion downstairs and screamed from the stairs “What did you find?” This contradicts what Burke says himself on Dr. Phil. It also doesn’t necessarily make sense of John angrily saying “We’re not speaking to you!” In his actual interview after the event, Burke does say he was awake in bed that morning. See below:

   Here is the dispatcher talking about it and Burke answering questions about it on Dr. Phil in a way that seems…not so honest. Again, when during the lawsuit, CBS is able to confirm Burke said it sounds like him to the Grand Jury:
   

   Below is the excerpt from the grand jury from Dateline covering the CBS lawsuit:

   

3. The red shirt and bedwetting lies - John said in their CNN interview that they weren’t aware of JBR wetting the bed. Their maid said John was there many times when JBR wet the bed and it’s odd he lied about this. He also must’ve known about Burke’s bedwetting and feces issues. Burke confirms that John and his mom knew that JBR wet the bed and he describes their routine around it in his videotaped interview.
   

   This interview was eventually shared with the public on Dr. Phil in 2016. The Ramseys lying around JBR wetting the bed is, again, what most likely raised Dt. Thomas’ suspicions around that theory. Netflix makes this sound ridiculous, but they ignore that the Ramseys did lie about it. I clipped Burke’s part of the footage from Dr. Phil below. It’s also interesting Burke says he and JBR wet the bed a lot and his parents would clean it up and he remembers this in 2016, but John couldn’t recall if JBR wet the bed in the 1997 CNN interview.

   I also believe Patsy did put the red turtleneck Det. Arendt saw in the wash on JBR that night, as mentioned above. She later lied about just putting her to bed in the white shirt. Again, just minor things there’s no real reason to cover up:

   

   This could also be another clue that JBR woke up in the night and took off the red turtleneck herself, another sign she was awake after her parents say she was asleep. Or did someone else take it off of her?
   

4. The Flashlight Lie - Police found a black flashlight in the kitchen. The Ramseys said they didn’t recognize it, but may have owned one. The maid and family friend John Fernie said she absolutely recognized it as the flashlight Burke would sleep with. He’d use it in case he had to go to the bathroom at night. And AGAIN, in 2016, Burke says his dad put him to sleep with a flashlight! Dr. Phil asks if he took the flashlight downstairs and he says he can’t remember. That’s a huge change in John and Burke’s stories!

   
   A flashlight sounds like something a kid sneaking downstairs to get a snack and play with his toys would bring with him. Why lie about recognizing the flashlight? Well the flashlight was the only item able to recreate the damage JBR suffered to her head. It was most likely the weapon used to hit her and BPD has held onto it as the murder weapon.

   

   Here is Burke on Dr. Phil in 2016 admitting for the first time that his father put him to sleep with a flashlight and he was up after everyone else went to bed. In this moment, Burke breaks his 20 year alibi and connects both him and his father to the murder weapon the Ramseys previously said they weren’t sure they owned. John doesn’t recognize the flashlight he used that same night with Burke?

   The 11am Timeline Lie - When John’s children from his first marriage came to the house after JBR was kidnapped, officers said it was a little before 1pm. This matters because John found JBR at 1:05pm. John’s son-in-law and daughter said that John got in their van as soon as they got there. He climbed in and said “JBR is with Beth now (his daughter who died 5 years before). I found her at 11am this morning.” Well…that means he found JBR before he “officially” did for police. It means he told his other children that JBR was dead before he “found” her at 1:05pm.

   
   John will eventually say got the timezones mixed up, but his son-in-law points out that he was referring to his own timezone, so why talk about a different time zone? Later, the Ramseys will say the kids arrived at 2pm or 7pm, despite John saying in his police interrogation that the entire family left the house at 1:30pm and never returned again.

   It’s a little hard to believe his kids arrived at 2pm or 7pm if the Ramseys weren’t there. Also hard to believe they arrived in the 1:05-1:30 window when John would’ve been finding JBR. It is most likely that the cops are telling the truth and the other kids arrived before 1pm, the body was then found and the family left the house for good at 1:30pm as John said in the interrogation. Officer Thomas documents this moment:

   

   Some believe John did this because he knew the staging was shoddy and didn’t believe that he and Patsy would get away with it. With this move, John gave himself an alibi and potential witnesses who could say he wasn’t involved with the crime until 11am if this did blow up in their faces.
   

5. The American Girl Doll Theory - Ok, this isn’t REALLY the American Girl Doll theory, I just call it that because it’s fun. BUT, people who think an intruder did it point to the fact that there was no matching source for the duct tape in the house and the Ramseys hadn’t left all morning, so how could they dispose of the tape? It must’ve come from outside the house. WELL, in his book, Det. Steve Thomas outlines a very easy way the Ramseys could’ve snuck evidence out of the house: they were allowed to.

   
   The day after JBR was found, the Ramseys asked if they could retrieve clothes for the funeral/JBR’s burial. The lead detective said sure, but you have to send someone else, we’ll take them to each room, they’ll point at what they need, we’ll document it and allow it to leave the property.

   At least, that’s how it was supposed to go. According to Det. Thomas, when Pam, Patsy’s sister, shows up to gather items, she has an entire list from the Ramseys. It includes credit cards, jewelry, passports, JBR’s American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals, clothes, and other items. Det. Thomas says she filled a car with suitcases, the officers on scene didn’t properly itemize everything taken and if the Ramseys did want to sneak stuff out, this is how they’d do it. How Thomas describes it:

   

   

   NOW, really crazy conspiracy ppl believe the source of the tape was the American Girl Doll. You see, in 1996, American Girl Doll stores trained employees to put tape on the back of the doll to cover a cord that came from the back of the doll’s neck. They also encouraged people who bought the dolls to do this. Det. Thomas looks into this theory and says it’s farfetched. It’s more likely they just hid the tape in a suitcase and had Pam take it out of the home.

   But it is weird that Pam takes a Molly doll that JBR only owned for about a month. Sure, maybe Patsy did want things that reminded her of JBR, but why a doll that’s only a month old and was a gift from her grandma? Well, tan and navy fibers were also found on JBR’s longjohns and the tape. These people think the tan and navy fibers would match the tan body of the Molly doll and her navy clothes. Did the police want to check the Molly doll for a fiber match? Yes. Could they? No. The Ramseys wouldn’t give it to them.
   

   In addition to that, the Molly doll drives suspicion because a few months after the murder, an employee at the American Girl Doll company reached out to Boulder PD to say someone ordered a Molly doll in JonBenet’s name after she was killed. The doll was bought with a money order and was sent to John’s office. John denies knowing anything about the doll, but it’s odd he didn’t go to police and say a stranger mailed him a doll in his dead daughter’s name that she owned before she died.
   

   Couldn’t that be a potential clue? Is it unrelated? Most people think they ordered a new Molly doll and destroyed the one that would match the fibers. People who don’t want to believe in the power of an American Girl Doll to solve this case, however, just think Pam snuck the tape and other evidence out when she grabbed their things.
   

6. The Ransom Note - Pretty much everyone thinks Patsy wrote the letter, but I mostly care about the opinion of James Fitzgerald. He was a linguistics expert who caught the Unabomber based on language in letters! He is very good at his job! He says it was Patsy. But, that is just his opinion.

   
   He wasn’t asked to officially review the case, even though he offered to do it for free with a panel of other experts in 2009. Chief Beckner said in his 2015 AMA that he declined the offer because Fitzgerald had trained a previous forensics expert on the case and he felt that was a conflict of interest the defense could benefit from, so there was no point in using Fitzgerald’s panel.

   

   I know Netflix showed you something that said “6 experts said it wasn’t Patsy,” but you see those were 6 experts hired by the Ramseys to help them in the civil suit they filed against Dt. Steve Thomas. These were not the findings of the handwriting experts the grand jury heard. The standards of a civil suit are very different from a criminal suit so their findings can hardly be accepted as the final word.

   Oh, also the FBI said in the history of kidnappings, there has never been a 2.5 page ransom letter and they felt it was written as a cover-up. Even if you think Boulder PD were bumbling idiots who dropped the ball, the FBI was a different team of people and the below statement is what they thought about the note.

   Also, let’s think about this. If you’re a kidnapper who wants an amount with specific instructions, do you hope there’s paper and a pen in the house so you can write that demand out when you get there? What do you do if you can’t find a pad of paper? If that’s your motive, you’re just crossing your fingers that you get there and find a way to communicate your demands?

   Also, if you’re in the middle of kidnapping her and she dies, why leave the ransom letterthat’s the only evidence pointing to you anyway? Without the ransom letter, the kidnapper could take all evidence pointing to him and easily pin this on the parents.

   
   The FBI thought it was odd a kidnapper would leave something so incriminating with the body in the house, which would immediately negate any chance of getting the ransom money and provide a clues on a suspect. If you accept the ransom note is fake, that’s incredibly damning for the Ramseys.

   

7. The Morning Timeline Lie/Was Burke Awake? - For 20 years, John and Patsy told the same story about that morning: Patsy woke up to make coffee, she went down the stairs and found the ransom note. She didn’t read all of it, she just immediately ran to JBR’s room. When she saw she wasn’t there, she yelled for John. John ran out of the bathroom to the back stairs and found Patsy. He took the letter and told her to call 911. He says at this point he or Patsy went in to check in on Burke, but they left him sleeping. Both Patsy and John say they never looked for JBR because of the ransom note

   For 20 years, the police thought that was weird as hell. Whose daughter goes missing and they don’t call her name out or search for her? Why wouldn’t they wake Burke up and ask if he knew anything? Kolar documents this:

   

   Here, is John saying he was the one who checked Burke’s room and Burke was still asleep.

   

   In 2016, thanks again to Burke’s Dr. Phil interview, we find out that Kolar was right to feel suspect about this because the Ramseys did lie. According to Burke, his mom came bursting into his room, searching for JBR, not his dad. She was screaming, “Where is my baby?!” and woke him up. About an hour later, a police officer enters his room and he says that he stays in bed. This means the Ramseys did search for her, they knew Burke was awake and there was at least an hour between Burke waking up because of his mom and the 911 call and police showing up.

   You know I have the clip!

   The thing is, Kolar and the police knew to be suspect about this during the case because Burke told the police in 1996 that his mom came rushing into his room looking for JBR. They knew she and John were lying about Burke’s whereabouts and when they woke him up from day one. That’s why the police suspected the Ramseys. Burke’s police interview is below. Dr. Phil also points out it’s weird that Burke would hear his parents searching for his sister and wouldn’t get up to see what was happening:

   If the Ramseys did search Burke’s room, they probably searched the rest of the house looking for JBR too. We now know about an hour went by from Patsy waking Burke up to the cops showing up, rather than her original “I found the letter, John checked Burke and I called the cops shortly after, Burke never woke up” timeline.
   

   Did they tell police Burke was asleep and they didn’t search the house because he could mess up their timeline and prove they’d been searching for her for at least an hour before cops arrived?
   

8. Burke and JBR’s Behavioral Histories

Most people hate the Burke Did It theory because they can’t imagine a 9yo boy being violent or doing these things. However, Burke had a history of violence with JBR. By the end of this, you’ll see that he was a 9 year old boy who previously sent JBR to the hospital, had issues with bedwetting and feces, and may have been a victim himself.

When Burke was 6, he hit her in the face with a golf club and sent her to the ER. This is in her medical records. At the time, Patsy told friends he lost his temper. In their book, the Ramseys say he was practicing his golf swing and lost control. JBR was taken to the doctor 33 times in the last 3 years of her life. There were frequent doctor calls including three 8 days before the murder. It’s more than likely that Burke hit JBR more than once. As far as we know, he’s the only person in the family to ever send JBR to the ER:

People point to JBR wetting the bed and getting clingier with her mom in the days leading up to her death as evidence she was being sexually abused or suffering trauma. What they tend to ignore is that Burke was also wetting the bed at an older age and people around the Ramseys heard odd comments from the family about his body.

Jane Stobie, a former manager who began working at John’s company Access Graphics in 1990, said Nedra, Pam and Polly (Patsy’s mom and sisters) would comment often on Burke’s penis in her 1997 interview with Vanity Fair. The three were also on payroll at Access Graphics and Stobie managed Nedra.

Of course, this could be how the family jokes around. In addition to that, however, his previous nanny said he was wetting the bed until he was at least 7. Cops asked him about it and he got defensive. If JBR regressing and her bed wetting getting worse is a sign of abuse, the same could be said for Burke. Was he wetting the bed because someone in the family was also sexually abusing him? If that’s the case, could he have picked up learned behaviors that he took out on JBR?

Wilcox says that JBR’s bedwetting was getting worse, but what we also know is that Burke’s issues with feces were also escalating. When Patsy was first diagnosed with cancer, housekeeper Geraldine Vodicka found him smearing poop on the walls. This would’ve been around the time of the golf club incident.

Nedra, JBR and Burke’s grandmother cleaned up the incident Vodicka mentioned so she also witnessed this. Another maid, Linda Hoffman-Pugh, previously found feces in JBR’s bed sheets and thought it may have been Burke’s. This matters because feces were found in JBR’s room when the crime scene was processed:

The Ramseys say that Burke lived in the house and they can’t say when he may have left the pajamas there and question if he even did. Boulder PD didn’t have a chance to question him about it. However, the fact that it was still present at the crime scene points to it being recent: The Ramseys had maids, does it really seem likely they left poop-stained pajamas and candy in JBR’s room for days? A maid was there on the 23rd according to witnesses (this is the day Fleet White makes an “accidental” 911 call at the Ramsey’s home, they had guests over).

We know JBR slept in Burke’s room on the 24th because he says this in his interview. Did Burke do this on the 25th? If so, why? Did the maid leave poop-covered pajamas and a candy box in JBR’s room for days? Did this cause a fight between Burke and JBR that night? It’s unlikely the feces is connected to the intruder, but if Burke did do this on the 25th, again, it points to him being awake that night.

Maybe it was an innocent prank, but did he hear anything while intruders came to kidnap his sister while he happened to be leaving feces in her room? These are questions he could answer, but he doesn’t seem interested.

Back when Burke did his Dr. Phil interview in 2016 and admitted he was up after everyone went to sleep, Boulder PD asked to interview him again. They even sent two people out to his house. They wanted to ask if he heard anything since this was a new revelation after 20 years. That makes sense! They have a possible new witness! Even John Ramsey was shocked at this revelation.

John says he had no idea Burke got back up, “if he even did.” He thinks Burke might’ve misunderstood Dr. Phil’s question, but it’s clear that Dr. Phil asks twice. Dr. Phil says, “Your father says he put you to sleep with the flashlight and you went downstairs.”

Burke says “Yeah, I had some toy that I wanted to put together. I remember being downstairs after everyone was in bed…wanting to get this thing out.” Dr. Phil replies “Did you use the flashlight so you wouldn’t be seen?” Burke says, “I don’t remember. I just remember being downstairs with this toy.” I’ll share this YouTube clip of an interview John did this year for Crime Junkies where he expresses shock that Burke left his room after everyone was asleep. Apparently, John and Burke never talked about this:

John says Burke wouldn’t keep any information to himself, but Burke refused to answer any questions after this revelation and sent a message via his lawyer to never contact him again. If he is interested in finding his sister’s killer, that isn’t something anyone has ever seen, at least outside of the family. Even after the murder, he seemed uninterested in where JBR was or who may have taken her. Fleet White noticed he didn’t ask any questions when he drove Burke from the Ramsey’s home to his the morning JBR was kidnapped. Kolar notes this:

Apparently, no new questions have come up for Burke since 1996. Even though he’s connected to the pineapple, the feces-smeared pajama bottoms and admitted he was up, he has nothing to say. He was willing to talk to Dr. Phil, but not the police. That’s odd.

The Evidence of JBR’s Previous Sexual Assault

Ok, this is a very complicated topic and I will beg you here to read this 2 part reddit thread that quotes from the child abuse panel’s findings on JBR directly. But, look, I know, the Netflix documentary showed you a clip of JBR’s pediatrician from ages 3-6 and he said he saw no signs of sexual abuse during his exams of her. The documentary presents this as final evidence: there was no previous sexual assault before her murder, see her pediatrician said so.

As I’ve said so many times: this isn’t the case! In order to see signs of child sexual abuse, thorough exams are needed that look at the hymen and internal vaginal walls for damage. JBR’s pediatrician never performed a test like that and said so to the grand jury. That wouldn’t have been typical for him to do when JBR wasn’t brought in for those reasons and he had no reason to suspect that. Of course he saw no evidence for sexual abuse, he wasn’t looking for it.

The coroner who did the autopsy did see signs of previous sexual abuse, but couldn’t say when it occurred. The Boulder PD decided to put together a panel of child sexual abuse experts to examine the body and look into the case. This panel included John McCann, who created the standard now used to define child sexual assault in hospitals and police cases. Basically, these are authorities on the topic. The strongest evidence of the previous sexual abuse is that it was allowed into the grand jury evidence:

The other four people on the panel were Richard Krugman, James Monteleone, Valerie Rao and Andrew Sirotnak. Every sexual abuse expert who examined the genital findings from JBR’s autopsy recognized physical signs of sexual abuse that predated her murder. The only thing they couldn’t agree on was when and how often it occurred. McCann said the abrasions were 7-10 days healed, Rao said it could be 2 months, some didn’t feel comfortable trying to date it but could say it was damage that predated her death.

You may have heard that this damage and JBR’s bedwetting were caused by UTIs and irritation that’s common in kids. This is what the Ramseys put out through their lawyers. However, the abrasions seen on the hymenal transection by the panel could only be done through sexual assault or a massive injury. There was no massive injury in JBR’s medical history that pointed to something like this. It couldn’t have been caused by horseback riding or a bike, as these were abrasions that had healed, opened and re-healed, pointing to chronic sexual abuse.

If there was some intruder or pedophile stalker who managed to get access to JBR and assault her 7-10 days before her death, that would be a huge lead. This is evidence that, like the pineapple in her stomach, cannot be denied. But the Ramseys dismiss the evidence from this panel outright. Additionally, if there’s evidence that JBR was being chronically abused, who is to say Burke wasn’t also being abused, causing him to wet the bed again or take out the same abuse on his sister? And even if you don’t believe it’s Burke, couldn’t this be possible evidence that John was abusing his daughter and it’s still someone in the family?

Many believe Burke perpetrated the previous abuse on JBR and not John because a maid previously saw them “playing doctor.” When she asked what was going on, Burke got mad at her. Also, John was gone a lot. Additionally, the previous summer at the family’s Michigan house, Patsy told staff that Burke and JBR couldn’t be alone together. A family friend said Patsy said it was because they were “exploring” with each other too much.

Of course, these are secondary accounts, but coupled with the fact that Burke and JBR would share bedrooms occasionally and they both showed signs of regressing due to sexual abuse, there is a chance that their doctor “play” wasn’t so innocent. Was Patsy having issues with Burke? We can’t say for sure, but police do know that her mother, who cleaned up after Burke spread feces on the wall, gifted her 3 books on raising problem children in the year before JBR died.

One was Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong (see above screenshot on feces). Of course, she might just like parenting books and they were just gifts.

The above facts usually get people around to Ramseys Did It. It was this thread that got me fully convinced of Burke Did It. Basically: everything done by JBR could’ve been done by a child and an adult would’ve caused more damage. The Netflix doc ignores all of this. The hit to the head wasn’t enough to kill JBR, it caused internal bleeding and knocked her out, but she wasn’t dead. The choking started 45 minutes to 2 hours after she was hit in the head and also wasn’t enough to kill her by itself. While the skin on the outside of her neck was red, there was no internal damage to the windpipe.

If an adult hit her head, it would’ve killed her. If an adult strangled her, there would’ve been internal damage to the windpipe. She was either choked by an adult who didn’t want to hurt her or a child who wasn’t strong enough to. Also, why would an intruder hit her in the head and wait 45 minutes to 2 hours to choke her? If you’re there to kidnap her, why not just leave now that she’s unconscious and you have her? Also, If you think she’s dead from the hit, why leave the ransom note that would point to you?

And while the garrote used was described as “complex” by the Ramseys, a knot expert and the FBI said it was a simple loop knot a boy scout could make and the tool was rudimentary. Burke was a cub scout. In Officer Thomas’ book, he says these are the facts that even made the FBI ask if a child could be involved.

Let’s get into the reason so many people believe the garrote was complex, despite the opinion of experts. That would be thanks to the Ramseys. You see, soon after their daughter was killed, the Ramseys decided to start a foundation in her name. By March, the foundation was created with tax documents filed.

The Ramseys still wouldn’t talk to police until April, but they took time to do this. Part of the foundation was a website, ramseyfamily.com (since taken down). On this site, the Ramseys shared a tip phone number that led to their lawyers and not the police.

They also shared intimate details about the case before police said it was okay. You see, the Ramseys point to the media circus causing them to become suspects. The truth is that it was the Ramsey’s circus. When the police started leaking information to the media, it was only after the Ramseys started a website with information from the case and started buying ads in the newspaper that also leaked information about the case!

The police couldn’t understand why the Ramseys wouldn’t talk to them to answer questions or get updates, but they wanted to put things online. The World Wide Web! In 1997! The Ramseys published crime scene photos, direct messages from family members, photos of JBR, drawings she did, and updates.

They even published a photo of the garrote, where they ask people to notice the “complexity”:

That’s odd considering police experts felt it was a simple knot with a bunch of loops that any adult or Cub Scout could’ve done. The police wondered why the Ramseys were purposefully putting out misleading information. That wouldn’t help find the killer. If it was a close friend or someone in the pedophile circuit, what if they had used simple knots and weren’t an expert? Sharing this information with the public would also mean any wanna-be fake confessor could share details of the case and confuse the suspect list.

The Ramseys are also the ones who leak the ransom note to the press. They buy an ad and publish it in the paper, despite the police begging them not to. The Ramseys even admit on their website that the police have told them not to share details from it, but they share samples of the writing with the public. Now, if an intruder tried to mimic Patsy’s handwriting or just tried to conceal their handwriting, how would releasing this to the public be helpful? This was the most intimate, direct piece of evidence from a supposed intruder and they published it in the paper and on their website:

Well, the police didn’t like this. Neither did their friends. Even Barbara Fernie, one of the people Patsy called over immediately, noticed the Ramseys were misleading the public by presenting false information. She let investigators know that one of the ads the family published was intentionally misrepresenting things. Fleet White also begged the family to stop posting and going on TV and to talk to the police.

This was the power of the Ramsey PR machine! To this day, people think the knots were complicated. They think there was evidence of a break-in on the backdoor! They think an intruder could’ve found duct tape, a paintbrush and cord in the basement of a house this crowded, big and dark (someone leaks the crime scene video at some point)! Oh, are you shocked you just saw a full video of the inside of their house? Yeah. That's pretty weird for 1996.

Maybe the cops leaked it to show the public how hard it would be for anyone to find anything in such a dark, big, crowded basement. Maybe the Ramseys leaked it so there’d be more doubt about who exactly knew the layout of their basement. Who knows?

This is also why John Mark Karr persists as a suspect. Because he knew “private” information. Well, the Ramseys maintained a website for years where relatives left personal messages. Did she ever sign one with that nickname? Hard to say, most of the site has been scrubbed from the internet. If Karr was obsessed with the case, he easily could’ve seen that there. The family put personal photos and crime scene photos on the site, anyone interested could’ve checked obsessively.

Despite the family making all this information public, Boulder PD investigators who previously worked on the case like Kolar knew that Karr was a fraud as soon as his emails came out because he still couldn’t get the details right. Boulder PD did manage to keep a few details from the public and Karr didn’t know them says Kolar in his 2014 AMA. The police know Karr is a fraud from these details, but Netflix dedicates nearly an entire episode to him. Why? It helps the Ramseys and supports their intruder theory.

Boulder Police dropped the ball on this case on day one by failing to secure the crime scene. However, the Ramseys are the people who failed to secure crucial information about the investigation and case after day one. The Ramseys benefit from muddying the evidence, the suspect list and anything else. If the police were able to rule people out, something might point to the Ramseys.

If the Ramseys could make details widely known, there’s just more people to point away from them. Their PR team goes to work at this and, now, the myth that the garrote was “complex” persists. Today, the Ramseys can use Netflix instead of a geocities site. I would be willing to believe they created their site in good faith, to collect evidence or tips, but it’s odd that they dismantled the site a few years after her murder. No one was arrested. They stopped communicating with Boulder PD after they moved back to Georgia. Was the site just a temporary PR effort?

The Ramseys continue to use the media to push the narratives they want. Let’s take, for example, something as simple as the order of JBR’s injuries. The Netflix documentary says it’s “unclear if the head injury or choking” happened first. It makes it nebulous, like no one could tell! Well, the medical examiner could. he listed this as the order of death:

Det. Kolar also points to evidence that this is likely the order. As he says below, if the garrote caused her death or brought her close to death and then she was hit in the head, her head wouldn’t have bled for 45-90 minutes:

There’s a lot of evidence that makes the timeline clear, so why don’t the Ramseys want you to know the above timeline? Because it makes them look guilty as hell. In fact, the grand jury thought this pointed to the Ramseys. Why would an intruder sit around for 45 minutes to an hour waiting to choke her and not just leave with her?

A few members of the grand jury have spoken out. They said this timeline was one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that the parents did it. They felt the DNA didn’t matter. Naturally, the Ramseys use Netflix to confuse the timeline and make the DNA sound incredibly important.

I found the Ramsey site when I was 12. I remember thinking it was so weird I could see crime scene photos and evidence. Isn’t it strange how much publicly available information there is in this case, but the Ramseys still create their own narrative?

Once you accept that these injuries could be caused by a child, the Ramsey’s PR works harder than Kris Jenner, Burke may have been a victim of sexual abuse himself and Burke may have been doing this to his sister, the case makes a lot more sense than a magic intruder floating in through a window without touching spiderwebs or the world’s quietest stun gun.

It also explains why the Ramseys would cover for Burke. If they said he did it, he might tell the police their dad had been inappropriate with both of them. If John or Patsy did it, they have little reason to cover for each other. If either parent did it, why would the other keep Burke around them? Either parent could’ve turned on the other and the innocent parent would look like a hero.

However, if it was Burke that did it, that would damage Patsy and John’s reputation as parents. Could John work for the government if he was famous for raising a son who killed his beauty pageant daughter? Would Patsy still be loved in the community? Patsy also said she’d die if anything happened to Burke. When asked if she’d protect John if he did it, she said no, she’d kill him herself.

John also said he wouldn’t protect Patsy if she did it. When asked if she’d protect Burke if he did it, Patsy screamed “You can’t ask that!” However, Burke being involved is the only reason to do a cover-up or lie about his whereabouts or keep him from answering questions about direct evidence connected to him. John and Patsy wouldn’t have covered for each other.

What do I think happened that night?

The family came home at 9:30/10pm. John did put JBR to sleep and her mom did go in and change her into a red sweater over her white shirt and longjohns. Burke, however, didn’t want to go to bed yet. John said in his interview that Burke wanted to build a car garage toy he got, but he made him go to bed. John goes to bed where Patsy is already asleep after changing JBR.

Thinking everyone is asleep around midnight, Burke gets his flashlight and decides to sneak back downstairs to get his favorite snack, pineapple and milk, and to play with his new toys. I tend to think Burke made the pineapple alone because Patsy would’ve known to clean it up with everything else if she’d known about it.

He gets to the kitchen, makes the bowl and a cup of tea. He finishes the tea, but only eats some of the pineapple. He grabs his flashlight and goes down to the basement. The basement is known as Burke’s toy room. He has an entire train room down there, he often whittles in the wine cellar and is basically left to roam down there a lot according to their maid:

At some point, JBR wakes up in the night. Maybe she heard Burke in the kitchen (her room is above it and even Burke said he could hear the fridge open from his bed). Maybe she hears him playing with toys. Maybe she wet herself and is doing her usual routine of changing and going to his room, but notices he isn’t there. Either way, she’s a six year old and she wants to play too so she goes to find him. Downstairs, she sees the leftover bowl of pineapple and grabs a piece. She heads down to the basement to play with her brother.

Burke has been in the wine cellar, we know this because he later says he opened the gifts that were being kept there (see below), even though Patsy lies and says she did this. She most likely wants to distance Burke from the scene. When JBR comes down, perhaps he sees a chance to “play doctor,” since he believes his parents are asleep. I think this is actually when the paintbrush comes into play. Or, maybe, they just get into a fight over the gifts.

The previous abrasions caused to JBR were thought to be caused by digital penetration. Perhaps, Burke saw his mom’s paintbrush in the basement and escalated things. According to the autopsy, the paintbrush was inserted once and removed. The FBI thought this was odd if it was a pedophile: they’d probably do something similar to sexual stimulation, not jam it in and remove it once. Their conclusion was that it was staged to hide previous sexual abuse. As you see from Dr. Meyer’s report below, this is another grey area the Ramseys took advantage of. It sounds horrific, too horrific for a 9yo to do it, but the actual physical evidence was not consistent with torture:

But, imagine a young boy who has been abusing his little sister. Or you just hit her and she’s knocked out and you want to try something extreme to wake her up. He happens to see a paintbrush around, escalates the situation, she screams in pain, jumps up and says she’s going to tell mom. Burke grabs her by the collar to stop her (see below, does this sound like the action of an intruder?).

We know someone grabbed the front of her shirt because it had a wrinkle pattern that looked like someone grabbed it. She scratches at her neck and his hands to get him to let go, which is how DNA ends up under her fingernail. When he lets go, she turns around to run. He grabs his flashlight and hits her on the head. She falls unconscious.

Burke is now a scared little boy who is trying to wake his sister up. He grabs the train tracks that are later found next to her body and starts poking her in the back and in the neck to get her to wake up. She doesn’t. He realizes he might be in big trouble now. He can’t let his parents see what he did. He breaks the paintbrush. He wraps a cord around the broken brush with a knot and decides to strangle her with it. Maybe he thinks that won’t look as bad as what he actually did with it. Or, maybe he simply left the paintbrush there and when Patsy and John find her, they create the garrote to hide what Burke did with the paint brush.

Whoever strangles her isn’t strong enough to break her windpipe or they were careful not to use too much pressure. However, it is enough to kill her with the head wound. After the murder, Burke will casually talk to a friend about possible ways JBR was strangled and how JBR may have been hit in the head. Officers will note he seems comfortable talking about violence. Others believe the garrote is part of the parent’s staging.

Now, Burke or his parents have to hide his crime. Maybe he’s angry and also breaks the Train Room window (some believe it was broken that morning and John’s story about breaking it months prior was a lie.) Maybe he’s so angry about what he’s done, he regresses to smearing poop in JBR’s room. He tries to hide what he’s done and grabs a blanket off of JBR’s bed. He doesn’t realize her Barbie pajamas are wrapped up in it. He goes back to the basement, throws the blanket over it and goes to bed. Some think the parents carefully wrapped her in the blanket with her favorite pajamas, however.

At some point, Patsy wakes up, well before 5:30am. They had to be at the airport at 7am and she hadn’t finished packing yet. We know this because there were open suitcases with clothes in them in the room next to JonBenet’s. Or, maybe she never went to sleep.

When Patsy greets officers after the 911 call, she’s wearing the same clothes she wore to the party at the White’s the night before and she has a full face of make-up. She says she threw on the same clothes from the night before. The Crime Junkies episode and Netflix treat this as normal for her. However, it wasn’t according to her maid. Her friends say she’d never be caught dead wearing the same clothes two days in a row. The family was also headed to the airport for a trip that morning, why travel in party clothes and not something more comfortable if you don’t care? Investigators see it as a sign that she didn’t actually go to bed.

Did Patsy stay up because she heard a fight start between JBR and Burke that escalated into him hitting her? Did Burke sneak into JBR’s room with his flashlight to leave the feces, wake her up and start a fight that ended with him hitting her in the head and Patsy rushing into the room to turn on the only light that worked?

Personally, I do believe her when she said she went to JBR’s room first that morning and noticed she wasn’t there. If John or Patsy had known about the pineapple or feces, they probably would’ve cleaned those parts up, so these activities probably happened without their knowledge.

If she saw JBR wasn’t in bed, she most likely went to search for her. She goes downstairs, she checks the dining room, eventually she goes to check Burke’s playroom downstairs. Maybe she notices he left his new toys out, but she doesn’t see JonBenet. Maybe she notices the door to the wine cellar is partially open. We do know her palm prints are found on the wine cellar door in two locations. She finds JonBenet and screams, waking John up.

John and Patsy go into panic mode. They know Burke has been violent with JBR before, they probably suspect he did it immediately. They can’t lose two children or have Burke admit to any abuse in the home, so they decide to cover it up and make it look like a kidnapping. Patsy or John decide to write a ransom note. He dictates it to Patsy, she writes it. He’s very specific about two things in the letter: they cannot call the police or tell anyone and John must bring a large enough bag to carry the $118k broken down in small bills. He pulls out a large, blue Samsonite suitcase. Later, JBR’s DNA will be found inside this suitcase according to Det. Lou Smit.

This, perhaps, is a clever attempt by John to find a way to remove JBR’s body, I believe. He intended to put JBR in the suitcase and leave the house to dispose of it. The letter would give him cover for leaving the house before calling 911 (“I went to get the cash, they told us not to call,” he could say). However, this didn’t work. Rigor mortis had already set in, they couldn’t get JBR into the suitcase.

Det. Lou Smit offered that theory on Larry King when he leaked info that JBR’s DNA was found on a duvet in the suitcase and he thinks the intruder tried to leave with the body in the suitcase, but couldn’t get it through the window. I don’t think this is realistic. Most likely, she had previously used the duvet and Fleet put the suitcase there. However, if Smit knows there’s DNA beyond the duvet, that really only points back to the parents.

Why would an intruder just hope a perfectly-sized suitcase is there to help smuggle her out that window? Smit believes they changed course and killed her because the suitcase wouldn’t fit (there were scuff marks on the wall). If you’re a kidnapper with only one small, awkward window well to leave through, wouldn’t you prepare?

It doesn’t matter, the parents have to pivot now anyway and leave her in the basement while still making this look like a kidnapping. Patsy gets duct tape and puts it over her mouth. The FBI, Boulder PD and coroner believe the tape was placed on JonBenet after she was dead. Why put tape over a dead or unconscious girl’s mouth?

The tape also had Patsy’s from the jacket she wore that night at the White’s (see below) . That means the tape definitely came from the house. John said he carried JBR into the house. Patsy went in to change her, but most likely removed the tape from JBR’s mouth in the basement. It wouldn’t make sense for Patsy’s jacket fibers from that night to be on it if this were brought in by an intruder.

Remember back when I said the Ramsey’s might’ve snuck tape out through Pam? Did the intruder just hope they’d also be able to find duct tape in the house? They didn’t bring it with them for a kidnapping? And why would you need duct tape if you she’s knocked out, bleeding from her mouth and mucous is running down her face? Does it make sense for an intruder to take time at this crucial moment to go search the house for duct tape when the girl is incapable of talking or moving from the head injury?

This is the family staging the scene. John ties loose restraints around her wrists. They tuck the blanket in around her. Some believe this is when John may have used the paintbrush to hide his previous sexual assault or he made the garrote to hide Burke’s assault if you can’t believe that Burke made this tool.

It’s time for the Ramseys to call 911 and put on a show, Patsy is yelling into the phone. At some point, this wakes Burke up or he was already up. He asks them “Please what should I do” (this is according to the CBS enhancement of the 911 call, the Aerospace enhancement doesn’t have this). Thinking she hung up the 911 call, his father yells “We’re not talking to you!” His mother says “Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus.” Burke asks, “Well what did you find?” and the call clicks off.

Within minutes, the police will be here, but the Ramseys aren’t dumb. They already wiped JBR’s body with a navy blue cloth to mix up DNA. Unsourced fibers are eventually found on her vaginal area. The coroner says it looks like someone tried to “wipe clean” the body with a cloth, but a matching cloth is never found in the Ramsey home. Perhaps Pam removes it when she’s given access to the scene. Maybe an intruder used something with them, but if you’re concerned about leaving evidence on her…why not just take her body like you intended?

Some have mentioned that it was the 90s and people weren’t thinking about DNA. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m old and that’s not true! On top of that, guess what case happened the year prior? OJ Simpsons! That was a huge case where the main attraction was DNA. OJ was found innocent because of DNA. There’s no way the Ramseys weren’t aware of the case.

In fact, in their first interview a week after their daughter dies on CNN, Patsy mentions OJ. They were aware of him when their daughter died:

So, yeah, the Ramseys know it matters that only the Ramseys have been in the home and they really want to make sure there’s other DNA around the body. They call their closest friends and tell them to rush over immediately, there’s an emergency and they need them. Hopefully, this will muddy the crime scene. Fleet White comes and immediately heads to the basement, but doesn’t see JBR in the wine cellar because it’s dark and he can’t find the light. He notices the train room window is closed, but it is broken. He moves the suitcase that happens to be there over to look into the windowsill for glass. At some point after this, John goes back down and opens the window.

As the police start to arrive and his friends begin searching the house, John grows frustrated that 2 police officers have failed to find JBR in the wine cellar. When Det. Arendt suggests that he and Fleet go search the house top to bottom to find anything off, he realizes now is his chance. Fleet and John first go to the train room. Fleet asks about the broken window and John says he did it months prior. According to John, they look around for any new broken glass.

Then, as Fleet is still in the train room, John heads to the wine cellar door. With Fleet standing 20ft away, John opens the door and says, “Oh my God, Oh my God.” Fleet follows behind him and sees John turn the light on. For a moment, Fleet considers that he had just walked in that room and couldn’t see anything without a light but John screamed before the light was even on, but he doesn’t make much of that for now. John will eventually say he could see the white blanket. Yet Fleet and a police officer who peered in the room could not.

Rather than risk someone finding the body where the crime occurred, John sees another chance to muddy DNA evidence. He picks up JBR, despite it being clear she is dead, rigor mortis has set in, and rushes her upstairs to “get her help.” Det. Arndt tells John to put lay her at the top of the stairs. He asks if she’s dead and moans when the officer confirms she is. Det. Arndt moves JBR’s body to the living room, but before she can tell anyone not to touch her, John places a blanket over her and a sweatshirt.

He lays on her and cries, he lays next to her and puts his arm around her. Det. Arndt tells him not to touch her hands. Next, Patsy comes in and does the same, laying all over JBR. Their friends stand around JBR and pray. If there was any hope of getting DNA from a single suspect who interacted with the body, that hope is gone now. The Ramseys have successfully created an “unidentified” third profile. I think if this DNA ever does match to anything, it will prove to be touch DNA unrelated to the killer.

Anyway, there’s too much information out there for this to still feel like a mystery. The only mystery is why the Ramsey Family has worked so hard to create a different narrative through their PR, but even that isn’t a mystery.

Well yes, and I imagine the police have already done this. You’ll remember when you started reading this an hour ago, that I told you feces were found on a candy box in JBR’s room and in a pair of pajama bottoms that were too big for her? Well, there’s your answer. Examinations can tell you how old or fresh stool is. The contents of the stool could match the meal served at the Whites and police would know someone in the family was in her room after everyone went to sleep, smearing poop on her candy.

Odds are, the poop was fresh. It’s one piece of evidence the Ramseys have never addressed or tried to spin. It’s also a detail the cops rarely mention. With all that publicly available info, isn’t it odd that this detail is the one that hasn’t been mentioned a million times? If Burke did this in her room that night, did it start a fight? Did he see an intruder while playing this prank in her room? If the poop is old, it’s irrelevant. It’s just…that that’s highly unlikely.

The Ramsey’s maid confirmed she was at the house on the 23rd and there was a huge party. She probably would’ve noticed large, stained grey pajama pants in JBR’s room. She was supposed to go back on the 24th, but didn’t. However, Christmas Eve, JBR sleeps in Burke’s room according to his testimony to police. She wanted Burke to wake her up early for Christmas presents. Seems unlikely he could’ve done this that night without the parents or JBR noticing it Christmas Day. I tend to think John and Patsy didn’t know about the feces incident or they would’ve cleaned it up.

Another way we know the pajama bottoms were probably left Christmas night? Patsy says in her interview with police that she checked JBR’s bed Christmas morning. If the accident happened then, Patsy surely would’ve noticed soiled pajama bottoms. Plus, she even says that JBR had on pink pajamas, not grey, large pajama bottoms.

The pajama bottoms were very visible in JBR’s bathroom (each bedroom had its own bathroom), so a maid, JBR or a parent would’ve seen them. Patsy definitely would’ve seen them that Christmas morning. They weren’t hidden or tucked behind anything. If Patsy and John came right home from the White’s and took JBR to bed, did they not notice them right next to the toilet?

Investigators aren’t able to ask Patsy about these pants until 1998, a year and a half after the murder. She said they were JBR’s, not Burke’s despite appearing to be his size and “boys flannel pajama bottoms.” She said it was from JBR not wiping properly. She couldn’t recall when JBR wore them last. Kolar says it’s hard to know if she’s lying about who they belonged to or not in his verified AMA 4 years ago.

So, let’s say Patsy was lying about who the pajama pants belong to. Doesn’t that mean it’s possible Burke left the feces the night of the murder? He said he got up after everyone went to bed, did he do it then and that’s why his parents didn’t know? If the police have confirmed when this happened, it throws everything the family has ever said out the window. There’s a completely different timeline. That puts Burke in JBR’s bathroom and bedroom. And, if you have a hard time with my theory that Burke was involved with the paintbrush at all, some people think it went this way:

The family came home. Patsy and John tell the kids to go straight to bed, but Burke wants to stay up. After his dad reads him to sleep with the flashlight like he says in Dr. Phil, he goes downstairs. Maybe he makes some pineapple and this wakes up JBR. She eats some of his snack. Either this made him mad or something involving the gifts did and he hits her in the head. He tries to poke her awake with the train tracks, but she doesn’t move. Some time passes, maybe 30 minutes, an hour. He gets nervous, maybe he starts yelling for her to wake up, eventually getting Patsy to come downstairs.

Patsy immediately tells him to go to his room, noticing that JBR isn’t moving. JBR isn’t bleeding, so maybe Burke doesn’t realize how hard he hit her or that she’s really hurt. Maybe he throws a tantrum, angry that he can’t finish his snack (you’ll notice there’s a lot in the bowl) or play with his new Christmas toys because his sister got him caught.

Burke storms upstairs and, out of anger, smears feces on JBR’s candy box and goes to his room. He falls asleep, unaware his parents are creating the scene. He has no idea what they’re do. They have no idea he left feces in JBR’s room or left pineapple out. Now the Ramseys have to stage a crime so horrific that no one would ever consider a 9-year old who previously hit his sister did it again with an object he was often seen with, his bedtime flashlight.

Theoretically, John may have a problem now too. If he’s been abusing his children, he needs to conceal it. If Burke has been “playing doctor” and Patsy and John know that, then they both know they’ll need to hide evidence of that. There will be an autopsy and there needs to be doubt as to where the previous injuries come from. This also explains why they can’t just call 911 after JBR is hit. This is a serious head injury, if they take her to the hospital, they might do an exam and see the prior sexual abuse. They conceal evidence of this abuse and stage the scene.

They miss the feces and pineapple, though.

It also would explain Burke’s comment on the enhanced 911 call. “What did you find?” He might’ve thought they found the pajama bottoms and the candy box. He stays in his room all morning because he thinks he’s in trouble for that. Eventually they tell him JBR was fine after their fight. She went to bed and he didn’t do anything bad. Everyone went to sleep, an intruder came in and now she’s missing.

At 9, Burke might’ve truly believed this was the case. He just has to keep his temper tantrum a secret. He wouldn’t want anyone to know what he did in her room anyway.

When a few people involved in the case did a panel in 2016, they said: The JonBenét Ramsey case is not a mystery. It just remains unsolved. Because the Ramseys want it that way. The grand jury, however, unraveled that mystery and wanted to indict the parents for child abuse.

Some people believe the feces information and who it belonged to was in the grand jury trial because it was relevant. Some people think it wasn’t included because it was found to be irrelevant or was JBR’s. Well, it’s sealed, so we don’t know! Either way, it potentially points to a 9-year old being involved in the incident and that’s where the real problem with the idea of “justice” in this case comes in.

If the feces were relevant and Burke hit her, the DA knew they couldn’t prosecute a 9-year old in Colorado and Boulder PD knew they couldn’t leak the source of the feces that confirmed an intruder couldn’t have been in her room if it was related to a child. Without Burke’s exact involvement, you can’t say which parent did what and they can point to the kid or each other (or just John to Patsy, now). It’s a no-win case. There will never be charges.

The only hope this case will be solved? If all the grand jury documents are released. Colorado has strict laws around this, but Fleet White and officers in the case have sued to get them released in the past and ~4 pages have been released. The total indictment is 18 pages. White and the Boulder PD seem to think making the grand jury documents public will solve this for everyone.

When those 4 pages were released, the judge initially decided to release all of them, then changed his mind. Kolar believes it’s because it contained information about a juvenile:

The grand jury who recommended the parents be charged with child abuse for knowing their child was in danger, but not providing help seemed to solve the case. Of course, most people are only just finding out the grand jury made this recommendation because it came out in 2013. The DA and the Ramseys kept that information sealed for 14 years and the Ramseys presented this as them being “cleared.” That was, once again, far from the truth. The grand jury did recommend charges, but the DA declined to move forward.

Netflix tells you the answer to this case is DNA, but the answer sits with the grand jury. While the documentary does mention that the jury did want to convict Patsy and John of 2 charges each, it doesn’t get into the details. The specifics make clear the grand jury believed that Burke was involved. Why does Netflix make this theory sound so ridiculous?

The charges were child abuse and “unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person.”:

COUNT IV (a)

On or between December 25, and December 26, 1996, in Boulder County, Colorado, John Bennett Ramsey/Patricia Paugh Ramsey did unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenet Ramsey, a child under the age of sixteen.

As to Count IV (a), Child Abuse Resulting in Death: A TRUE BILL

and

COUNT VII

On or about December 25, and December 26, 1996 in Boulder County, Colorado, John Bennett Ramsey/Patricia Paugh Ramsey did unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted had committed and was suspected of the crime of Murder in the First Degree and Child Abuse Resulting in Death.

As to Count VII, Accessory to a Crime: A TRUE BILL

If the jury thought the only two people involved were Patsy and John and charged them with assisting each other, one would be charged with the underlying crime. The fact that no one is charged with the underlying crime points to someone who couldn’t be charged, like a child. Colorado Attorney Lisa Polansky agrees with this take in the CBS documentary:

Outside of those documents that made the grand jury feel a third person was involved, is there any hope of solving this? Well, someone could confess.

Yeah, I’m back I’m so sorry, I forgot to mention one more thing.

• John Mark Karr - The Netflix doc spends a lot of time with this suspect and his voice messages to a detective on the case. They almost make it seem like he could be a legit suspect if only the DNA was a match. However, Karr has an alibi: he was in Georgia with his family according to them.

  Oh, also Boulder PD found pictures of him in Georgia with his family within 18 hours of hearing he was a suspect. They felt the DA never should’ve brought him in. He also didn’t know any private details of the case. He only knew publicly available information. As I told you above, the Ramseys had that damn website with all their info!

  Outside of that, the nickname for JBR’s grandma was known in the pageant circle. Her grandma planned most of it. If he attended shows, he may have heard it. However, the doc makes it seem like this wasn’t known at all. Anyway, Karr was cleared in 2006 for those reasons.

  
  Most people do not consider him a serious suspect and view him as a mentally ill pedophile seeking fame. It’s insulting his pedophile audio fan fiction is given serious time in this documentary and he’s getting the fame he wanted. However, it helps the Ramseys, so that may have guided the director’s desire to spend so much time on him. I think that is another bad decision and wanted to make that clear too.

  

Some people asked if I had any layouts/t

estimated reading time: 10 min

You have been granted access, use your keyboard to continue reading.

When Saori Kawano arrived in New York City in 1978 from Yokohama, most Americans’ ideas of Japanese food ended at instant ramen and onion volcanoes. Since then, if you’ve enjoyed hand-cut soba noodles or an omakase dinner, or admired the graceful curves of a rice bowl or the flash of a Japanese knife blade, you can probably thank her.

Ms. Kawano is the founder and owner of Korin Inc., an importer of knives, kitchen tools and tableware from Japan that has become a place of pilgrimage for restaurateurs since opening in 1982. It’s the main U.S. supplier for big-name chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Matsuharu Morimoto and Eric Ripert; restaurants like Buddakan, Sugarfish and Eleven Madison Park; and hotel chains like the Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental.

Her TriBeCa showroom, packed with wares ranging from $20 kitchen shears to $2,000 sushi knives, hums with customers arriving with knives to be sharpened, and the spin of the custom-made Japanese whetstone that powers the business.

Image

Image

The space is narrow, but it contains a vast network of connections and knowledge that has fueled the extraordinary rise of Japanese food in the United States.

“So much of the popularity and familiarity that we have now is due to her,” said Michael Romano, the chef of Union Square Cafe from 1998 to 2013. He was an early convert from European to Japanese chef’s knives, opened Union Square Tokyo in 2007, and now lives there part-time.

In her shop on a busy winter morning, Ms. Kawano, 68, beamed as her resident sharpener, Vincent Chin, described restoring dozens of knives in the kitchen of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. She tends to credit her success to loyal chefs and employees like Mr. Chin, but her combination of elegance, toughness and charm doubtless played a part.

“I always knew I was not going to live in Japan for my whole life and be a housewife,” she said — partly because her mother, a pioneering female insurance executive, told her so. “I never thought that Japanese food would become the focus of my whole life.”

Long before Amazon or Alibaba, Instagram and Line (Japan’s most popular social media and shopping app), Ms. Kawano was a direct link between the American culinary world and the most prestigious chefs, artisans and craftsmen in Japan.

Image

“She’s the only person who can pick up the phone in New York City and talk to anyone in Japan,” said Yukari Sakamoto, a sake expert who lives in Tokyo and leads high-end food tours. “Connections are everything here. Everyone knows that if Saori has vetted you, you’re worth their time.”

If you have a Japanese knife in your home kitchen, Ms. Kawano may have had a hand in that, too. American cooks have long relied on European-style knives, with one basic blade shape, descended from a butcher’s tool. Among other differences, Japanese knives evolved to cut fish and vegetables, not meat. They have many shapes and a thinner blade, making them capable of cleaner cuts.

The modern culinary conversation between Western and Japanese chefs started with Shizuo Tsuji, a writer and Francophile who opened a cooking school in Osaka in 1960. His relationships with influential chefs like Paul Bocuse and David Bouley laid the groundwork for high-end Japanese cuisine in the United States.

By the 1980s, Japanese food had a firm foothold in Europe; chefs adopted its plating, lightness and seasonality, and turned the traditional kaiseki meal — a progression of carefully ordered bites — into what we now know as a tasting menu. This nouvelle cuisine revolution, radiating outward from France, created an American market for the small plates, square bowls and Japanese knives that Korin stocked.

Ms. Kawano educated herself about the centuries-old Japanese craft of knife-making and its nuances — for example, a sushi chef might use a different knife for the same fish in different seasons, depending on its size and fattiness. She passed that knowledge on to her American customers.

Image

Through the Gohan Society, a nonprofit cultural-exchange program she founded in 2004 (now funded by Kikkoman, Kewpie and other global brands), hundreds of American chefs have followed her to Japan, entering through doors only she can open, visiting woodworkers, potters, glassblowers, sake brewers and miso producers.

When Ms. Kawano came to the United States nearly 50 years ago, it was for the music. Her husband, who had been accepted at the Juilliard School to study classical piano and teach Japanese string instruments, wore his hair long and his boots high-heeled; bands like Queen and the Beach Boys were his extracurricular passion.

She was also a pianist, and like most Japanese girls of her time, was trained in the traditional arts of arranging flowers (ikebana), archery (kyudo) and wrapping a formal silk kimono.

Worldly New Yorkers, she assumed, would have an appetite for learning about Japanese culture. “No one was interested,” she said.

The couple thought they’d brought enough money to last three years; it ran out after six months. So she began her culinary career in desperation, as a waitress at a posh Japanese restaurant near the Pan Am Building (now MetLife) in Midtown, where some of the biggest Japanese companies had their U.S. headquarters.

Image

Because she is that kind of person, it bothered her that the restaurant didn’t always use authentic bowls and plates. Having persuaded the owner to let her order some from Japan, she then decided that Americans would — or should — appreciate the graceful shapes of Japanese tableware.

From her mother’s work selling insurance, she had absorbed persistence, optimism and the art of the cold call. Every day after the staff meal, she shut herself into the restaurant’s pay-phone booth and called the housewares department at Bloomingdale’s. “I believed that someday, there would be someone on the other end who wouldn’t hang up on me,” she said.

Some months later, Ms. Kawano got through, talked the buyer into a meeting and left with a $1,500 order for plain white bowls. She began making sales calls around the city, armed with iron teapots and rice bowls.

“When I got into Zabar’s and Dean & DeLuca, that was my pride and my joy,” she said.

When Ms. Kawano started Korin in 1982, her only regular customers were Asian restaurant owners, who were rarely able to buy expensive tableware. (The era of the $400 omakase dinner was far in the future.)

There were difficult years, when she was in debt, divorced and in despair of finding a market. As a single parent, she could no longer afford child care, so she brought her daughter, Mari, along on sales calls, wrestling a stroller loaded with samples and snacks through the subway system.

Image

Then, in 1991, a young chef with an idea for a glamorous Thai-French restaurant showed up on her loading dock. Jean-Georges Vongerichten had lived in Bangkok for two years and was shopping for his second New York restaurant, Vong. “I couldn’t find the colors and glazes I’d seen in Asia anywhere,” he recalled.

Vong opened with Ms. Kawano’s golden plates, lacquered chopsticks and bamboo place mats, and Mr. Vongerichten spread the word to the city’s other top French chefs who, under the influence of nouvelle cuisine, had already become entranced by ingredients like rice vinegar and yuzu.

Those chefs also had deeper pockets than most of her customers. Instead of ordering wholesale, Ms. Kawano began making direct contact with artisans in Japan, researching the best makers of porcelain in Saga Prefecture and knives in Sakai. She persuaded Japanese chefs to come to New York for demonstrations of sashimi and sushi. She even talked her ex-husband, Chiharu Sugai, into becoming an expert knife sharpener, an educational process that took a decade and continues to pay off by bringing customers into the shop over and over again. (Mr. Sugai died in 2018; Mr. Chin was his protégé.)

Image

When the Japanese chef Noriyuki Sugie arrived in New York in 2003 to become head chef of the brand-new Mandarin Oriental hotel’s restaurant, his first stop was Korin. Entrepreneurs were opening Japanese-influenced restaurants around the world, Mr. Sugie said, with vast menus and themes like waiters dressed as ninja warriors.

“It was a bubble,” he said.

It was also the beginning of Japan’s first official foray into culinary diplomacy. Alarmed by the spread of such inauthentic places, and eager to replicate the successful gastro-diplomacy of countries like South Korea and Thailand, the government began a campaign in 2006 dedicated to spreading knowledge of traditional Japanese foodways — washoku — and informally known as “the sushi police.”

Through agencies dedicated to tourism, food and exports, young Japanese chefs were encouraged to go abroad, both to learn and to teach. “It’s very Japanese to care about whether people thousands of miles away are arranging the fish just right, or stirring wasabi into their soy sauce,” said Ms. Sakamoto, the sake expert.

In 2013, washoku was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage traditions, alongside Neapolitan pizza and Korean kimchi. Today, according to Japan’s official tourism agency, food is the reason cited most often by tourists for their visit to Japan.

Image

Ms. Kawano’s connections to top U.S. chefs were invaluable in this educational project. Americans began to hear more about Japanese fermentation, specialties like Edo-style sushi, and ramen not microwaved in a cup. They traveled to Japan to visit fish markets and shop in Kappabashi, Tokyo’s ever-expanding “kitchen street.”

“When there was more respect for the tradition, and Japanese restaurants began to get Michelin stars, that is when the category began to bring in more money,” said Mr. Sugie, who is now a global consultant for Japanese-inspired restaurants.

Today, Ms. Kawano supplies 8,000 restaurants and hotels, has 34 full-time employees including her daughter, and travels constantly, guiding chefs from around the world through Japan.

Back in the 1990s, she almost moved back to Yokohama when things got hard, but said the same mantra that got her into Bloomingdale’s kept her in New York.

“I’d ask myself, ‘Have I tried everything I can think of?’ and I hadn’t,” she said. “And I remembered that a ‘no’ won’t destroy me.”

Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.

On our flight home from Rome, we hit some turbulence — the borderline scary kind that turns your stomach and elicits the occasional gasp. I am a pretty seasoned traveller, so it would take much more than that to make me really fear for my safety. But my mind did wander: what if this was the end? And I thought about my improbably good life: a wonderful partner, a job that lets me genuinely contribute to society while challenging myself intellectually, a beautiful highrise apartment in a city we love, a lifestyle that accomodates frequent international travel…. It would be a shame not to get as much of this life as we could, but if a freak accident cuts it short, we have at least been living the life we want. My Esteemed Partner, happily engrossed in her movie, was apparently even less affected by the turbulence than me, but I imagined that if it really was a serious situation and she really was scared and upset, sharing thoughts along these lines with her might bring some comfort — maybe even some peace.

I sat with this line of thought for a few moments, savoring my sense of calm and equanimity. And then I thought: “Am I okay?” Is it normal for a person in the prime of life to be so comfortable with the thought of premature death? Is this a sign of wisdom and maturity, or of despair? Reflecting on this experience several times over the past few months, I have not been able to settle on an answer to that question. But what has become clear is that it was not about death as such, or at least not entirely: it was about Trump, the one force on earth that seems somehow even more inescapable than death.

Part of why I could imagine that flight home as the end is that we had joked, and maybe more than joked, about that trip being our last for the foreseeable future. The fears that motivated that speculation seemed distant and outlandish at the time — maybe My Esteeemed Partner, whose passport expires in a couple years, would not be able to renew it for some reason; maybe we would come to understand that we wouldn’t be guaranteed reentry if we left the country.

Now those fears seem somehow more realistic, not because of anything concrete that has happened in connection to the Trump administration’s policy on travel, but simply because everything feels like it’s up for grabs. I know that there’s always someone willing to claim they were the one voice in the wilderness that no one would listen to, but surely no one could have predicted how arbitrary and far-reaching the damage would be. Did Trump campaign on, for instance, suspending all medical research grants indefinitely? Did anyone really understand that he was going to hand the keys to Musk and completely ignore the Congressional appropriations process? Did anyone think the president would be openly musing about picking and choosing which government debts he regarded as binding?

And yet I still live my life, basically unaffected so far except for some mild anxiety about whether I will actually receive my tax refund. In fact, things are going well. I’ve been promoted, at long last, to associate professor, and though the Shimer faculty was not given the opportunity to gain tenure status, we have at least achieved some formal job security after many years of uncertainty. I’m enjoying my teaching this year — which is a good mix of familiar courses and challenging new material — and I’m happy to be serving my colleagues as chair of a major standing committee within faculty governance. My book Late Star Trek is coming out in a few short weeks, and I’m working toward establishing my scholarly expertise in the Qur’an.

In short, everything is coming together — but I’m not 100% sure there will even be college next year. Most are interpreting the assaults on federal research funding as attacks on higher ed more broadly, and the entire sector is deeply, deeply dependent on federal funding. Would they get rid of Pell Grants? That would be fatal for many institutions. Getting rid of federal student loans would be fatal for nearly all. I find myself in the bargaining stage as to whether North Central is likely to be affected by each step. I can even imagine scenarios, albeit highly improbable ones, where the loss of student loans is somehow survivable. But such speculation requires at least some stable background, some comprehensible context — and I will admit that I cannot process what a total repudiation of higher ed by the federal government does to the enterprise of higher ed, much less one particular school.

More radical thoughts present themselves as I go through the bargaining stage. What if I lose my job? I have savings that can last me a good long while, even leaving aside My Esteemed Partner’s income. And even if we both find ourselves out of work, we could probably survive for many years at a tolerable level of comfort. But that presupposes things like the continued viability of banks, or the continued value of money, or the stability of the power grid, or the safety of the water. John Quiggin introduced some nightmare fuel over at Crooked Timber: what if Trump announces the convertibility of US dollars with cryptocurrency? As recently as five weeks ago, I would have laughed off the idea. I’m not laughing now.

And it’s like this for everything. Will there be a flu shot next year? Will there be a Post Office next year? Will air travel remain viable? Will we be bogged down in a counterinsurgency in Canada? Will we join the Russian Federation? I threw the last one in there to test whether there’s a limit of what seems possible, and I find that I can’t dismiss even that — not after Trump’s insane lies about Zelinskyy and the origins of the war in Ukraine!

For a long time, I have been encouraging people to consider whether George W. Bush was even worse than Trump, but in a few short weeks Trump has demolished my case. Bush was an evil president using the power of the state to do evil things. Trump has effectively abolished the state. We do not have laws. We do not have a government. We certainly don’t have a Congress and we barely have courts. But in an important sense, we also don’t have a president. We have the irritable whims of two billionaires, handling domestic and foreign policy, respectively, and we have a bunch of psychos in charge of more detailed policy portfolios. The goal is not to change public policy, but to render public policy impossible. The goal is not to transform American society, but to destroy it completely, to destroy everything that makes it possible to call this great and terrible nation a human society.

Everything is up for grabs, because there is no limit to how capricious and spiteful and short-sighted the people ostensibly “in charge” will allow themselves to be. There is no possibility of any positive outcome until they are removed from office and replaced by literally anybody else — even J.D. Vance, who at least lacks Trump’s demonic charisma and who certainly does not inspire the same kind of fear and pathetic self-abasement and hence might get some pushback from someone.

Yet we all live our lives, day to day, as though we still live in a society, as though promises mean something, as though it’s possible to tell the future more than a week in advance, as though there’s anything we can be sure they won’t take from us. And as I think about that, I can sometimes even work myself into a state of calm resignation where I can contemplate the possibility of my life becoming much different and worse due to circumstances beyond my control and conclude that I will survive and find ways to affect the world positively and maybe even still experience moments of satisfaction and joy. But there are other times where I read the latest headline and spontaneously think: I don’t want to live in this world anymore.

When I’m in that mood, sometimes I think back to that turbulence. The strange thing about being in a plane crash, at least to my mind, is that you are going to be falling — for the rest of your life. The sick roller coaster sensation — at least this is how I imagine it, though it’s presumably much worse — is what you are going to be experiencing for the rest of your life. With one major exception, of course! But maybe one is accepting of that outcome in a different way in an endless moment of perpetual falling than in a moment of abstract contemplation. Food for thought, certainly!

Am I okay? I don’t even know what that would mean under these circumstances. And I — a white, straight, monogamously partnered, property-owning male with a savings account — am certainly the least of anyone’s worries. All due respect to those who are being more directly victimized! But what I’m sure we can all agree on, regardless of privilege level, is: This can’t go on forever. It can’t even go on for four years. And yet it might go on for four years and maybe even longer. For some people, it will last — perhaps already has lasted — the whole rest of their lives.

Agamben is best known for his critique of sovereign emergency powers and their tendency to reduce all legal subjects to a homo sacer-like state of absolute exposure to violence. But in more recent years, he has written more often about a seemingly opposite, but actually deeply correlative problem: the attempt to legislate every area of life. On the political level, this means collapsing legitimacy (our sense of what the law should be and do) into legality. Whatever the law is, must be legitimate, simply because it is the law — meaning that the idea of legitimacy as a critical standpoint over against the law is lost. One can see this on the level of constitutional law in the United States, where establishing the Founder’s intent, or simply repeating the way the existing institutions function, often suffices to establish the legitimacy of a particular outcome, at least in the minds of many liberals.

The same dynamic holds at an interpersonal level. On the one hand, we have increasingly lost any sense of the distinction between the legal and the ethical. I think here of the frequently given advice that after a car accident, one should not apologize, because it would mean admitting fault and could put you at a legal disadvantage. In a sane society, though, a person who believes themselves to have caused serious harm to another should apologize — and the person receiving the apology should not seize on that natural human reaction to maximize their legal advantage. On the other hand, people increasingly seem to believe that their interpersonal relationships can and indeed must be structured according to strict contractual terms. This comes up especially in sexual contexts, where one might expect legal niceties to be out of place. I look at the vogue for polyamory, for instance, and wonder at people’s apparent belief that anyone can “promise” that their feelings won’t be hurt. We could say something similar for people’s love of inscribing themselves into ever more precise identity categories that come complete with their own list of demands — or for other’s apparent belief that merely being asked to acknowledge the existence of unfamiliar gender or sexual identities is an unjust imposition to which they did not consent.

For me, the distinction between legality and legitimacy — or, more vividly, between law and justice — is pretty foundational. This is, blessedly, not because of Schmitt’s book by that title, but because it was foundational for Ted Jennings’ teaching when I was in grad school. This was when he was working on his two career-capping works on Paul, Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul and Outlaw Justice. As is well known, Paul’s mission in life was to vindicate the full inclusion of non-Jewish or Gentile believers in the Jesus movement — without requiring them to fulfill the Jewish law. And he argues for this position theologically by taking a fairly extreme position: “works of the law” cannot be necessary to save the Gentiles, because they have never actually saved anyone. What is salvific is actually faith or trust in God, apart from any external work. Although he would probably resist this description, in both books Jennings “secularizes” Paul’s argument by claiming that he is pointing to a universal dynamic in the relationship between law and justice. Law always points beyond itself, toward the principle of justice, and that principle means that law can always be called into question. When law claims to be fully self-sufficient, it betrays itself and becomes a tool of injustice.

In those days, there were many clear examples of what happens when law is separated from justice. George W. Bush was president, having taken office with a minority vote after a deeply questionable Supreme Court decision. No one had won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote in over a century, and the Supreme Court had never intervened in an election case in such an overtly partisan way. But the Electoral College was technically the law, and the Supreme Court is the last court of appeal, so he took office. After 9/11 — somewhat contrary to Agamben’s analysis — Bush did not claim sweeping emergency powers so much as fashion himself “legal tools” to wage his War on Terror. New legal categories were invented (“enemy combatant”), loopholes relating to territoriality were exploited (Guantanamo and CIA black sites), and the use of military force was authoritized even if war was not declared (in either Afghanistan or Iraq). Most chillingly, the White House set teams of lawyers to work elaborating a legal basis for the use of torture.

Basically all of this is still on the books. The Authorization to Use Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies is still the law of the land. Obama took advantage of Bush-era laws and norms to run a drone strike program that even claimed the right to execute American citizens without due process. Bush’s torture memos, even if never used by later administrations, were never tested in court, and certainly none of the architects of the torture regime were ever prosecuted. And the normalization of the Electoral College technicality gave us Trump in 2016 — and almost provided him with a perfectly legal means to seize a second term against the popular will in 2020.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been weaponizing laws and rules in many other ways. The anti-abortion movement has routinely passed state laws that were known to be unconstitutional, for the express purpose of giving them a route to the Supreme Court in the hopes of chipping away at and eventually overturning Roe v. Wade. In Congress, they have exploited every rule and loophole — from the abuse of the fillibuster to McConnell’s refusal to even consider Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee. Less discussed have been their efforts to ratchet the balance of power in the House permanently to the right. By means of the Hastert Rule (named after a convicted child molestor, by the way), which mandates that no legislation can come to the floor unless it has a support of the majority of Republicans, laws that would have enjoyed majority support have been obstructed even more efficiently than with the Senate fillibuster.

Meanwhile, professing the sanctity of laws and norms, Democrats refuse to change the rules to take away Republicans’ illegitimate advantage — because they have no conceptual basis for calling it illegitimate. The rules are the rules, and changing them would be cheating. That goes even for a stolen Supreme Court, whose Democratic members insist must be respected even as it undoes all their priorities with a gleeful disdain for precedent or even normal legal procedure — many of the biggest recent decisions should have been dismissed because the plaintiff lacked standing. But again, the rules are the rules, and all Democrats can do is grin and bear it.

We may be seeming to enter a new phase with the total brazen lawlessness of Trump 2.0. But I think it is, instead, the natural next step in the dialectic. Law shorn of legitimacy is already a kind of force, an inert brute fact — and so it should not surprise us that it eventually gives way to overt force. When law that has become nothing but a tissue of arbitrary technicalities, is it surprising that someone would eventually treat the concept of law itself as one huge annoying technicality? Meanwhile it is hard to imagine popular passions being inflamed by the call to vindicate the claims of Congress, which has systematically rendered itself incapable of passing routine legislation with majority support, or of the Courts, which have increasingly revealed themselves to be the servants of presidential power in any case. Nor is it any wonder that low-information normies approve of Trump’s actions, because the dysfunction of the system has created pent-up demand for someone to finally do something — without all the infighting and excuses.

The fact that what is being done is purely destructive, that we are losing things we may never get back, has not yet become clear. And when it does, we will need leaders who can speak to the level of justice and legitimacy rather than law and norm and procedure — leaders who can say, straightforwardly, that Trump shouldn’t do what he’s doing because it’s pointlessly cruel and that Trump doesn’t have a mandate to do what he’s doing because he’s a liar. When that moment comes, though, I fear that we will instead get the same mealy-mouthed losers who could do nothing but mumble about a “democracy” that means you can only vote for one party for the rest of your life and you should never actually expect to get anything out of it. We should want a return to law, a return to procedures and norms recognized by all political actors — but only on just and legitimate terms. Perhaps that can occur within the boundaries of the existing constitution, but a return to the status quo ante of 2024 is not and cannot be the answer. Until people of good will come to understand this, there will never be hope.

[spoilers ahead]

The protagonist of Kevin Smith’s Dogma, the last living descendant of Mary, mother of Jesus, is named Bethany. It’s standard practice in this kind of apocalyptic film for names to mean something, and Dogma seems in general to bear this out. Chris Rock’s character, the black thirteenth apostle, is called Rufus, after the biblical son of Simon the Cyrene, mentioned in Mark’s account of the crucifixion and by Paul in Romans 13. Alan Rickman plays the voice of God, Metatron, and takes his name from an angel who appears as a divine figure standing beside God in various apocryphal texts. So why is the last living descendant of God called Bethany?

The name Bethany comes from the biblical town of Bethany, where Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha. Like Lazarus, Bethany dies and is resurrected by God – here Alanis Morissette rather than Jesus. I’d like to suggest that we can infer from this that Jay and Silent Bob occupy, in Smith’s film, the roles of Mary and Martha.

Like Mary and Martha with Lazarus Jay and Silent Bob have – despite their best efforts – a non-sexual relationship with Bethany. Like Mary, who washed Jesus’ feet in an erotic act of service and is traditionally associated with sex workers, Jay is constantly making sexual advances to the people around him. Like Mary, who angrily remonstrates with Jesus when Lazarus dies (‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”), Jay shouts at God who has appeared apparently too late to prevent catastrophe: “What the fuck is this shit?! Who the fuck are you lady?!” Like Martha, who approaches Jesus with faith (“But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask”) and opens up the tomb where Lazarus’ body has been laid to rest, it is Silent Bob who carries Bethany’s lifeless body to God to be raised. Like Martha, it is Silent Bob who quietly gets on with the necessary work, and Jay who insists on conversation.

Let us say then, with Jesus: “Jay has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from him.” Great is the mystery of Dogma. Blessed be the name of Alanis Morissette.

As I have been writing my posts on the relationship between Trump and neoliberalism, a feeling of futility has sometimes set in. Who cares about this abstract question amid all the wreckage he has already created? My first response to such a demand for practicality is to insist that it is always better to understand than not to understand. To the extent that my analysis is accurate, it’s important because it’s true. And that truth may lead to a strategic gain, insofar as viewing Trump as a big dumb continuation of neoliberalism might reduce the leftist temptation to think “maybe we can use this” or, worse, “maybe he has a point.”

On a personal level, though, part of the reason I am focusing on such large-scale questions is simply that I have done a poor job as a day-to-day commentator or prognosticator. I wrote shortly after the election that it seemed fanciful that Trump would attempt to cancel future elections. Now it turns out that his opening gambits were to attempt to invalidate the Fourteenth Amendment and the separation of powers, which makes extreme outcomes like that much more imaginable. At the same time, however, the Democratic refrain that democracy is in peril seems to remain unconvincing to the general population. Trump’s approval ratings are favorable, seemingly precisely because of the actions he is taking. He won the election, he seems to be taking bold action to fulfill his promises, and most people like it — where’s the threat to democracy?

The problem, as ever, is the lack of clarity about what democracy is and why it’s valuable. And part of the confusion comes from the tendency to conflate “democracy” with “the US Constitutional system,” which was avowedly set up in order to tame and even frustrate democratic ambitions to the extent possible. To the extent that Democrats are simply calling for a return to the conventional constitutional order, I would certainly prefer that to the current situation. But that order is sclerotic and unsustainable. Indeed, many of the kinds of actions that Trump is doing now are ones that I would have liked to see Obama or Biden do — strong-arming the Senate instead of deferring to their stupid anti-democratic customs, or simply ignoring things like the debt ceiling. I’m even on record as saying that Obama should have refused to acknowledge Trump’s Electoral College technicality and begun the transition with Hillary.

What’s frustrating about this situation is that this final presidential push was bound to happen. The current system does not fulfill popular demands, by design, and there’s no reason to expect a society to tolerate that indefinitely. And unfortunately, the presidency is the only institution other than Congress with anything like a democratic mandate, and it is definitely the only institution that can directly do stuff. The shame is that it didn’t happen under a president who wanted to do good, instead of a president who wants to do nothing but harm. And that stems in part from our old friend neoliberalism, whose “best practices” do not include bold state initiatives. But it also stems from the older generation of Democrats’ pathetic Boomer reverence for the Constitution that never evolved past childish Cold War truisms. And now that it’s tumbling down, we’re all being asked to hope that the system that frustrated popular demands for a generation and gave us Trump will somehow stop Trump.

There is nonetheless a deep irony here, because Trump’s rampage against the constitutional order is obviously undercutting the sources of presidential power and even of state legitimacy. One reason that the executive branch is able to do stuff is that it knows stuff — indeed, it provides the standard statistics that underwrite all other public and private economic activity and much else besides. By destroying that basic state capacity, Trump is destroying any reason for citizens to trust the government about anything, unless they happen to trust the current holder of the presidency. It becomes pretty difficult to run a society — even a paranoid police state determined to carry out the biggest forced population transfer in human history — without that baseline of trust. It also becomes pretty difficult to know whether you’ve succeeded in achieving your goals and to convince others that you have.

Low-information voters are still only seeing the broadest themes in Trump’s actions. He said he’d cut foreign aid, which most voters falsely believe to take up a huge portion of the budget, and he’s doing so. He said he’d appoint Musk to head up an effort to aggressively cut waste in the federal government, and he’s doing so. He said he’d use tariffs to strong-arm other countries, and he’s doing so. The self-undermining and nonsensical nature of many of those actions, much less their long-term consequences for the constitutional order, are seemingly not on people’s radar. But if he continues to “succeed,” many people will be rudely awakened to the fact that the government seemingly has no ability to benefit them in any way — and whether that realization hits while Trump is president or after he dies peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his friends and family, it will be a major, probably fatal blow to the legitimacy of the system.

It might even be the kind of things where particular states or regions start asking why the federal government even exists, and then the great “national divorce” so desired by conservatives might actually happen. And then we might all recall, too late, that “national divorce” is a euphemism for civil war — which, as everybody knows, is the very worst thing that can happen to a society. So now I’ve maxed out the negativity of my predictions about Trump and no longer have to worry about being made to look naive by the actual course of events.

In my last post, I awkwardly name-dropped a book to admit I hadn’t read it — namely Robert McDonald’s Works Like a Charm: Incentive Rhetoric and the Economization of Everyday Life, available wherever fine books are sold. Since then I have in fact read it and want to discuss some connections with my notion of a Trumpian “shove” as the successor to the neoliberal “nudge.” What follows is not a full account of the book — which, along with being a great critique of “nudge” rhetoric, also turns out to be an accessible primer on Lacan (with depressingly relevant examples) — but a sampling of some key concepts that I find especially applicable to Trump’s heretical neoliberalism.

McDonald’s Lacanian approach allows him to see some internal dynamics of the nudge that otherwise would not be as evident. (I will spare you the Lacan and give you the pay-off.) First, he notes that nudges never live up to their promise of seamless unconscious manipulation of behavior. Instead, they always announce themselves more or less clearly, spurring the subject to begin questioning what the nudger wants from them — and possibly rebelling against the intended outcome simply out of annoyance at the attempted manipulation. For this reason, nudges generally don’t work, and presumably the nudgers know they don’t work. Hence McDonald concludes that nudges are not actually directed at the ostensible nudgees, but are messages sent to some presumed third party. For example, the attempts to “incentivize” a return to work post-covid by removing unemployment benefits had not apparent impact on employment — but they were a powerful message that everyone should get back to work and no longer expect any mollycoddling (my term, not McDonald’s). Finally, the nudge paradigm as a whole sends a broader message of despair, signalling clearly that any deliberate collective project is impossible. This opens up a performative contradiction, because on the one hand, only the market can be trusted to deliver any social benefit, but on the other hand, the market is apparently not achieving that on its own and needs tinkering by expert state actors.

Applying these to Trump’s “shoves” — his attempts to use economic inducements to blackmail people into his desired behavior — I think we get further evidence that Trump is a heretical mutation of the neoliberal project. First of all, like a classic nudge, Trump’s “shoves” generate a lot of questions as to what he really wants, but in contrast to the neoliberal apparatchik, Trump’s desire is fundamentally unknowable — apparently even to himself. Hence investors and political commentators all assumed, up to the weekend before they were set to take effect, that Trump would call off his harsh tariffs against Canada and Mexico. And at the last minute he did, at least temporarily, after securing concessions that most observers agree were already happening (and, bizarrely, conceding to Claudia Sheinbaum’s demand that he take more action to stop the flow of guns into Mexico). Will he find another excuse to kick the can down the road in early March? Presumably, but who knows?

What is at stake here is more than simple incoherence or inconsistency — and we are certainly not dealing with some game of 11-dimensional chess where Trump is skillfully deploying Nixon’s “madman strategy.” Where the nudger ostensibly sought to influence the behavior of the nudgee for the sake of some particular end, Trump’s shoves seem to be nothing but the assertion of dominance and control for its own sake. And we can see that the same ambition was present in the original nudge paradigm, which promised a form of seamless social control without political conflict. Surely what made nudging so appealing to people like Barack Obama was not the series of piecemeal social gains they could deliver (increasing uptake of 401(k)’s by 6%!) but the very idea that “smart” policymakers could gently guide society from behind the scenes without indulging in anything so vulgar as political contestation.

In practice, many subjects were offended by the implied blackmail of the nudge — and in protest, they have helped to elect someone who took away the implication but kept the blackmail. But, importantly, they are no longer the people being nudged. Rather, the deep state wreckers and DEI elites and, above all, foreigners are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. This is why Trump and company have targetted arguably the most sympathetic and beneficial use of government money (USAID) for absolute elimination and why they began their tariff crusade by threatening to blow up relations with our closest neighbors — to send the message that they will be swayed by no moral claim, especially not a claim of loyalty. All that matters is the brute fact of economic competition, which Trump is attempting to rig so that America wins every time (instead of merely most of the time). Any other concern or priority is not merely a distraction from the important task of “winning” every economic statistic, but an active deception and a ploy.

And that brings us to the performative contradiction of Trump’s agenda. If the classic nudgers were testifying to the failure of the state to organize collective life, Trumpian shoves presuppose the failure of the economy itself — and on a global scale. In his very desperation to gain the approval embedded in the economic statistics he has chosen to target (coming out “ahead” in all trade balances), Trump implicitly invalidates all previous economic outcomes as illegitimate, tainted as they are by wokeness and meddling foreigners. And his attempt to assert American domination presupposes that America has been almost comically weak for basically the entire postwar era, allowing even Canadians to manipulate them into unfavorable trade deals.

This disconnection from reality is what makes Trump so scary, but it is also what makes him weak. Indeed, on his own terms, Trump cannot possibly succeed, because he has deprived himself of any standard of judgment other than his own irritable whim — which will never be satisfied and which, ironically, makes him extremely vulnerable to people who manipulate him by setting up incentives and fooling him into thinking their preferred outcome is his own choice.

estimated reading time: 6 min

Whipping siphons have revolutionized the art of foam-making, bringing efficiency and creativity to kitchens everywhere. But siphons are useful for making so much more than whipped cream. These tools allow chefs to transform fatty or starchy ingredients—even fluid gels—into delicate, stable foams with ease. We use ours all the time—for making fresh soda, greatly speeding up marinating, infusing fruit with a flavorful juice, or topping a dish with foam for flavor and textural contrast.

Whipping siphons require cartridges of gas to function. Nitrous oxide offers exceptional solubility in fats and oils without the risk of oxidation or bacterial growth. Each standard charger contains 8 g of this versatile gas, which dissolves into the liquid, pressurizing the siphon. When released, the mixture expands, creating the airy, smooth texture that defines culinary foams. Carbon dioxide is also another type of gas that can be used with a whipping siphon, but its high solubility and distinct fizzy taste often make it less ideal for creating creamy, stable foams. With nitrous oxide, however, chefs gain a reliable, flavor-neutral tool for culinary experimentation, whether crafting decadent dessert sauces or innovative savory toppings. This is why we often prefer using nitrous oxide; however, carbon dioxide is required if your goal is to carbonate rather than to foam.

The possibilities with a whipping siphon are virtually limitless, opening up a world of culinary creativity. Take, for instance, our Caramelized Carrot Pizza from Modernist Pizza (page 277), which features a coconut chutney foam. This foam—made with cilantro, mint, green chili pepper, coconut cream, and coconut milk—adds a vibrant, aromatic layer to the dish.

The siphon can also streamline the preparation of batters, like teff injera (Modernist Bread, Vol. 5:156) or tempura batter (Modernist Pizza, Vol. 3:281), creating light, consistent textures with ease.

Additionally, it’s a game changer for emulsion-based sauces, particularly during service. The siphon not only keeps sauces warm but also aerates them, creating volume and a lighter mouthfeel compared to dense, overly rich sauces. For example, we use it to prepare Sous Vide Hollandaise or sabayon sauce.

Whether you’re carbonating, infusing, or foaming, there are a few basics you should know. First off, the siphon requires cartridges of gas, also called chargers, to pressurize the chamber holding the liquid. Carbon dioxide is best used for carbonation only. We use nitrous oxide for foams, marinating, and infusing. A cartridge holds 8 g of gas, can be used only once, and costs about 50 cents. Two cartridges are typically sufficient to charge a 1 L siphon. Use about 2% gas, or 8 g of gas for every 400 g of liquid—more if the liquid is low in fat.

Listen to your siphon. If the seal on your whipping siphon is faulty, the gas will go in and right back out again. So listen closely as you charge it. You should hear gas filling the chamber—and then silence. Still hear hissing? Remnants of a previous foam might be causing a leak, or some part of the siphon could be damaged. Vent the siphon, remove the nozzle, unscrew the top, and take out the cartridge. Then clean these parts and the rubber gaskets thoroughly, and check to make sure that they are undamaged and in place.

The rubber gasket keeps the dissolved gas from escaping from the lid. Make sure it fits snugly along the top of the lid and is intact.

A disposable cartridge holds 8 g of nitrous oxide, the gas used to pressurize the siphon. The number of cartridges you need depends on the volume of the siphon, how full the siphon is, the fat content of the liquid to be whipped, and the temperature of that liquid. Generally, two cartridges are enough for a 1 L siphon.

Charging the siphon—inserting the gas cartridge so that it is pierced by the pin—increases the pressure inside it dramatically and forces the nitrous oxide to dissolve into the liquid. Shaking the container is crucial to ensure that the gas is evenly distributed.

Create a sparkling drink or give porous food a surprising fizz with your whipping siphon. We slice carbonated grapes over chilled oysters and pair rich pâtés with sweet, tart, fizzy raisins. You need three cartridges of carbon dioxide to get really good carbonation in a 1 L whipping siphon or soda siphon.

STEPS TO CARBONATING WITH A SIPHON

1. Chill both the liquid and the siphon. Carbon dioxide is most soluble in cold liquids.
2. Pour in a cold liquid or add a chilled fruit. Do not overfill. Tighten the lid.
3. Insert the first carbon dioxide cartridge while holding the siphon upright. Hold down the nozzle to blow out the gas. The venting step is important because it replaces the air sitting above the liquid with carbon dioxide.
4. Insert one or two more cartridges of carbon dioxide; do not dispense any of the gas. Shake the siphon vigorously for 5–10 seconds.
5. Refrigerate the siphon to allow the gas to fully dissolve into the liquid. Let liquids sit for 2–4 hours. Let fruit sit for at least 4 hours, but preferably for 8–10 hours. Don’t open the siphon until you serve the fruit.
6. Open the siphon by holding it upright, pressing a cloth against the nozzle to contain any liquid, and slowly releasing the gas. Then remove the siphon lid, and pour out the soda or fruit. Dispensing soda through the nozzle results in a tingly and foamy drink, not a fizzy one, because the gas exits the liquid too quickly.

If you are ready to experiment, give carbonated cranberries a try.

Whipping siphons were designed for aerating cream that is high in fat. (Nitrous oxide dissolves much better in fat than in water.) But you can foam any liquid thick enough to hold bubbles. Add starch, gelatin, eggs, or agar to thin liquids to give them enough body for foaming. A fine, creamy foam comforts and provides contrasting texture, like mashed potatoes, or whipped cream atop a dense dessert. Light, acidic, and airy foams can contribute an additional layer of flavor. The more air in the foam, the less concentrated its flavor, so use a very strong liquid when making a foam to serve as a garnish or sauce. A foam used to top some other flavorful food may not need to be as intense. It’s a matter of finding the right balance.

STEPS TO FOAMING WITH A SIPHON

1. Add the liquid to the siphon, and tighten the lid. Do not overfill it.
2. Charge the siphon with only one cartridge of nitrous oxide. Shake vigorously for 5–10 seconds. Resting is unnecessary; the gas dissolves quickly.
3. Turn the siphon upside down, and press the lever to dispense a bit of foam. Check the texture. One cartridge is usually sufficient for high-fat liquids. Add more cartridges to create progressively thicker foams. The foam will release any gas it can’t hold, so an extra charge won’t ruin it. Shake the siphon each time before you dispense the foam.

You can use the high gas pressure in a siphon to force liquid into a solid, thus speeding up the processes of infusing, brining, or marinating. Meat cut into cubes for kebabs, for example, takes 20 minutes to marinate instead of 1–12 hours. Infusing porous fruit with liquid is a fun twist—think strawberries and lemonade, apple slices bursting with apple juice, or watermelon with hints of green tea.

STEPS TO INFUSING AND MARINATING WITH A SIPHON

1. Add cubes of meat to the siphon, and cover them with marinade or brine. To infuse fruit with a liquid, add the fruit and enough liquid to cover it. Tighten the lid.
2. Charge the siphon with nitrous oxide. Use two cartridges in a 1 L siphon. Shake vigorously for 5–10 seconds.
3. Refrigerate the siphon for 20 minutes to let the flavors infuse.
4. Open the siphon by holding it upright, pressing a cloth against the nozzle to contain any liquid, and slowly releasing the gas. Then unscrew the siphon lid, and pour out the contents.

Further Reading

estimated reading time: < 1 min

You followed a link on instagram.com that redirects to https://modernistcuisine.com/mc/all-about-whipping-siphons/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabAV9wjx_J1PV6kGewRD3C16LGfkVmilZ6Ck45omZHCm3J6pFVNNLHCqK0_aem_UgBphsCEvg-R8tmc9Cb1HQ.

Make sure to only follow links from sources you trust. Learn more

We're showing you this because our systems detected that the link you're trying to follow may not take you where you intended to go.

Though I haven’t written much on neoliberalism lately, I still dip into the literature now and again. The next book in my queue, Robert McDonald’s Works Like a Charm: Incentive Rhetoric and the Economization of Everyday Life, has put me in mind of the classic neoliberal notion of the “nudge” and how it might help us think through the vexed question of Trump’s relation to neoliberalism. (This post does not directly reflect McDonald’s specific view, though, because I am not planning to start it until my train ride tomorrow — but in the true spirit of blogging, I decided to write at the moment I had the time, the idea, and the motivation rather than waiting.)

In the “Trump chapter” of Neoliberalism’s Demons, I claim that Trump is a heretical neoliberal in the proper theological sense — someone who radicalizes the premises of neoliberalism in order to purify it. Trump doubtless violates many specific neoliberal policy preferences (e.g., free trade, trust in abstract expertise and competence), but when it comes to what I identify as the moral core of neoliberalism, he is a true believer. He really sees the world as a field of zero-sum competitions whose results don’t just sort people into winners and losers, but do so in a way that reveals their true worthiness as people. His critique of actual-existing neoliberalism is that the “wrong” people and countries are winning.

Hence Trump concludes that the system must be rigged against the “right” people and countries and sets about righting that supposed wrong to make sure that the “right” people and countries start winning again. Obviously his framework for determining the “right” people and countries is deeply racist and xenophobic, but I think it’s important to highlight that he’s taking a specifically neoliberal approach to racism and xenophobia — the damage that the racial and foreign Others are doing is economic and calls for a shift in economic policy. The economy is still in principle the site for legitimation of individuals and groups, but in his view it hasn’t been allowed to operate properly. Once he “fixes” it, white people will once again be in charge of everything (instead of merely most things) and America will once again dominate the world (instead of being merely the unipolar hegemon).

Trump is pursuing this agenda even more radically in his second term. What’s striking to me, however, is how thoroughly neoliberal his tools are. So far, everything is structured as a big, dumb “nudge.” To start with the least heretical policy: he doesn’t like the trade balance with other countries, and so he threatens them economically with tariffs. Traditional neoliberals would prefer that tariffs be kept at a minimum, but there is room for protective or punitive tariffs if they aren’t following the rules of the free market, as Trump believes other countries are not. More radical, though, is his attempt to weaponize economic tools to achieve seemingly unrelated policy goals, like using tariffs in his negotiations with Colombia over deportations (apparently unsuccessfully, or at least not as successfully as Trump believes) or his threats to impose punitive tariffs on Denmark if they do not cede Greenland to him. And on the domestic side, he doesn’t like anything “woke” or DEI, so he tries to take away all their money — most dramatically through the attempted freeze on federal grants and loans, but also with the more routine threats to withold federal funding from sanctuary cities, school districts that acknowledge trans people exist, and other supposed malefactors.

In both cases, Trump also holds in reserve the punitive arm of the state — refusing to rule out a military conquest of Greenland (surely a mighty feat that will live on in song and legend) or the deployment of troops in his deportation scheme. That, too, broadly fits with the neoliberal paradigm, which tends to delegitimate any direct role for the state other than the police and military. But it is fascinating that these hamfisted economic “nudges” are what he reaches for first and most often. From the classic neoliberal perspective, the actions are much too “in your face” and forceful, rather than the seamless, almost unconscious manipulation that “nudges” were supposed to achieve. Hence we could call them “shoves” rather than “nudges.” But both are still economic in nature, and thus in continuity with a worldview in which economic incentives are the only legible motivations.

More than that, Trump conceives of the policy priorities that are not directly economic from a common sense perspective as profoundly economic. They are part of his agenda to “fix” the economic order so it starts delivering the “correct” results again. And once we see that, even some of his crazier policy preferences start to make a perverse kind of sense. The best example here is his fantasy that tariffs can somehow replace the income tax as the primary funding source for the federal government. This goal is for all intents and purposes impossible to achieve and the pursuit of it would cause untold suffering and disruption. But what makes him think it must be possible is that it is morally necessary — it would be a form of reparations from the whole world, for all the economic damage they have done to America with the many unfair deals they have imposed upon us. The same logic worked on a smaller scale with the fantasy that Mexico would pay for the wall. By supposedly “sending” so many immigrants to steal American jobs, Mexico had done profound economic harm to America, so it’s only fair that they should foot the bill for the solution.

Trump’s mutation of neoliberalism is of course delusional and simplistic — but it is, in its own way, deeply coherent. In fact, it is too coherent, which leaves it with no room to process the unexpected or even the unknown. The fact that all the people who actually know anything objectively true at all are in on the anti-American DEI conspiracy is obviously a huge weakness, and it leaves those of us on the outside of the Trump bubble with very little leverage to persuade them to change course. Yet I cannot help but notice that the reciprocal shove of everyone in the country simultaneously shouting at them that, no, they can’t arbitrarily shut down the entire federal government because some of duly legislated programs might be too “woke” did prove effective. We can also expect reality itself to shove them back if they really do attempt to replace the income tax with tariffs, because they will very quickly realize that they don’t have any money to pay all the guys with the guns.

This is obviously very far from the ideal of deliberative democracy, but it makes sense that a neoliberal heretic would not be invested in an ideal to which the orthodox believers gave half-hearted lip service at best.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniel Domig (@daniel.domig)

This year I had the unique opportunity to visit both Athens and Rome (on separate trips). I’ve therefore seen a ton of ruins. In most of my travels, I’ve found ruins and archaeology in general less interesting than well-preserved artworks in comfortable museums. This time it was more of a mixed bag — the Acropolis, for instance, was a little underwhelming, but it felt very meaningful to me to wander about in the Agora, imagining that this was the same ground Socrates trod.

My reaction to Roman ruins was more complex. Part of the reason that I had never visited Rome before, despite having ample opportunity, was that I have an antipathy to the Roman Empire, due to my intellectual formation in liberation-oriented theology circles. To me, they are history’s Bad Guys, and there is something pathological about the way they are fetishized again and again throughout Western history. What jumped out at me on this tour — especially in the day we spent at Pompeii, the preservation of which surely counts as one of the most horrifying yet amazing things ever to happen — was just how capable they were. The design of the city of Pompeii, for instance, seemed more functional and intelligent than that of 95% of US cities. (Here I count even the biggest cities — surely the Romans would have anticipated the problem of garbage piling up on the streets in New York City and designed the city with alleyways!) The fact that the routes of Roman roads are still travelled today, that aqueducts are still functional, that the international metropolis of Rome literally still uses the sewer dug by the Romans — it’s absolutely incredible.

One of My Esteemed Partner’s favorite sites was the Pantheon. On the ground level, it’s just a moderately cluttered and tacky church, but the ceiling is an unparalleled feat of engineering — a huge dome, with no internal infrastructure or supports. Contemporary investigators literally don’t know how they achieved it. And on this trip, a retrospectively obvious thing dawned on me: for most Western Europeans for a thousand years or more, that was how it was with essentially all Roman achievements.

Often modern people look down their nose at the so-called “dark ages” as an era when people were obsessed with the past, seemingly arbitrarily. But they were physically surrounded by infrastructure and buildings erected by the ancients that they couldn’t build if they wanted to. The engineering know-how, the access to resources, the sheer ability to organize and structure a labor process — it was all gone and there was seemingly no way to recapture it.

The situation reminded me of a common trope of contemporary dystopian sci-fi. In many of these stories, there is a kind of deposit of older technology that current-day people either rely on without fully understanding or else scavenge for parts — often with unanticipated consequences. The same thing happened with Roman technologies. The Colosseum, for instance, was obviously subject to wear and tear from the weather, as well as earthquakes, but a big part of why more and more sections of it kept collapsing was that people were simply pulling out the iron rods that held the columns together and using them for something else.

We could say the same for the intellectual achievements of the ancients. Medieval people didn’t rely on them simply because they were lazy or unimaginative. They lacked the intellectual infrastructure — not just the traditions of education, but often the physical documents themselves, which had to be copied afresh every generation or so. They assumed that Galen was smarter than any contemporary doctor not only because he was such a genius but because he was in a position to know much more than any current-day investigator. You can’t just rebuild that intellectual infrastructure through sheer force of will, certainly not as an individual. The most gifted person in medieval Europe simply could not get as far as a person in the Hellenistic era would have been able to get. Medieval Europeans thought the ancients were better because they were, and it took centuries for them to get to a place where they could seriously think of themselves as surpassing their achievements.

My big worry is that we are currently experiencing a process of decay that will leave future generations living among ruins. It might seem absurd in terms of contemporary ideology to say that we will soon be living off of older technologies, but even within a single lifetime we’ve collectively lost abilities — the ability to get to the moon safely, for instance — and there are still crucial systems that are running on “outdated” code (such as COBOL for bank mainframes, etc.). More prosaically, our roads, our other infrastructure, our housing stock are all cheaper and crappier than they were a generation ago. It is impossible to imagine contemporary buildings remaining functional a century from now, as so many institutional buildings from the turn of the 20th century are. In fact, many of them aren’t functional even when they’re built!

But my more urgent concern is the intellectual infrastructure. Academics of my generation look at people like Fredric Jameson and think of that kind of erudition as simply unachievable — much less earlier polymathic figures like Auerbach. I don’t think anyone the age of 50 would claim to know as much as Jameson did when he was 50. People just don’t do that anymore. And we are witnessing a further ratcheting down, at least in the US, as the humble art of reading an entire book is increasingly lost to the younger generation. Students are graduating from high school and college knowing less and less, and able to do less and less. What happens when they’re the ones teaching the younger generation?

This is not just “kids these days” scaremongering. It’s not about them as individuals, it’s about intellectual infrastructure. My strongest students now are every bit as smart and capable as my strongest students were when I first started teaching — in fact, I’d count some of the students I’ve taught in the last couple years as the finest I’ve ever encountered. But it’s much more binary, and more seriously, the students who lack those abilities and experiences most often don’t think of it as a problem. The students who can engage at a higher level appear to be anomalies, as though they are “born with it.” And if emulating their own stronger peers does not seem like a live possibility, what about emulating the professor, much less the people who are writing or editing or translating the books they’re reading?

Once in a discussion of Aristotle’s scientific writings, a student generously suggested that Aristotle did the best he could, because he couldn’t just look things up on Wikipedia like we can. I jumped in to say: Aristotle was Wikipedia to them! Just like you look it up on Wikipedia, they looked it up in Aristotle! My improvised retort was perhaps a little glib, but especially with the rise of generative AI, it does seem like we’re going to be in a situation where more and more people are going to be forced to rely on a deposit of knowledge from prior to 2019 — one that can be remixed and perhaps commented on, but not really expanded, because the skills and resources that it takes to expand it have somehow withered away.

Some have suggested that this shift is okay, because students are gaining other kinds of competencies we lack. To me, that seems like magical thinking — much like an ancient person assuming that if the Romans left, someone else would come along to build and maintain the roads. Things don’t happen simply because the space is left open for them. Maybe on the margins the new educational regime where text is radically decentered allows other competencies to grow more than they otherwise would, though some of the claimed competencies strike me as having dubious value (like posting TikTok videos). But there is no medium as information-dense or as able to capture complexity as text. People who cannot work with text simply cannot learn as much overall, and no amount of silver linings can undo the brute fact that less is less.

Mass literacy is a kind of infrastructure, and like all forms of infrastructure in our neoliberal and now potentially post-neoliberal world, it has been allowed to crumble. Without a rapid course correction that appears to be nowhere on the horizon, we are headed down a path where many future generations are going to be gleaning from our scraps, because they have been deprived of the resources and knowledge they need to match our achievements. Who knows how long people will look back on the golden age of the Twentieth Century like medieval Europeans looked back on Roman times? As history shows us, it can be a long time.

estimated reading time: 37 min

ForFor just about as long as there have been movies, food has played a meaningful role in film. This history dates all the way back to the silent era and films like Mr. Flip (1909), in which a fed-up waitress who’s being harassed shoves a pie into the face of her tormentor, or The Gold Rush (1925), in which silent film icon Charlie Chaplin makes a soup of his own shoe, ladling the “broth” over the boiled boot before eating it with a knife and fork for Thanksgiving dinner. And whether it’s as a vehicle for Chaplin’s absurdist physical comedy, or it’s offering romantic depictions of Italian cuisine in Goodfellas and Big Night, or it’s the way the The Menu uses visceral horror and biting satire to critique the extravagance of luxury dining culture, food plays a crucial role in making the movies we love feel real.

But what exactly constitutes a great food movie? Well, that really depends. Some, like Ratatouille and Chef, are obvious picks — they are largely set in restaurants or kitchens, there are chefs involved, etc. Other films employ food in more subtle ways, to further the narrative or help us connect with a character. To celebrate the enduring connection between food and film, we spent the last several months thinking about the most essential food movies, eventually settling on 38 classics, cult favorites, and all the categories in between. The one thing that all of these films have in common is that they depict food, dining, cooking, or eating in relatable, often visceral ways.

To assemble this list, we gathered Eater’s highly opinionated brain trust of writers, editors, and movie lovers to passionately make their case for each and every film worth including. After much heated debate, here, in chronological order, our list of the 38 finest food movies. — Amy McCarthy, reporter

---

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

If you’d never seen Willy Wonka, you might not think its premise — a monopolistic recluse in a purple suit terrorizes a bunch of kids, their parents, and grandpa Joe while leading a corporate plant tour and singing about chocolate — sounded very much like a children’s movie. This is because Willy Wonka isn’t really a kids movie (though it is a family movie). For the first 45 minutes, the film indulges in a good amount of social commentary about class and consumerism aimed at adults, just like the Roald Dahl book on which it’s based (though it thankfully avoids Dahl’s blatant racism). We don’t even enter the titular chocolate factory until near the halfway point. Once we do, the children may be unknowingly competing for the title of CEO, but they’re just acting out basic parables; it’s their guardians that are the real target audience, the ones who need to be educated in the morals of pure, youthful fantasy. The film’s great feat isn’t squashing adult themes into a kids movie, the way animators coyly slide adult jokes into Saturday morning cartoons. The focus from the start is getting adult viewers to embrace the transformative powers of fantastical sweets, which can act as balms for the tedious, quotidian ills of grown-up society, if you can set aside your disbelief. — Nicholas Mancall-Bitel, senior editor

La Grande Bouffe (1973)

If you haven’t seen La Grande Bouffe, I urge you not to take this as a recommendation. The film is grotesque, and if I’m being ungenerous, I’d go as far as to say it serves no purpose beyond provoking disgust in its audience. But on a list of movies about eating it would feel wrong not to include Marco Ferreri’s 1973 satire in which four friends gather at a crumbling mansion and gorge themselves to death. Along the way they rope in some women (three hired, one a local school teacher) to further indulge in carnal pleasures (it’s rated NC-17). Although critics are divided, the more generous read is that it’s a comment on the decadence of the bourgeoisie. And as the four men, all stars of French and Italian cinema at the time, feast and, eventually, painfully consume mountains of pasta, over-the-top smorgastarta, and so much meat, their appreciation for fine cuisine is clear, even if the motivations for absolutely anything else happening on screen are not. — Monica Burton, deputy editor

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

There’s a scene near the end of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, in which Dielman spends three minutes in silence, alone in her kitchen making meatloaf. The camera remains fixed in place as Dielman folds the ground meat over on itself again, and again, and again, pausing briefly to sprinkle breadcrumbs on top before recommencing the folding. This moment is just one in a series of mundane tasks, many of which take place in the kitchen, that the late director Chantal Akerman highlights in extraordinary — and some might say painfully realistic — detail over the course of the film’s nearly three-and-a-half hour runtime. But while watching a woman skin potatoes, or prepare veal, or struggle — again alone, in silence — to make a cup of coffee for over eight straight minutes might not be entertaining in the traditional sense, Jeanne Dielman offers something more for those willing to sit through it.

The film follows Dielman over the course of three days, and as the minutes and hours tick by, a strange thing happens. Sitting in the audience, your mind begins to stray from what’s happening on screen, much as it might if you were washing dishes or cooking dinner in your own home. Time begins to take on a funny, confusing quality, and you start to think in a new way about the cost of labor, specifically the amount of time and effort that goes into preparing a meal. Cooking a healthy, satisfying dinner is a herculean undertaking, but the prep work is often forgotten once a steaming plate is set in front of you. Jeanne Dielman hits its audience over the head with a true representation of kitchen labor, and instills in viewers a newfound appreciation for anyone who has ever served them a meal, even if Dielman’s own bland boiled potatoes leave something to be desired. — Jonathan Smith, interim senior editor

Eating Raoul (1982)

Swingers, culinary aspiration, cannibalism, and death by frying pan: These are the primary ingredients of director Paul Bartel’s 1982 cult classic about Paul and Mary, a married couple who turn to murder in order to fund their dream restaurant. Paul (Bartel himself) is a wine snob who sleeps on a pillow shaped like a Beaujolais bottle, Mary (Warhol star Mary Woronov) is a nurse, and together they live unhappily in an apartment building that hosts frequent swinger parties. When one of the swingers assaults Mary, the pair kills him with the aforementioned frying pan and empties his wallet — and quickly discovers that killing “rich perverts” is a lucrative endeavor. Enter Raoul (Robert Beltran), a double-crossing locksmith who sells the bodies to a dog food factory, and you get a film whose dark satire lives somewhere between Sweeney Todd and Sideways. — Rebecca Flint Marx, home editor

Tampopo (1985)

In 1985, Japanese director Juzo Itami released what is arguably the most iconic film ever made about noodles: Tampopo. The film follows Gun (Ken Watanabe) and Gorō (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a duo of gruff truck drivers, as they embark on a quest to teach flailing ramen shop owner Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) the real art of this beloved Japanese dish via a series of schemes and bumbling espionage attempts. Both a heartfelt, occasionally slapstick comedy and a scathing satire of American Westerns, Tampopo is the rare film that isn’t afraid to get a little weird in its pursuit of ramen perfection. (Just wait for the film’s notorious sex scene, in which an egg features heavily.) — AM

Babette’s Feast (1987)

Based on a 1958 short story by Isak Dinesen, Babette’s Feast is the archetypal tale of cooking-as-art. The titular Babette flees violence in France to work for two pious sisters in 19th-century Denmark, whose bland diet of bread soup keeps them just sustained enough, but never tipping into gluttony. That is, until Babette insists on cooking a “real French dinner” of dishes like turtle soup, quail with foie gras and truffles, and rum sponge cake. In silence (so as to avoid praising what is surely a sensual sin), the town eats, and comes to understand the godly power of pleasure that food can provide. — Jaya Saxena, correspondent

Crossing Delancey (1988)

Director Joan Micklin Silver’s wry romantic comedy is the story of Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman (Amy Irving), an independent New York woman who yearns for an urbane, literary life worlds (or at least blocks) removed that of her Lower East Side bubbe (Reizl Bozyk). But Crossing Delancey is also a story about pickles, as personified by Sam (Peter Riegert), the pickle seller whom Izzy reluctantly meets through the local Jewish matchmaker. Pickles represent everything Izzy is trying to get away from: the old world, the old traditions, the old, Yiddish-inflected storefronts of the Lower East Side. Pickles aren’t sexy — although, as Izzy gradually realizes, the pickle man sure is. Filmed on location, Crossing Delancey is as much a portrait of a disappearing culture as it is of a modern woman negotiating romance, family, and the push and pull of her own expectations. — RFM

Cocktail (1988)

Okay, okay. Cocktail — in which Tom Cruise’s Brian Flanagan falls into the wild world of flair bartending — isn’t a good movie. Studio rewrites, intended to make the story more palatable by Hollywood standards, yielded a convoluted plot, flimsy character motivations, and bonkers tone shifts. It won a Razzie. It’s arguable whether it’s even a good food movie, both in that it totally misrepresents the world of bartending (even flair bartending) and can’t seem to keep its eye on the (high)ball. Yet, despite all its problems, it remains the definitive representation of cocktail mixing in popular culture (which may have more to do with popular understanding of cocktail bars than the movie’s actual staying power). Cocktail has had real-world impacts in ways few movies do: According to Punch, the Alabama Slammer wouldn’t have its widespread name recognition if it weren’t for that Cocktail, and you can still find neon signs reading “Cocktails & Dreams” at bars all over the country. For better or worse (definitely worse), it’s an unshakable part of American drinking culture and history, necessary context to understand the craft cocktail renaissance of the 2000s and everything that came after. — NMB

Mystic Pizza (1988)

Although it’s widely remembered as the movie that helped launch Julia Roberts’s career, Mystic Pizza is a lot more than that: a charming, tonally perfect portrait of three young waitresses at a small-town pizzeria the summer after high school. Roberts stars as the headstrong Daisy, Annabeth Gish as her bookish sister, Kat, and Lili Taylor as their best friend, Jojo, ambivalently engaged to be married. The pizzeria functions as both a source of income and a center of gravity for the three, who hover on the cusp of adulthood with dreams of what they want their futures to be. The movie never condescends to its working-class characters, or to the local pride that excellent pizza can provoke: When a snotty restaurant critic visits the pizzeria, you hope for a good review every bit as much as you hope for Daisy, Kat, and Jojo to get what they want in life. — RFM

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Probably the greatest friends-to-lovers rom-com to ever rom-com, written by Nora Ephron and starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, When Harry Met Sally follows the friendships and relationships of its two protagonists over the course of 12 years in New York City. As is true for so many New Yorkers, much of Harry and Sally’s life together happens at restaurants. It’s at restaurants that they learn who the other is at their core and then become real friends. Sally is whip-smart and unapologetically herself: Consider her fake orgasm while eating pastrami at Katz’s just to prove a point (“I’ll have what she’s having”) or even the way she delivers a monologue of requests every time she orders. (“Not only does she always pick the best thing on the menu, but she orders it in a way even the chef didn’t know how good it could be,” as Harry puts it.) Harry is funny and secretly warm, at his best when he’s in dialogue with Sally. Here, restaurants are the ultimate life backdrop, or, as Sally’s friend Marie (Carrie Fisher) quotes from New York magazine to Harry’s friend Jess (Bruno Kirby): “Restaurants are to people in the ’80’s what theaters were to people in the ’60’s.” — Hillary Dixler Canavan, restaurant editor

Goodfellas (1990)

Anyone who’s watched Goodfellas has permanently altered the way they approach garlic. But outside of the iconic scene of Paulie Cicero slicing cloves with a razor blade in prison, director Martin Scorsese shows how food and Italian American mob life are intertwined. This thing of theirs is nothing without wooing dates with prime tables at elite supper clubs, laying low at mom’s house while eating her pasta, and making a Sunday gravy in between drug runs. — JS

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)

Some may say that 1991’s Fried Green Tomatoes, starring Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy, isn’t a food movie. But this film, based on Fannie Flagg’s classic, similarly titled Southern novel, uses food to explore some of its biggest themes — love, revenge, and reclaiming one’s power. Bates stars as Evelyn Couch, a put-upon housewife who’s steeped in diet culture and stuck with an ungrateful husband until she meets Ninny Threadgoode (Tandy) while visiting a relative in the nursing home. The two strike up a friendship, and Ninny shares with Evelyn a colorful array of stories from her life in early 20th-century Whistle Stop, Alabama.

Ninny’s stories largely center the relationship between her older sister Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and her best friend Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), who eventually fall in love after they deal with Ruth’s abusive husband in a decidedly dark (and smoky) way. The two run the town’s Whistle Stop Cafe, serving their fried green tomatoes and other Southern comfort staples as they confront terminal cancer, family chaos, and queer love in the 1920s American South. — AM

Like Water for Chocolate (1992)

Based on Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel of the same name, Like Water for Chocolate is the film that has arguably done more than any other to equate food with the expression of emotion. Its story, directed for the screen by Alfonso Arau, follows Tita (Lumi Cavazos), a young woman living in early 1900s Mexico. Tita is deeply in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but forbidden to marry him due to a family tradition. Instead, Pedro marries one of Tita’s sisters, while Tita, forced by said tradition to take care of her mother, channels her feelings into the food she cooks. This is a film in which tears baked into a wedding cake cause the guests to cry and vomit, and a quail dish made with petals from an illicit bouquet provokes overwhelming horniness in all who consume it. It’s little surprise Like Water for Chocolate inspired similar films (hello, Simply Irresistible and Woman on Top) and that, decades later, its passion still burns. — RFM

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

This early Ang Lee comedy-drama is one of those films that it’s impossible to watch without working up an appetite. Chu is a banquet chef with three adult daughters. On Sundays, he gives his talents over to preparing elaborate family meals, and Sunday after Sunday, we watch their lives take dramatic turns, as the dinner table becomes the setting for the seemingly sudden announcements of pregnancies, marriages, and other major life decisions. The importance of food to these characters’ lives is right there in the title — “eat” comes first, after all — but it’s underscored in perhaps the most devastating of the dramatic twists when Chu loses his sense of taste, forcing him to leave his job in shame. The loss is a metaphor — it comes as the chef feels increasingly unmoored by his life outside of the kitchen — but it also makes clear that in the world of the film, life has little enjoyment without the presence of good food and the ability to appreciate it. — MB

Big Night (1996)

More than any other movie on this list, Big Night captures the agony and the ecstasy of restaurant life. The highs are profound — eldest brother, Primo (Tony Shalhoub), is a culinary genius, his talent as a chef is at the heart of the restaurant he runs with his younger brother, Secondo (Stanley Tucci), in New Jersey, the two having emigrated from Italy. The business, however, is in shambles. Primo’s artistry and vision makes him resistant to meeting the demands of his customer base who, in 1950’s fashion, make requests of him like adding a side of spaghetti to their risotto. While their restaurant struggles, the restaurant across the street, Pasquale’s, is thriving under the leadership of owner Pascal (Ian Holm) who happily panders to his guests and hopes to bring Primo onto his staff. In a last-ditch effort to save the restaurant, the brothers heed advice from Pascal and prepare a blowout meal sure to entice celebrity singer Louis Prima to attend, thus earning the restaurant the buzz it needs to survive.

The dinner sequence that follows is part Waiting for Godot, part Italian food fantasia, an amazing demonstration of just how good the restaurant could be at its very best. Bottles of wine litter the table, and few food moments on film hold as much drama as the cooking, and later, unveiling and feasting, of Primo’s timpano, a dome of pasta filled with yet more pasta, sauce, eggs, sausage, and other goodies. The evening is full of ecstasy, but the realities are agony. And it’s that last note that bleeds into the famous final sequence of the movie, a silent choreography of two brothers and a cook in their restaurant kitchen, preparing an omelet that will hopefully heal the wounds delivered the night before. — HDC

Good Burger (1997)

Yes, Good Burger is a goofy kids movie about two dudes who work in a vaguely sketchy burger joint, but this Nickelodeon classic is so much more than that. Dexter Reed (Kenan Thompson) is a delinquent teen who needs a job to make cash after he wrecked his mom’s car, and finally lands at Good Burger, working alongside Ed (Kel Mitchell), a well-meaning, if occasionally clueless, burger-flipper. Amid Dex and Ed’s self-created chaos that frequently involves showers of pink milkshake flying everywhere, a new chain called Mondo Burger threatens Good Burger’s existence, which means that Ed and Dex have to figure out a way to save it.

All the way back in 1997, Good Burger was warning us about the impending problems with chainifcation, the proliferation of chemicals in the American food chain, and labor exploitation in the food industry, all of which we’re still seeing right now. Impossibly prescient for a kids movie, Good Burger also somehow manages to hold up comedically. — AM

Soul Food (1997)

It’s nearly impossible to consume food media that doesn’t extoll the healing powers of home-cooked meals lovingly shared with family in a manner befitting a Hallmark card. In many Black American families, this is embodied by weekly Sunday night dinners, cookouts, or potlucks, typically organized by an auntie or grandmother. But what happens when the primary cook and driver of the tradition falls into a coma? Such is the premise of Soul Food, the star-studded 1997 film following the Joseph family’s struggles to heal past wounds and new betrayals, preserve 40-year-old traditions, and find some way to move forward together.

Told from the perspective of 11-year-old Ahmad Simmons, the movie boasts no shortage of gut-busting punch lines or juicy, gripping drama (cough, cough, a certain affair), but the film’s greatest strength lies in its clear-eyed depictions of meals shared around common tables as both unifying and dividing forces. It’s here that the Joseph family’s loving veneer shatters — and eventually, is reforged. — Jesse Sparks, senior editor

Chocolat (2000)

Chocolat is the kind of film you want to live in. Like please, let me be the seductive, slightly magical Vianne (Juliette Binoche) blowing into the most romantic town in the south of France like Mary Poppins, setting up a picturesque chocolaterie that becomes a home for the wayward and needy, and taking on the Catholic Church’s prudish ideas. It’ll almost have you believe chocolate can change minds, erase prejudice, and reunite families. But mostly, it is the textbook example of how a good food movie should make you salivate. The endless shots of chocolate being stirred, drizzled, unwrapped, and sucked off fingers are made of pure sensuality. — Jaya Saxena

Spirited Away (2001)

It’s not a secret that Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli works magic with food scenes. There’s Ponyo, with its love of all things ham; Kiki’s Delivery Service’s carby bakery wonderland; and The Boy and the Heron’s appreciation of butter and strawberry jam toast. But Spirited Away is the studio’s best tribute to food.

Spirited Away is not an obvious food movie, it’s about a girl, Chihiro, who is thrown into a fantastical, unfamiliar spirit world that she must navigate to save herself and her family. But it’s also about the transformative and grounding power of food, in both a negative and positive sense: Chihiro’s parents turn into literal pigs after eating all the dim sum at an unmanned food stall, but eating onigiri anchors and strengthens Chihiro so she can embark on her quest. Importantly, Spirited Away also includes one of the world’s most iconic food scenes. When the lonely No-Face spirit demands all the food in a glorious display of indulgence, staffers eagerly bring him every edible thing because they want his tips of gold. We witness him gorging from an undulating buffet of hand-drawn foods — including roast pigs, bao, sushi, and all the rice — and can almost taste and smell the savory aromas.

Director Hayao Miyazaki is a mastermind, and he knows that food is an essential part of the worlds — both real and imagined — that we live in. — Nadia Chaudhury, Eater Austin editor

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

There is no truer modern odyssey than a munchies-fueled quest for fast food. Like the deepest emotional journeys, it is singular in focus, total in its commitment, and absurd in its details. Harold & Kumar, an instant classic when it premiered in 2004, expresses this perfectly (it also made me, at 12 years old, laugh so hard I shot Coca-Cola out of my nose). The movie is exactly as funny and stupid as it needs to be to follow in the footsteps of Cheech, Chong, and other stoner comedy virtuosos of the silver screen. But it also captures an ascendant moment in the cult of fast food, which would later develop into widespread internet fandoms for brands like Chick-fil-A and Jollibee. Sure, the Big Mac already held a place of cultural prominence; H&K premiered the same year as Morgan Spurlock’s fast food documentary Super Size Me (box office rank: 149). But Harold & Kumar gave us a preview of how a slider can become an icon of fascination among fans, inflating in our minds entirely beyond any actual gastronomical experience. Rewatching it nearly 20 years later, the bodily humor is still gross, the CGI cheetah is terrible, but the obsession with White Castle is so familiar, and not just because it seamlessly recalls the mythological odyssey. — NMB

Sideways (2004)

Remembered as the film that put pinot noir on the map (and wiped Merlot from it), Sideways is ultimately a film about coping mechanisms. As Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church) seeks sex to quell his insecurities on his bachelor weekend, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) uses his knowledge and appreciation of fine wine to avoid dealing with heartbreak and anxiety over his unpublished novel.

Amid golden shots of California vineyards, the two must face what the hell is wrong with them, and wine becomes a beautiful metaphor for care, attention, and not letting things go to waste. — Jaya Saxena

Man Push Cart (2005)

Sometimes food isn’t something that sparks passion or nostalgia or reminds you of the beauty of human creation. Sometimes it’s what gets you through the day, especially for the people selling it. This neorealist film, set in post-9/11 New York, follows Pakistani immigrant Ahmad as he drags his coffee and doughnut cart to his corner to dish out quick breakfasts to office workers. He longs to be with his son, to make enough money for an apartment, to maybe even find love again or restart the music career he had in Pakistan. But the only constant is the cart, the day-in-day-out pattern of coffee and tea and bagels, sold to people he’ll never connect with. Yes, it’s bleak, but it’s also deeply human. And a reminder of the lives that exist behind morning coffee. — Jaya Saxena

Last Holiday (2006)

Everyone loves an underdog. Last Holiday introduces us to one of the most endearing: Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah), a shy department store worker who leads culinary demonstrations by day and cooks along to Food Network shows by night — only to give her food away as she resigns herself to frozen Lean Cuisine meals and counting Weight Watchers points. That is until an MRI shows she has a life-threatening brain tumor.

With weeks to live, Byrd changes her tune. She quits her job, abandons her beige-cardigan-coded lifestyle, and blows her life’s savings on an eye-popping trip to a Swiss ski chalet, which just so happens to be staffed by the Emeril Lagasse-esque celebrity chef she adores. Heartwarming hilarity ensues as Byrd sheds her self-doubt, speaks her mind, and truly savors all of the rich, luxurious foods she’d once given up. Naturally, her newfound demeanor rubs off on the guests and hotel staff around her.

Tropey at times — excusable, given that this is a 2006 movie featuring LL Cool J — Last Holiday is a delightful detour from the gravitas often attributed to food films. Instead, it’s an ode to the many food lovers often left outside of the camera’s gaze and a charming reminder that life is meant to be enjoyed, full-fat butter liberally applied, and kitchens gleefully shared. — Jesse Sparks

Waitress (2007)

As Jenna, the heroine of director Adrienne Shelly’s quirky comedy about an unhappily married, unhappily pregnant diner waitress somewhere in the American South, Keri Russell spends a lot of time making pie. Pie is her calling card — she is described as a “pie genius” — as well as a way to channel her feelings, as pies with names like “I Hate My Husband Pie” and “Pregnant, Miserable, Self-Pitying Loser Pie” attest. Waitress belongs to a subgenre of movies that center diners and their employees, but few have used food as such an explicit means of self-expression, and, ultimately, self-actualization. And while the movie has numerous charms, including an off-kilter sense of humor and a supporting cast that includes Cheryl Hines and Shelly herself as Jenna’s fellow waitresses, what lingers is its sweetly stubborn insistence that while pie can’t solve all the world’s problems, it can certainly offer an opportunity for personal salvation. — RFM

Ratatouille (2007)

There is something utterly beautiful about unlikely scenarios, like putting pickles on pizza, dipping fries in milkshakes, or even a rat cooking high-end French cuisine. The latter is the absurd premise of Ratatouille, the touching animated film about a little rat, Remy, who is a fantastic cook. I could go on about the cultural impact of the film — and, in fact, we have — but what Ratatouille does so well is visually and sonically depict the beauty of food. The way Remy experiences food and particularly food combinations is stunning. For example, the moment he takes bites of cheese and strawberries together is an explosion of abstract shapes and squiggles, soundtracked by an orchestral burst.

Of course, it’s the broader message that solidifies Ratatouille as a quintessential food movie, namely that cooking is open to everybody, no matter who you are. Remy learns to reconcile his multiple selves: the one who wants to cook, the one who wants to be a friend to Linguini, and the one who is a rat brother and son. As ghost Gusteau tells Remy, “Food always comes to those who love to cook,” and while Remy initially disagrees, he eventually proves himself wrong. Anyone can cook as long as they have real passion, even tiny chef rats. —NC

Julie & Julia (2009)

Directed by Nora Ephron and starring the dream team of Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Stanley Tucci, Julie & Julia was always destined to be a comfort movie for the ages. What makes it so charming upon each rewatch is the way its characters find pleasure in food: Child’s excitement as she tries cassoulet and sole meunière in France, and Powell’s relatable sense of accomplishment as she learns from Child’s recipes how to poach eggs and boil lobsters. By connecting Powell’s and Child’s lives, Julie & Julia is an encouraging and heartwarming — if not entirely realistic — story of two women who were, as Adams says in character, “saved by food.” It also commemorates a major inflection point in modern food culture: when blogging became a serious, viable pursuit, paving the way for today’s creator economy. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter

It’s Complicated (2009)

Nancy Meyers is well known for meticulously crafting worlds in which privileged characters play out dramas with comfortingly low stakes. The most delicious of these is showcased in It’s Complicated. Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) finds herself in an affair with her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin), who left her for a much younger woman years earlier. Jane, reeling from her new status as the other woman, is thrown for even more of a loop when her kind architect, played by Steve Martin, shows romantic interest. However, those plot points aren’t nearly as important as the beautiful Santa Barbara, California, setting and the food scenes it gives way to. Jane is a notably good cook, with a predictably enviable kitchen and access to the finest Californian ingredients. She also owns a bakery and in an iconic two-minute sequence, she and the architect visit the shop after hours and whip up some chocolate croissants. It’s Jane at her most joyful, as she and the architect toss around the dough, turning it into beards and the triangles of a bikini top (they’re also high). In a film full of aspirational moments, this is the scene we would most like to recreate. — MB

The Trip (2010)

A food film for anyone who loves to plan their travel around eating, The Trip follows comedian Steve Coogan on a newspaper assignment to review some of northern England’s best restaurants. For the trip (get the name) he brings along fellow comedian Rob Brydon, and off they drive to feast at restaurants like L’Enclume, Holbeck Ghyll, and the Inn at Whitewell. Coogan and Brydon play versions of themselves; their wives and girlfriends are actresses, their circumstances — and the Observer article — are fictional, too, but the dynamic the two cultivate meal after meal is real. Their sprawling conversations as they drive through gorgeous scenery and dine in some of the most acclaimed restaurants in England are less My Dinner with Andre and more unending comedy routine, with the duo’s dialogue and numerous impressions totally improvised. And while it’s clear that while they’re not food experts (Coogan at one point describes a tomato soup as tasting like tomatoes), they do hit on some of the highs and lows of haute cuisine — the scourge of sauce dots, the sometimes silly naming conventions of the dishes (scallops, Brydon muses, can’t be “rested” since they’re dead), but also how damn good fine food and wine can be. And underneath the laugh-out-loud performances lies a moving portrait of middle-aged life, love, and friendship. And so much food. — HDC

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

With artsy close-ups of ingredients being prepped and plated, set to soaring orchestral music, almost every food documentary now owes some of its aesthetic sensibilities to Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In a novel approach for the time, Jiro took a Planet Earth-inspired eye to shots of hands slicing fish and forming sushi. With it, director David Gelb changed not only how we watch food in the United States, but also how we eat. The award-winning Jiro turned its namesake Jiro Ono into a global phenomenon, making reservations at Sukiyabashi Jiro a hot commodity. In doing so, it also popularized the concept of omakase and spurred a high-end sushi boom in the United States. Of course, Jiro then paved the way for Gelb to make the influential Chef’s Table. — BM

The Lunchbox (2013)

What’s more romantic than a crossed-wires connection a la You’ve Got Mail, especially one in which two people fall in love through the making of and eating of food? This is the core of The Lunchbox. In the international production directed by Ritesh Batra, housewife Ila Singh lovingly cooks lunch tiffins for her husband to be delivered by way of Mumbai’s intricate and lengthy dabbawala system. But it turns out the operation isn’t perfect and her meals end up with a different person in a different office, Saajan Fernandes (played by the late great Irrfan Khan).

Aside from the meet-cute, will-they-won’t-they plotline, The Lunchbox is about food’s particular ability to bring people together. Saajan and Ila develop their friendship as she prepares him dishes she knows he’ll enjoy, like the aubergine stir-fry. Meanwhile, Saajan begrudgingly shares these meals with his new trainee Sheikh, who then becomes a familial figure in his life. The film also beautifully showcases the ways cooking can be a craft, especially in South Asian cultures. I recognize the way Ila taste-tests by dabbing bits on her palm — much like my mom does — and the way her upstairs neighbor could smell that certain spices were missing from a dish. It’s clear the making and enjoying of food is one of those less obvious love languages that director Batra just gets. —NC

Chef (2014)

In the film that Jon Favreau directed, wrote, and stars in, Carl Casper is an acclaimed chef, stuck creating generic crowd-pleasing menus at a fancy-pants Los Angeles restaurant. As he becomes increasingly bored by the whole shtick, he realizes that he wants and needs to cook without any restraints. He gets his wish after he’s fired for blowing up at a food critic over a bad review, and not knowing what else to do, he opens a food truck, El Jefe, focused on Cuban sandwiches. He then takes the truck on a cross-country road trip that serves the dual purpose of allowing Carl to reconnect with his son and find a way back to cooking.

Favreau loves food. Each dish prep scene is shot with care, whether it’s Carl slicing vegetables at the restaurant, pressing a grilled cheese in his home kitchen, or fashioning an assembly line of sandwiches in a tiny food truck space. The same goes for every bite taken on screen, including beignets in New Orleans and brisket straight from the smoker in Austin (hi, Aaron Franklin). But ultimately, Chef is about who we cook for and why, and posits that being a great chef comes from making delicious food for yourself and loved ones. —NC

Phantom Thread (2017)

Sometimes, you need to lightly poison your lover to make them act right. Or at least that’s the message at the heart of Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 epic. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Reynolds, an intense, obsessive, and sometimes paranoid dressmaker with a voracious appetite. He meets Alma (Vicky Krieps) when she’s waitressing at a restaurant and the two quickly become enmeshed, with Alma moving in with Reynolds to serve as his creative muse. While those who have only seen the trailer might not immediately clock it as a food film, the drama and resolution in Phantom Thread always hinge on a meal. There’s the restaurant where Alma and Reynolds meet, the ill-fated dinner she prepares for him in a display of her devotion, and a pivotal, poisoned mushroom tea, which Alma gives to Reynolds so that she can be the one to nurse him back to health. Finally, the film culminates in a mushroom omelet, lovingly prepared by Alma, that reveals the depth of this complicated couple’s connection. — AM

Bao (2018)

Domee Shi’s Pixar short Bao acted as the intro to Incredibles 2, but I’d argue that it stole the show. In just under eight minutes, Bao told the story of a mother whose baozi becomes sentient. After her coddled dumpling baby grows into an independent adult, the mother impulsively eats him. We realize then that it was a dream, representing the mother’s fear of growing distant from her real, non-dumpling son. Though the twist horrified some viewers, it resonated deeply with others, especially within the Asian American community, for its depiction of overprotective parents and complicated familial love. Every ingredient and the entire dumpling-making process is rendered in beautiful, drool-worthy detail, informed by tutorials from Shi’s mother; Shi’s animated food only improved in her 2022 feature-length debut, Turning Red. — BM

First Cow (2019)

All of the characters in Kelly Reichardt’s masterpiece First Cow know that pastries are out of place in the unforgiving frontier of the 19th-century Oregon Territory. The oily cakes and clafoutis that Cookie (John Magaro) makes are too sweet for a world made savage by greedy, violent interlopers. The titular cow, who lost her bull and calf on the journey to the frontier, is also out of place. When Cookie and King-Lu (Orion Lee) take to secretly milking the cow for a fledgling bakery pop-up, essentially stealing from the local governor who owns the animal, they risk their physical safety, but they also provide purpose where before there was meaningless solitude. Cookie’s pastries not only make use of the cow’s milk, which will never go to her lost calf; they also bring immense joy to local customers otherwise consumed with individual material gain. The protagonists also find a shared purpose in their scheme, as well as comfort, support, and a kind of love in the domestic sphere they carve out of the cold forest, a liminal place that exists outside the rules of polite society and the annals of progress (as King-Lu puts it, “History hasn’t gotten here yet”). In this world, baking becomes a subtle act of rebellion by offering cohesion to disparate elements and motivation to lost people. That’s still true everywhere history has arrived. — NMB

Minari (2020)

Minari follows a Korean immigrant family as they try to build a life in rural Arkansas in the 1980s, drawing partially on the experiences of director Lee Isaac Chung. Jacob (Steven Yeun) and his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) work as chicken sexers for the poultry industry in order to support their two young children, though Jacob would rather make a living growing Korean vegetables. Arriving from Korea to assist the family, Monica’s mom Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) slowly builds a relationship with her grandchildren, while Jacob’s pursuit of his farm creates other tensions. Tender and moving, Minari — which gets its name from the Korean word for water celery — frames food as a symbol of hope and of sacrifice in pursuit of the “American dream.” — BM

Pig (2021)

Pig was the movie of the summer back in 2021 (or at the very least, my movie of the summer, a substantial portion of which I spent blogging about it). It stars Nicolas Cage as retired chef Robin Feld, who has been living off the grid in the Oregon woods, supporting himself by foraging truffles with his titular truffle pig. When his pig is stolen, Rob must return to the grisly underworld of Portland’s dining scene to get her back, forcing him to confront the life he left behind in the process. It might sound like John Wick, but the mood in Pig is far, well, moodier, exploring themes like loss, grief, artistry, genius, and finding one’s purpose. The film is at turns intimate (Rob connects with a young kid in the backyard of the home he used to live in) and imaginative (an underground restaurant worker fight club lit by chandeliers). And there’s plenty of food, as a movie about a chef should have: There’s the high-end restaurant Eurydice, a send-up of pretentious cheffery — and by contrast there’s the scene where we finally see Rob cook, a beautifully rustic pigeon with chanterelles designed for the movie by Portland’s own Gabe Rucker. A must-see for fans of Cage, mushrooms, and/or tear-jerkers, Pig is unexpected and compelling, a uniquely introspective food film. — HDC

The Menu (2022)

What would you pay for the most exclusive dining experience in the world? That’s the question at the heart of The Menu, director Mark Mylod’s 2002 dark comedy-horror film. Ralph Fiennes terrifies as the tyrannical chef Julian, a man with a lust for revenge on those who have misunderstood or undervalued his culinary genius. His victims are a dining room full of elites, played by a stellar ensemble cast that includes John Leguizamo, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Nicholas Hoult. They’re the kind of people who have earned enough money and power in uniquely unscrupulous ways to fritter away $1,200 per person for dinner — except for Margot (Taylor-Joy), a sharp-witted sex worker who’s determined to make it out alive. The film unfolds much like a tasting menu, and each course more terrifying than the next. That terror culminates in one hell of a dessert, er, ending — one that’s all but assured to have you laughing out loud. — AM

The Taste of Things (2024)

Set in France in the 19th century, The Taste of Things is the love story of a cook named Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and her gastronome employer Dodin (Benoît Magimel). It’s a film that understands the deep romance in cooking for, and with, another person. Accordingly, the story is told through food, which director Trần Anh Hùng presents in indulgent, drawn-out, and atmospheric detail; the film begins with an ensemble cooking sequence that’s 40 minutes long in the most generous estimations.

Trần excels at displaying cooking sensually. He lets the camera linger on the steam that billows from a pot of stock, for example, and then holds it there as Dodin drips that stock onto the taut skin of a chicken, the kitchen aglow in golden-hour light. These lush visuals are enhanced by the crisp sounds of cooking, with no soundtrack for distraction. It’s a film that makes you yearn not only for the food, but also for the lifestyle — of spending your days cooking in a sun-drenched chateau kitchen, because you love the act of doing it, and then sharing that food with someone you love. — BM

Marylu E. Herrera (she/her) is a Chicago-based Chicana collage, print media, craft, and fiber artist. Her collage work has been featured in the Cut, the Los Angeles Times, Bitch Media, Eater, and Punch.

• Milestone

In this release, the coding focus has been on moving to PHP 8.1+ and refactoring the integration of the SimplePie library (which was long due). At the same time, plenty of new features have been added. Enjoy! 🎄

Breaking changes 💥:

• Require PHP 8.1+ (and improved support of PHP 8.4+)
• Require PostgreSQL 10+ or MariaDB 10.0.5+ or MySQL 8+

A few highlights ✨:

• Add support for regex search (regular expressions)
  • ⚠️ Advanced regex syntax for searches depends on the database used (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MySQL),
    but FreshRSS filter actions such as auto-mark-as-read and auto-favourite always use PHP PCRE2 syntax.
• Allow dynamic search operator in user queries, like search:UserQueryA date:P1d
• New feed mode HTML+XPath+JSON dot notation (JSON in HTML)
• Better HTTP compliance with support for HTTP response headers Cache-Control: max-age and Expires
• New unicity policies and heuristic for feeds with bad article IDs (reduce the problem of duplicated articles)
• New option to automatically mark new articles as read if an identical title already exists in the same category
• Add ability to remove content from articles with CSS selectors, also when not using full content
• New condition option to selectively retrieve full content of articles
• New UI feature to download a user’ SQLite database or a database SQLite export (to be produced by CLI)
• Supported by Capy Reader (Android, open source)
• Many bug fixes, UI improvements, and a lot more

This release has been made by @aledeg, @Alkarex, @Art4, @ColonelMoutarde, @Frenzie, @math-GH, @ramazansancar
and newcomers @DevGrohl, @UserRoot-Luca, @aarnej, @andrey-utkin, @bhj, @christophehenry, @davralin, @drego85, @ev-gor, @killerog, @kwarraich, @minna-xD, @mtalexan, @oshaposhnyk, @patHyatt

Full changelog:

• Features
  • Add support for regex search (regular expressions) #6706, #6926
    • ⚠️ Advanced regex syntax for searches depends on the database used (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MySQL),
      but FreshRSS filter actions such as auto-mark-as-read and auto-favourite always use PHP PCRE2 syntax.
  • Allow dynamic search operator in user queries, like search:UserQueryA date:P1d #6851
  • New feed mode HTML+XPath+JSON dot notation (JSON in HTML) #6888
  • Better HTTP compliance with support for HTTP response headers Cache-Control: max-age and Expires #6812, FreshRSS/simplepie#26
  • Support custom HTTP request headers per feed (e.g. for Authorization) #6820
  • New unicity policies and heuristic for feeds with bad article IDs #4487, #6900
  • Fallback to GUID if article link is empty #7051
  • New option to automatically mark new articles as read if an identical title already exists in the same category #6922
  • New reading view option to display unread articles + favourites #7088
    • And corresponding new filter state &state=96 (no UI button yet)
  • Add ability to remove content from articles with CSS selectors, also when not using full content #6786, #6807
  • Update phpgt/cssxpath library with improved CSS selectors #6618
    • Support for :last-child, :first-of-type, :last-of-type, ^=, |=
  • New condition option to selectively retrieve full content of articles
    #33fd07f6f26310d4806077cc87bcdf9b8b940e35, #7082
  • Allow parentheses in quoted search #7055
  • New UI feature to download a user’ SQLite database or a database SQLite export (to be produced by CLI) #6931
  • New button to delete errored feeds from a category #7030
  • Better import of Inoreader user labels #6791
  • Rebuild feed favicon on cache clear #6961
  • New sharing with Bluesky #7116
  • New sharing with Telegram #6838
• Bug fixing
  • Fix searches with a parenthesis before an operator like ("a b") or (!c) #6818
  • Fix auto-read tags #6790
  • Fix CSS selector for removing elements #7037, #7073,
    #7081, #7091, #7083
  • Fix redirection error after creating a new user #6995
  • Fix favicon error in case of wrong URL #6899
  • Use cURL to fetch extensions list (allows e.g. IPv6) #6767
  • Fix XML encoding in cURL options #6821
  • Fix initial UI scroll for some browsers #7059
  • Fix menu for article tags in some cases #6990
  • Fix share menu shortcut #6825
  • Fix HTML regex pattern during install for compatibility with v mode #7009
  • More robust creation of user data folder #7000
• API
  • Fix API for categories and labels containing a + #7033
    • Compatibility with FocusReader
  • Supported by Capy Reader (Android, open source) capyreader#492
  • Improved UI for API #7048
  • Allow adding multiple feeds to a category via API #7017
  • API support edit multiple tags #7060
  • API return all categories also those without any feed #7020
• Compatibility
  • Require PHP 8.1+ (drop PHP 7.4) #6711
  • Improved support of PHP 8.4+ #6618, PhpGt/CssXPath#227,
    #6781, #4374
  • Require PostgreSQL 10+ (drop PostgreSQL 9.5) #6705
  • Require MariaDB 10.0.5+ (drop MariaDB 5.5) #6706
  • Requiring MySQL 8+ (drop MySQL 5.5.3) #6706
• Deployment
  • Docker: dev image freshrss/freshrss:oldest updated to Alpine 3.16 with PHP 8.1.22 and Apache 2.4.59 #6711
  • Docker alternative image updated to Alpine 3.21 with PHP 8.3.14 and Apache 2.4.62 #5383
  • Update Dockerfiles to newer key-value format #6819
  • Docker minor improvement of entrypoint #6827
• SimplePie
  • Refactor our embedding of SimplePie #4374
    • Our fork is maintained in its own repository.
  • Remove HTTP Referer #6822, FreshRSS/simplepie#27
    • If some sites require it, add Referer: https://example.net/ to the custom HTTP headers of the feed #6820
  • Upstream fixes simplepie#878, simplepie#883
  • Sync upstream #6840, #7067
• Security
  • Apache protect more non-public folders and files #6881, #6893, #7008
  • Add privacy settings on extension list retrieval #4603, #7132
  • Fix login in unsafe mode when using a password with special XML characters #6797
  • Fix login in e.g. Brave browser by avoiding synchronous XHR #7023
  • Fix invalid login message #7066
  • Modernise windows.open noopener (to avoid flash of white page in dark mode) #7077, #7089
• UI
  • Searchable My Labels field #6753
  • Add subscription management button to reading view #6946
  • New option for showing label menu in article row #6984
  • Move to next unread label on mark as read #6886
  • Improved article footer for small / mobile screens #7031
  • Improve Web accessibility: fix aria-hidden bug, and use HTML5 hidden #6910
  • Default styles for <pre> and <code> #6770
  • Refactor the sharing menu to use a <template> instead of duplicated HTML code #6751, #7113
  • Refactor the label menu to use a <template> #6864
  • Rework UI for authors #7054
    • Avoid Unicode escape of authors in HTML UI #7056
  • Improved subscription management page #6816
  • Improve user query management page #7062
  • Restore JavaScript form validation compatibility with Web browsers using older engines (SeaMonkey) #6777
  • Reorganise some options #6920
  • New shortcut ? to show shortcut page and help #6981
  • Use of consistent colours in statistics #7090
  • Various UI and style improvements #6959
• Extensions
  • New extension hook simplepie_after_init #7007
• I18n
  • Add Finnish #6954
  • Improve English #7049, #7053
  • Improve German #6847, #7068, #7128
  • Improve Italian #6872, #7069, #7086
  • Improve Spanish #6894, #6908
  • Improve Turkish #6960
• Misc.
  • Better cache name for JSON feeds #6768
  • Fix inversed encoding logic in Minz_Request::paramArray() #6800
  • Pass PHPStan booleansInConditions #6793
  • Rename PHPStan configuration file to phpstan.dist.neon to allow custom configuration in phpstan.neon #6892
  • Code improvements #6800, #6809, #6983
  • Makefile improvements #6913
  • Fix PHPCS ControlSignature #6896
  • Update PHPMailer #6968, #7046
  • Code updates to PHP 8.1 syntax #6748
  • Update dev dependencies #6780, #6964, , #6965,
    #6966, #6967, #6970,
    #7042, #7043, #7044,
    #7045, #7047, #7052

estimated reading time: 19 min

If you want to support knife steel research, come join us at Patreon.com/KnifeSteelNerds. You get articles and videos before everyone else!

If you’re looking for Knife Steel Nerds Christmas gifts, some good choices are the book Knife Engineering, the book The Story of Knife Steel, and the Buck knife model 501 “The Larrin.”

Video

There is a video version of the following information:

Why Analyze AI Capabilities?

I’ve had multiple people over the past couple years send me steel compositions that ChatGPT came up with. People want to know what I think, and if AI is going to be taking over everything now, including the design of new steels. I took a few of the steel compositions people sent me so I can analyze them to see if they would work. Can ChatGPT come up with new and fresh ideas to revolutionize knife steel? Let’s look at them and see:

Infinisteel

ChatGPT has some grandiose claims for this first steel:

Introducing the revolutionary super steel, InfiniSteel! This cutting-edge material boasts unparalleled toughness, edge retention, and corrosion resistance, surpassing any other steel on the market. By exploiting a unique interplay between various alloying elements, InfiniSteel exhibits remarkable properties that set it apart from conventional steel grades.

The InfiniSteel composition consists of:

Iron (Fe): 75%
Carbon (C): 1.2%
Chromium (Cr): 20%
Vanadium (V): 2.5%
Molybdenum (Mo): 0.8%
Tungsten (W): 0.5%

The biggest issue with this steel is that it won’t harden. When heat treating knife steel the main step is “austenitizing,” the high temperature step before the steel is quenched (rapidly cooled). You can read more about austenitizing in this article. It is called the austenitizing temperature because the steel transforms from the low temperature ferrite phase to the high temperature austenite phase. Ferrite is the normal “phase” of iron at room temperature which has a certain set of properties, such as being magnetic and soft. When you heat up iron to high temperature the atoms rearrange themselves into a different structure called austenite, which has different properties, one of them being that it is not magnetic. When you quench austenite it transforms to the hard steel phase martensite. If you don’t transform to austenite at your heat treatment temperature you will still have soft ferrite after heat treating and thus it will not make a good knife edge.

Some elements are “ferrite stabilizers” and some are “austenite stabilizers.” This steel has a relatively high content of ferrite stabilizers including 20% Cr, 2.5% V, 0.8% Mo, and 0.5% W. This would be ok if there were enough austenite stabilizers, but the only austenite stabilizer in the steel is carbon, and 1.2% is not enough for all of those ferrite stabilizers. ChatGPT is just adding elements in because when it reads random articles online that say that each element does some beneficial thing. It doesn’t know anything about balancing different elements together and it has no idea that it needs to have enough carbon or other austenite stabilizers to go with all of those ferrite stabilizers.

Here’s a detailed explanation of the role each component plays in the alloy and how they contribute to the exceptional performance of InfiniSteel:

Iron (Fe): As the primary element in steel, iron provides the backbone of the material’s structure. It imparts strength and toughness to the alloy, ensuring InfiniSteel can withstand substantial loads and resist deformation under various conditions.

Carbon (C): The addition of 1.2% carbon significantly improves the strength and hardness of the alloy. This results in superior edge retention, allowing InfiniSteel to maintain a sharp edge even after extensive use. Additionally, the high carbon content enables the formation of carbides, which further enhance wear resistance.

Chromium (Cr): Chromium contributes to InfiniSteel’s exceptional corrosion resistance. At 20%, it forms a stable, adherent, and self-healing passive film on the steel’s surface, effectively protecting it from oxidizing agents. This film also enhances the steel’s resistance to various corrosive environments, such as those with high humidity or in contact with aggressive chemicals.

Vanadium (V): Vanadium’s primary function is to refine the steel’s grain structure, leading to enhanced toughness and resistance to impact. At 2.5%, it forms hard vanadium carbides that strengthen the material and improve its edge retention properties. Additionally, vanadium aids in stabilizing the passive film, further enhancing the steel’s corrosion resistance.

Molybdenum (Mo): Molybdenum strengthens the steel matrix and improves its resistance to high-temperature creep and stress rupture. At 0.8%, it also contributes to the formation of a more stable passive film, increasing the corrosion resistance of InfiniSteel.

Tungsten (W): The addition of 0.5% tungsten enhances the high-temperature performance and hardness of InfiniSteel. It forms carbides that provide excellent wear resistance, contributing to the alloy’s outstanding edge retention properties.

Through this unique interplay of alloying elements, InfiniSteel achieves an unprecedented level of performance in terms of toughness, edge retention, and corrosion resistance. The combination of carefully selected constituents enables the alloy to outshine any other steel on the market, making it the ideal choice for a wide range of demanding applications, such as aerospace, automotive, marine, and cutting tools industries.

The explanations of what the different elements are doing are also very dumb and obviously based on random articles from non-experts online. For example, under iron it says that the iron “imparts strength and toughness to the alloy.” This is a very odd thing to say about the steel since steel is made up of iron. Iron is pretty soft before we add other elements to it, especially carbon. So why would you describe iron as imparting “strength”? Sounds like something a dumb AI would write.

It also says that “Vanadium’s primary function is to refine the steel’s grain structure, leading to enhanced toughness and resistance to impact.” Small amounts of vanadium, like 0.1-0.2%, are added to prevent grain growth. In knife steels when you have 0.3% or more added, that is for wear resistance. In that case it is adding wear resistance and reducing toughness. So the claim by the AI that the vanadium is added for enhanced toughness is nonsense.

The AI also says that molybdenum was added for “its resistance to high-temperature creep and stress rupture.” High temperature creep is when a material is held under stress at relatively high temperature for long periods of time. The material slowly deforms, which is called creep. Resisting creep is totally unnecessary in a knife, and the AI is just pulling things from various places to support its choices in a seemingly random way.

No manganese or silicon was added to the steel. These are not always shown on datasheets but are present in all tool steels that I am aware of. I would say it just didn’t mention them, but it also gave the percentage of iron (75%) which leaves no more room for Mn and Si.

User
Please provide a detailed analysis of Infinisteel vs Magnacut?

ChatGPT
InfiniSteel and MagnaCut are both high-performance steels designed for demanding applications. Here’s a detailed analysis comparing their properties and performance:

Composition:

MagnaCut:
Carbon (C): 1.15%
Chromium (Cr): 17.0%
Manganese (Mn): 0.6%
Nickel (Ni): 0.3%
Nitrogen (N): 0.18%
Vanadium (V): 4.0%
Molybdenum (Mo): 2.0%

Comparison:

Toughness: Both InfiniSteel and MagnaCut boast high levels of toughness due to their vanadium content, which refines the grain structure of the steel. InfiniSteel contains 2.5% vanadium, while MagnaCut has a higher vanadium content at 4.0%. The higher vanadium content in MagnaCut might result in slightly better toughness compared to InfiniSteel.

Corrosion resistance: InfiniSteel has a higher chromium content (20%) than MagnaCut (17%). This results in better passive film formation and, consequently, superior corrosion resistance. Additionally, MagnaCut’s nitrogen content (0.18%) further enhances its corrosion resistance. However, InfiniSteel is likely to have the edge in this category due to its higher chromium content.

…

The person who sent me this also asked ChatGPT how the steel would compare to MagnaCut. Somehow ChatGPT managed to get the composition of MagnaCut wrong. MagnaCut has 10.7% chromium but ChatGPT says it has 17%. It also has 0.2% nitrogen as a target, so the 0.18% nitrogen that ChatGPT reports could technically be a nitrogen content that would be seen in an individual bar of steel, but that is not the target composition. And it also reports that MagnaCut has 0.3% nickel, even though nickel is not added to the steel and is not reported in the datasheet.

ChatGPT also repeats its mistake from earlier, saying that vanadium in higher amounts leads to more toughness. So it says that MagnaCut would have higher toughness because it has 4% vanadium instead of the 2.5% in “Infinisteel.” That is not how it works.

My Grade: D-

It is difficult to give the steel high marks when you can’t harden it.

Ultravium Steel

— create a unique composition of elements for a great blade steel that does not exist yet…
ChatGPT:
Creating a unique composition for a great blade steel requires a deep understanding of metallurgy and the desired properties in the resulting steel. While this composition doesn’t exist yet, we can propose an innovative blend of elements to produce an exceptional blade steel:

Name: Ultravium Steel

Composition:

Carbon (C): 2.5%
A higher carbon content contributes to increased hardness, making the blade exceptionally sharp and able to hold an edge for extended periods.
Vanadium (V): 7%
Vanadium adds wear resistance, enhancing the blade’s durability and edge retention. It also aids in fine-grain structure formation, crucial for sharpness.
Molybdenum (Mo): 3%
Molybdenum boosts the steel’s strength, toughness, and resistance to corrosion. It also helps maintain blade sharpness under high-stress conditions.
Tungsten (W): 5%
Tungsten further improves hardness, wear resistance, and overall blade performance. It enhances the steel’s ability to withstand extreme temperatures.
Niobium (Nb): 1.5%
Niobium promotes grain refinement, which contributes to sharpness and overall blade strength. It also adds stability to the steel’s microstructure.
Cobalt (Co): 2%
Cobalt increases the steel’s strength and high-temperature performance, making it ideal for blades subjected to extreme conditions.
Copper (Cu): 0.5%
Copper adds a touch of corrosion resistance to the steel while maintaining its strength and hardness.
Silicon (Si): 1%
Silicon enhances the steel’s toughness and resistance to wear, improving its overall durability.

ChatGPT starts out by saying that a unique composition for knife steel “requires a deep understanding of metallurgy,” which I agree with. However, this composition shows that ChatGPT also does not have this required deep understanding. The approach appears to have been adding large amounts of most of the major elements. This steel is a good example of how ChatGPT “reads” things online that say all the positive things that different elements do. When a layman reads about different elements this is also typically what they see. It says what an element does to improve properties but it doesn’t usually explain the tradeoffs or how elements are balanced or how they work together. It says that molybdenum “helps maintain blade sharpness under high-stress conditions.” I don’t know what that means or how molybdenum is helping. Is a “high stress” condition one where an individual is under attack? Or is “high stress” referring to “engineering stress” where a load is being applied to a knife? It says that tungsten is added “to withstand extreme temperatures.” What kind of temperatures? Is this a knife for use in volcanoes? It says that niobium is for grain refinement, but 1.5% is way more than necessary for grain refinement. That amount is for wear resistance and ChatGPT didn’t even mention wear resistance. Cobalt was added again for “high-temperature performance,” “for blades subjected to extreme conditions.” And again I say that if the temperature is too high for the knife it is way, way too hot for humans. Copper is added for “a touch of corrosion resistance” for some reason.

There is a big omission with this steel, however, which is chromium. ChatGPT didn’t add any of it. This means the steel does not have any corrosion resistance to speak of (that 0.5% copper isn’t doing much). But chromium is also added to steels for other reasons. It is present in nearly all high alloy tool steels, in part so that it has high “hardenability” so that it can be quenched more slowly and still fully harden. Not adding it is very strange for this steel.

Heat Treatment:

Ultravium Steel would undergo a precise heat treatment process, including quenching and tempering, to maximize its hardness, toughness, and fine-grain structure. The ideal hardness level would be around HRC 65-66.
Properties:

Ultravium Steel would be renowned for its exceptional hardness, wear resistance, and edge retention. It would maintain sharpness even under heavy use and extreme conditions.
The steel’s fine-grain structure would contribute to its ability to take and hold a razor-sharp edge.
Superior strength and toughness would make it suitable for a wide range of cutting applications, from fine slicing to heavy-duty chopping.
Ultravium Steel would exhibit excellent corrosion resistance, reducing the need for extensive maintenance and ensuring longevity.
It would be an ideal choice for high-performance knives, cutting tools, and blades used in demanding environments.
Applications:

Chef’s knives: Ultravium Steel would excel in the kitchen, making it a favorite among professional chefs and culinary enthusiasts.
Survival and outdoor knives: Blades made from this steel would prove highly reliable in rugged outdoor conditions.
Industrial cutting tools: Ultravium Steel would be sought after for its ability to withstand heavy use in manufacturing and construction.
Military and tactical knives: Its strength and durability would make it suitable for combat and tactical applications.
Artistic blades: Bladesmiths and artisans would appreciate its ability to hold intricate patterns and designs in damascus or layered steel.
While this hypothetical Ultravium Steel may not exist yet, advancements in metallurgy continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Such an innovative blend of elements could revolutionize the world of blade steel, offering exceptional performance and versatility to knife makers and users alike.

ChatGPT then claims that Ultravium would have “excellent corrosion resistance” which it certainly would not have without any chromium. It also says that bladesmiths would like it for “its ability to hold intricate patterns and designed in damascus or layered steel.” I don’t know what it means to “hold” an intricate pattern. But bladesmiths would likely not prefer this steel for Damascus because the high alloy content would make it more difficult to forge weld.

My Grade: C-

Since this steel hardens I will give it a C-. Can’t give higher than that since it skipped chromium while claiming the steel would have high corrosion resistance.

MagnaCut+

— ChatGPT
Hypothetical Composition for “MagnaCut Plus”
• • •
Element Proposed Content

Carbon (C) 1.05%
Chromium (Cr) 11.5%
Vanadium (V) 3.0%
Molybdenum (Mo) 2.0%
Tungsten (W) 0.5%
Nitrogen (N) 0.3%
Niobium (Nb) 0.5%
Cobalt (Co) 1.5%

Expected Improvements
• Wear Resistance: The increase in vanadium and tungsten would lead to harder vanadium and tungsten carbides, resulting in better edge retention.
• Toughness: The slight decrease in carbon and the introduction of cobalt would help maintain or even improve toughness.
• Corrosion Resistance: The increase in chromium and nitrogen should enhance resistance to rust and corrosion.
• Grain Refinement: More niobium would aid in creating a finer grain structure, resulting in better overall balance.
Potential Drawbacks
• Higher Cost: Adding tungsten and cobalt increases the cost of production.
• More Challenging Heat Treatment: The changes may require more precise heat treatment to unlock the full potential of the alloy.
• Diminished Ease of Sharpening: Higher vanadium content can make sharpening slightly more difficult.
This proposed “MagnaCut Plus” would aim to push the limits of what MagnaCut offers without compromising the balanced properties that make it so desirable. It would likely excel in applications requiring even greater edge retention and toughness, such as high-performance cutting tools and hard-use knives.

This steel was requested by the user to be an improvement on MagnaCut. However, ChatGPT offers from very strange reasoning:

“The increase in vanadium and tungsten would lead to harder vanadium and tungsten carbides, resulting in better edge retention.”

The vanadium content was reduced from MagnaCut, down to 3% from 4%. So I don’t know why ChatGPT thinks it has increased vanadium. It also claims that it added tungsten to form “tungsten carbides.” In these types of high alloy steels, adding a tiny amount of tungsten does not lead to the formation of any carbides that are tungsten-rich. The tungsten incorporates into other carbide types such as vanadium-rich or chromium-rich carbides. And those carbides would not be any harder. A small addition of tungsten seems to be a theme for ChatGPT and I don’t really see the point. To be fair, there are several stainless steels from Takefu where they added small amounts of tungsten and claimed similar reasoning. But I have also been on record saying I think that the tungsten is unnecessary in these steels.

“More niobium would aid in creating a finer grain structure.” The niobium content is less than MagnaCut, 0.5% vs 2%. so it does not have “more niobium.”

“The changes may require more precise heat treatment to unlock the full potential of the alloy.” Why? Based on what?

Other criticisms of the design require more in-depth analysis with a thermodynamics software that predicts carbide types and alloy in solution. ChatGPT claims an improvement in corrosion resistance because of the higher chromium, but in fact the chromium in solution is reduced in the “MagnaCut+” alloy because of the other elements. There is also  3-5% chromium carbide in the heat treated structure which reduces corrosion resistance. The improvement in corrosion resistance with MagnaCut came from reducing chromium carbide content to near-zero and this steel dropped that innovation for no reason because ChatGPT doesn’t know what it is doing.

The carbide content of MagnaCut+ and MagnaCut would be similar but MagnaCut+ would have half of its carbide be the larger chromium-rich type, reducing toughness. It also claims that cobalt improves toughness, which it doesn’t.

My Grade: C

The steel can be hardened and would be nearly stainless. But calling it MagnaCut+ while reducing corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and toughness from MagnaCut is bad so it gets a C.

Some General Thoughts

In none of the proposals that ChatGPT gave did it ever say that it would make these steels by powder metallurgy. The very high alloy content of these steels means they would not be very good if made with conventional steelmaking. Or at the very least these would not be an improvement on existing steels if they were not made with powder metallurgy. So to not state explicitly that the steel should be made with powder metallurgy is a big omission.

ChatGPT provided no heat treating information. In one case ChatGPT claimed its new alloy would require “more precise heat treatment” but it did not provide any information on temperature ranges the steel might heat treat from. I very much doubt it could give accurate ranges even if asked. Of course in the one case the steel wouldn’t be able to be hardened at all so it wouldn’t be able to give a temperature that would work.

As I have stated several times, the approach ChatGPT takes is to add a lot of every element. It seems to think that elements only improve steel, so add some of all of them and you have a new super steel. It has no real concept of balancing different elements together or what the drawbacks are for adding different elements. It is basically what happens when “internet experts” try to design their own steel. So maybe this is a win for AI because it is now as smart as “internet experts”?

Could a Different AI Design Knife Steel?

ChatGPT is a “large language model,” meaning it was trained on huge amounts of written text from humans. It uses the statistical information about how humans put words together to generate coherent text. However, the model is not good at collecting data about different things, analyzing and comparing that data to find unique insights and solutions, and then to turn that into information. The other problem is that information about how to design tool steels is not really available on the internet, especially not in a form that ChatGPT could use. To really develop a good model we would need a database of information specific to knife steel design. So not a “general AI” but a “narrow AI” for our specific task. This would still be challenging, because the exact data we want does not really exist. The more data we can feed into an AI model the better the results can be. This is the classic example of “garbage in, garbage out.” A lot of information on tool steels and stainless steels are locked within specific steel companies, or even inside the heads of different metallurgists. The scientific literature, including publicly available journal articles and reported experiments, are not usually in a format that would easily be usable in a large database for an AI. Each study is done with different conditions: they hot rolled the steel with a different amount of reduction, they tested different sized coupons, they reported microstructure values but not mechanical properties, they tested Izod toughness instead of charpy toughness, etc.

For my own development of steel I use several different things, including:

1. Journal articles and books which collect different studies to find trends with different variables. Changes to composition, heat treatment, etc.
2. My own data which I have collected the last several years on Knife Steel Nerds – toughness, corrosion resistance, hardness, edge retention, etc.
3. Thermodynamics software – this software does not use machine learning or AI but uses databases to come up with expected microstructure at different temperatures. When it works perfectly you can know what carbides you have and which elements are “in solution” and how much.
4. Simple models for different properties – I have created simple equations which predict properties and there are some that are reported in journal articles and books. Some that I have created have been reported on this website such as this study on corrosion resistance or this study on edge wear.

With those pieces of information I can come up with approximate property targets and balance elements together. A similar process could be used for a “narrow AI.” Existing thermodynamics software could also be plugged into this AI, which is already happening. I think to do much better than humans would likely require a bigger database of experimental data than we currently have. For example, small tweaks could be made to existing steels such as the content of Mo, Si, Mn, N, etc. Currently, without experimentation by making these variations, we don’t know which changes could potentially lead to improvements. If our database was big enough, perhaps an AI could make predictions about which changes to try and thus reduce the number of experiments. But we are not there yet.

At the AAR this past weekend, Beatrice Marovich hosted a discussion about the decline of theology. Eventually, this evolved into a discussion of the decline of theology blogging, which was where many of us had cut our teeth intellectually — and, of course, where many of us met in the first place. I have been processing this conversation over the past few days and wanted to write down some thoughts for posterity, as someone who was (if I may boast of such an august position) pretty central to the enterprise of theology blogging at its height.

The first question to ask is why theology blogging took off in the mid to late 2000s. I believe that part of the reason is simply that theology as a field has many intrinsic properties that dispose it to a relatively open-ended, undisciplined discussion like the blogosphere. Above all, theology is inherently interdisciplinary, combining conceptual analysis, literary interpretation, historical and political reflection, cultural criticism — basically everything that any humanities discipline does is done in theology. People in theology were therefore ready to be part of the widest possible range of conversations in the humanities blogosphere, and people in my immediate intellectual circle were in fact closely engaged with bloggers in literary studies, philosophy, political theory, and many other fields.

There are other factors more particular to that historical moment. To put it bluntly, it was the Bush years. This meant that religion was an unavoidable topic. That was the heyday of political theology (in the “real,” Schmittian sense, not the broader sense of “politically engaged theology”) and of the Paul and philosophy trend — meaning that other intellectuals were ready to take theologians seriously as interlocutors in a way they might not have been in the 90s. By the same token, the fact that the evangelicals seemed to be so clearly in the ascendant in the 2000s produced many opportunities for alienation and disillusionment among intellectually curious and passionate young adults, in a way that would have been less potent when evangelicals could present themselves as a threatened subculture in the 90s.

From both directions, then, it was a perfect storm. And for a few years, things were very intellectually intense and exciting. But the vibe started to shift already as I was finishing up grad school. Part of it was a degree of attrition — people got jobs and got busy, or didn’t get jobs and dropped out. The impact of the Financial Crisis was especially damaging in the latter respect, and in cutting off the pipeline of younger participants. And of course there was social media, which cannibalized the entire internet. A big part of blogging culture were the comment threads, which fell virtually silent as people decided they preferred to comment on social media rather than on the post itself. For a time, I would exhort such people to comment on the blog if they wanted to join the conversation, and they inevitably dismissed the idea — or (since they tended to be left-leaning social media users) claimed that I was somehow violating the principles of social justice by suggesting that someone should comment in a space where they felt potentially “unsafe.” My reaction to such remarks, then and now, was: “Bullshit.” And in retrospect we can see how damaging it has been to shift all public discourse onto algorithmically-driven, profit-seeking platforms — which now even actively discourage the use of links that would take one outside the corporately-curated experience.

There were also factors specific to academic and particularly theology blogging. I am thinking here of the tendency toward institutionalization. Specialist journals, centers, and even departments started putting up blogs, which competed for everyone’s free writing time even as they squelched the free-wheeling fun of the blogosphere. Even among bloggers themselves, there were attempts to create quasi-institutions in the form of group blogs (like Long Sunday or The Valve in circles adjacent to me). Obviously this is somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize, since The Weblog and An und für sich were always group blogs. But they were also very clearly my personal blog, not an impersonal institution. Since I knew that few had the same writing stamina, my strategy was to provide the audience for whenever a friend or intellectual comrade wanted to put something out there. (In retrospect, I worry that my dominance might have dissuaded some potential contributors, but that’s a different problem than impersonal institutionality.)

In the theology blogging space, there were two attempted institutionalizations that I believe were particularly damaging. The first was Syndicate Theology, which stole the idea of doing book events on major new publications in theology (a stock in trade of The Weblog and An und für sich at their height) and sucked the life out of it by overproducing them. I know that saying “stole” may come across as loaded language, but I heard reliable reports that the creators of Syndicate had our practice specifically in mind when they developed the site. They did not consult with me in any way, nor did they solicit me to participate or offer to do an event on any of my books — all of which points to a guilty conscience in my opinion. I’m happy to burn that bridge publicly now, because of course virtually no one reads the site. Just like Borders, they put their independent competitors out of business before overextending themselves.

The other problematic institutionalization was the blog attached to the journal Political Theology. Reportedly they were forced to do the blog by the corporate owner of the journal, but even within that context they proceeded in an unethical way. In the early stages, they repeatedly attempted to “poach” writers from my blog — though, again, never me. Later on, they started apparently publishing anything anyone sent them, leading to some pretty embarrassing posts. Ultimately they put out something so egregious — accusing leftists of supporting jihad — that some friends and I, concerned with how the low quality of the blog and the offensiveness of that post might reflect on the field, requested that it be taken down. The editors were so stubbornly defensive that we were forced to publish an open letter on the issue. Along the way, they had offered that we could write a rebuttal piece for the blog or even take over some of the editorial duties — both insulting offers in context. I joked at the time that I would take over as their blog editor only if I would be allowed to shut it down altogether.

Obviously I still have some bitterness on the last two points, but as I said, this was a huge part of my life — and honestly, a lot of the institutionalization attempts seemed to involve stealing my ideas or poaching young academics I had supported, while cutting me out personally. Whatever may be the case with my own personal grudges, though, what is certain is that the atmosphere became much more cynical and careerist, which again militated against the fun, free-wheeling atmosphere of blogging. Blog posts became a chore, a CV line, a way of doing a favor that one might be able to cash in later — not a forum for community-building or intellectual exploration. If Twitter and Facebook were what killed off the blogosphere, maybe what made people less resistant to the change was that blogging had already become too much like LinkedIn.

In the best spirit of the classical age of blogging, I have been open and vulnerable to you, probably to an inappropriate and self-undermining degree. Please reciprocate in the same spirit by submitting any comments, questions, reminiscences, apologies, points of rebuttal, or cease-and-desist letters in the comment form below rather than grousing on social media about it.

Techcrunch, the famous tech blog, wrote an article about wallabag.

The wallabag team was pleasantly surprised to find their project highlighted in a recent TechCrunch article. Recognized as a privacy-friendly alternative to Pocket, wallabag was praised for its self-hosting capabilities and commitment to user autonomy—values at the heart of the project since its inception.

For a small, community-driven team, being featured alongside giants like Signal and Nextcloud is both unexpected and deeply motivating. Seeing our work mentioned on such a renowned platform is incredible. It’s proof that independent, ethical alternatives can stand out.

This recognition not only validates wallabag’s mission but also encourages the team to keep improving the app. We hope this spotlight will inspire more users and contributors to join our journey towards empowering individuals to take control of their data.

The future looks bright for wallabag, proving that even small projects can make a big impact in the tech world.

[The following is a conference presentation delivered at the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference in San Diego, under the auspices of the Political Theology programming unit.]

The topic of this presentation began as a joke—an exceptionally niche joke, but a joke nonetheless. For many election cycles now, I have been declaring my intention to vote for the katechōn rather than the man of lawlessness. The reference, which I hope is clear to most attendees at a political theology session, is to the New Testament book of 2 Thessalonians. There, Paul—or, more likely, a later pseudonymous author trying to tone down or “correct” Paul’s apocalyptic teaching in 1 Thessalonians—writes that, contrary to the views that some people attribute to him, the apocalypse is not near at hand but has been indefinitely delayed. The passage reads as follows:

Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day [of Judgment] will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you? And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-8)

In contrast to 1 Thessalonians, which encouraged Paul’s readers to look forward to the apocalyptic fulfillment of the resurrection of the dead, the pseudonymous author focuses almost exclusively on the destruction that will be wrought by the “man of lawlessness” once the force or individual restraining him—namely, the katechōn—is removed. God is still going to win out in the end, but perhaps the restrainer is a better bet for the time being.

The figure of the restrainer has been the object of considerable reflection in the field of political theology. In Nomos of the Earth, Carl Schmitt argued that the katechōn was the central concept of Christian politics, allowing it to bracket its apocalyptic expectations and get to work creating political institutions in this present world, and many—including me, in The Prince of This World—have argued that the concept of the modern state is a secularized version of this figure who restrains the forces of apocalyptic destruction. Those forces of destruction are normally envisioned as coming from outside the institutional order, whether in the form of foreign enemies or domestic insurrectionaries. My joke about voting for the katechōn, presumably as a form of negative polarization against the man of lawlessness, expressed the sense that contemporary political rhetoric tends to figure the danger as coming from inside the house—that is to say, one of the two traditional parties of government is claimed to represent a mortal threat to the institutional order as such.

And now, of course, the joke is on me, because I have foolishly agreed to write a conference presentation analyzing what turned out to be a devastating election result. I do not intend to use this as a forum for punditry or prediction, genres that most of us have presumably consumed in excess in the last few weeks. Instead, I intend to carry out a political theological investigation of the apocalyptic rhetoric that has marked American political discourse in recent decades—and, it should be noted, almost equally on both sides. Just as Kamala Harris presented Donald Trump as a mortal danger to the American republic, so too did he paint her potential victory as the death of the nation. By pointing this out, I don’t mean to claim that both sides are equally justified in their use of this rhetoric, nor to discount the profound fears that Trump’s return to power have aroused—fears that I very much share. Even if this election turns out to be the time the rhetoric comes true, however, it is still worth reflecting on what it means that a nation split almost perfectly 50-50 between two institutional parties that are both more than 150 years old has developed such an apocalyptic political culture.

I will carry out my analysis in two steps. First, after briefly laying out what I understand to be the task of political theology, I will try to gain some critical distance from our desperate political situation by drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s reading of 2 Thessalonians in his short book The Mystery of Evil, where he claims that the passage is not an apocalyptic vision but instead reveals the deep structure of Western political institutions. With these concepts on the table, I will then plunge back into our domestic political hellscape, using the American situation to show the limits of Agamben’s reading of 2 Thessalonians.

I.

I should begin my analysis proper by clarifying what I mean by political theology. I do not use the term to designate a politically-engaged normative theology—for instance, one that would provide us with values and hopes that would help us to cope with our present political situation. Such work is necessary for faith communities, but I am not a member of any faith community and don’t presume to dictate their political action to them. Instead, I am a critic and scholar, and I view the task of political theology as that of exposing the theological roots of political concepts. As I define it in Neoliberalism’s Demons, “Political theology is a holistic, genealogical inquiry into the structures and sources of legitimacy in a particular historical moment. Political theology in this sense is political because it investigates institutions and practices of governance (whether they are defined as state-based or economic, public or private), and it is theological because it deals with questions of meaning and value (regardless of the form the answers take)” (128). Hence I believe that political theology is especially well suited to analyze the apocalyptic turn in American political rhetoric not solely or even primarily because that rhetoric is drawing on religious patterns of thought, but because it points toward a profound crisis of legitimacy. By the same token, Agamben’s Mystery of Evil is an especially fruitful point of reference for this analysis not only because it discusses 2 Thessalonians, but because it is fundamentally a book about crises of legitimacy—which Agamben believes to afflict all Western institutions.

The text itself consists of two short essays that heavily overlap. The first is a reflection on Benedict XVI’s abdication from the papal throne due to old age, which strikes me as uncannily timely given that the defining moment of this election cycle was Biden’s withdrawal from the race for the same stated reason. Agamben views Benedict’s decision as exemplary because it “forcefully calls attention to the distinction between two essential principles of our ethico-political tradition, of which our societies seem to have lost all awareness: legitimacy and legality” (2). By admitting that he was unable to carry out the duties of his office any longer and stepping aside in favor of a more vigorous leader, Benedict was, in Agamben’s reading, asserting the purely spiritual power of his office rather than asserting his legal prerogative to hold the position until death. More than restoring the legitimacy of the church in the public eye, however, for Agamben Benedict’s resignation serves to expose how much the church has given up all claim of legitimacy by descending into the machinations of money and politics.

To that extent, then, Benedict’s gesture was a messianic one in Agamben’s terms. This is one of the slipperiest concepts in his arsenal, not least because it seems to evoke hopes of political revolution or apocalyptic fulfillment. For Agamben, though, the messianic is ultimately a philosophical category rather than a political or theological one. The messianic is not concerned with any particular historical revelation and especially not with any arbitrary sequence of future events that is supposed to lead to the end of history. Instead, the messianic exposes the dynamics of history by providing a point of view from which the operation of the “political machine” that structures our lives is suspended so that we can actually understand it—and perhaps thereby transform it. Agamben’s reading of theological texts, especially the texts of Paul, is therefore a kind of secularization of their insights. In The Time That Remains, for instance, Agamben claims that the famous “already/not-yet” dynamic of messianic expectation is not tied to the postponed arrival of a particular messianic figure known as Jesus of Nazareth, but instead provides us tools to understand the experience of time through language. Hence it turns out that there is something fundamentally messianic about rhyming in poetry, for instance.

Agamben clears the space for this kind of reading by asserting—idiosyncratically and, in my view, falsely—that Paul is emphatically not an apocalyptic thinker and that apparently apocalyptic passages should instead be read “messianically.” In the case of 2 Thessalonians, such an assertion is especially counterintuitive, since the passage has almost universally been regarded as an apocalyptic narrative in which the katechōn is taken to represent a concrete historical individual or institution—most often the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Agamben finds a productive minority tradition in the fourth century theologian Tyconius, who is often classified as a Donatist heretic but who had a decisive influence on Augustine (and the young Joseph Ratzinger). For Tyconius, the katechōn is not an external agency like the Roman Empire, but the Church itself, insofar as it is still mired in sin. Whereas the conventional reading positions the katechōn as good, or at least as a necessary evil, Tyconius opens up the space to see this restraining power as a negative thing—and, in one of Agamben’s characteristic interpretive tours de force, to understand what pseudo-Paul calls the anomos in a more positive valence, not as a wicked individual or force, but as something that is “outside the law” in the same sense that Paul can describe the messiah and his followers as being “outside the law.”

Translating his extrapolation from Tyconius into more political terms, Agamben claims that “the katechōn is the power—the Empire, but also the Church, like every juridically constituted authority—that opposes and conceals the lawlessness that defines messianic time and in this way slows the revelation of the ‘mystery of lawlessness.’ The unveiling of this mystery coincides with the manifestation fo the inoperativity of the law and with it the essential illegitimacy of every power in messianic time” (33-34). Agamben applies this analysis directly to our present, “when the powers of state act openly as outside the law,” so that “the anomos does not represent anything but the unveiling of the lawlessness that today defines every constituted power, within which State and terrorism form a single system” (34).

Surely this last bit is evocative of all kinds of examples in all our minds, from police violence up to the president-elect’s solicitation of stochastic terrorism. Equally evocative is Agamben’s assertion that we cannot simply rely on the workings of the law to fix this problem of pervasive illegality. Here we might think of the attempt to solve police violence through improved training and procedures or the long-cherished (and now-thwarted) hope that the law will somehow save us from Trump. From Agamben’s perspective, however, we can see that this strategy was doomed to fail, because “the hypertrophy of law, which presumes to legislate over everything, on the contrary betrays, through an excess of formal legality, the loss of all substantial legitimacy” (3). Elsewhere he associates this excess of legality with “the paradigm of the self-regulating market [that] has taken the place of that of justice and [that] pretends to be able to govern an ever more ungovernable society according to exclusively technical criteria” (17). In either case, we are dealing with a legal or regulatory system that has dispensed with the need to establish its own legitimacy and has indeed attempted to collapse legitimacy into legality without remainder—in other words, to effect a final victory of the katechōn over the man of lawlessness.

The real solution, Agamben claims, is to find a way to hold in productive tension “the two coordinated but radically heterogeneous principles—legitimacy and legality, spiritual power and temporal power, auctoritas and potestas, justice and law—that constitute the most precious patrimony of European culture” (18). Rather than hoping for some ultimate end of history to arrive, we need to participate actively in the dynamic of history, recognizing that no constituted order can escape contestation over its legitimacy and that the attempt to shut down that contestation through purely legal means leads only to the worst forms of illegality and violence.

II.

Returning to the American political scene, we can see that both parties are engaging in their own form of apocalyptic speculation, in Agamben’s derogatory sense. Both are claiming, again and again, that they represent the katechōn over against the forces of lawlessness on the other side. Obviously the rhetoric is more plausible on the Democratic side, given Trump’s straightforward criminality and obvious ignorance of and contempt for the American constitutional system. But on the Republican side, Trump is taken to represent the avatar of a kind of natural order that is menaced by the Democrats’ supposed “woke” agenda. Both equally seem to imagine a final elimination of the lawless element. Democrats hope to defeat Trump once and for all, allowing a “strong Repulican Party” to rise from the ashes and begin the hard work of bipartisan dealmaking, while Trump supporters have more lurid fantasies of purging “woke” advocates from all positions of power and authority. Perhaps less obviously, I would also say that both sides share a kind of fetishization of the law. This is again clearest on the Democratic side, as they keep hoping that laws and norms will do their political work for them. But Republicans, too, seem to indulge in a kind of magical thinking where simply passing a law, or seizing a veto point, or locking in a permanent majority through gerrymandering, will simply be the end of the matter. That’s what I choose to hear in Trump’s declaration that his supporters will never need to vote again—not that he will somehow become dictator for life (or not only that), but that he will fix the system so completely and permanently that no one will ever be able to infect it with “wokeness” ever again.

If we return to the question of why the US should have such an apocalyptic political culture, Agamben’s analysis suggests that the reason is that American institutions are fundamentally illegitimate—hence menaced by the anomos. Neither side can fully admit that the anomos is coming from inside the house, however, so they project the lawless element onto their opponents, whom they then cast as foreign bodies to the republic that can and must be eliminated. And they have been in such a frustrating stalemate for so long because what they propose to do is impossible. The katechōn cannot finally win. Legality cannot finally swallow legitimacy whole. The attempt to make that happen is at best futile, as when Democrats allow their brief opportunities to govern to be fed through the woodchipper out of respect for “norms,” and at worst horrifically destructive, as with our worst fears about what Trump may actually be able to achieve this time around.

But what of Agamben’s prescription? What would it even look like to restore awareness of legitimacy as a principle heterogeneous to law? To me, the first step would be to break the taboo against even discussing major overhaul or even replacement of our absolutely abominable Constitution—but it’s difficult for me to imagine an actual overhaul or replacement happening without an intermediate stage marked by the old ultraviolence. And on a more conceptual level, I worry that Agamben is repeating, to a second degree, the same gesture he rightly critiques among the powers and principalities of our age. That is to say, I wonder if he is setting up the dynamic between legitimacy and legality, between the anomos and the katechōn, as a kind of meta-katechōn that staves off the decadence and violence that follows from the collapse of the tension between them. In other words, I wonder if he is offering us anything more than the naïve hope that we could make our existing order work if everyone would just act more in good faith, following the spirit of the law rather than weaponizing its letter. It is a telling sign of our predicament that such a seemingly obvious and even boring outcome seems roughly as likely as the coming of the messianic age.