Time to fire up the ol’ Sub-stack-o’-wood and tell you what’s been burning in our brains the last little while.
LISTEN
This playlist is on fire.
WARNING: contents are hot. Enjoy responsibly.
-AK
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Join the Ponytail Press discourse.
WATCH
Talking fire on film
No, I don’t mean that I’ll just be talking fire on film, I mean I’ll be talking talking fire on film.
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
A simple morning of pleasant contentment in the present is interrupted by a fiery encounter with the divine and the entirety of the time and existence itself—the past, the future, the creator, the destroyer, the “I am that I am”.
Elemental (2023)
This fire can talk, but can she figure out what her soul is trying to say?
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
Home is where the heart(h) is, and where there’s food.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
‘Twas fire that mysteriously spat out Harry’s name as an unlikely participant in the Triwizard Tournament, and now from fire again comes a heated warning.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
No, this fire doesn’t say anything out loud, but its sparks of rebellion still spoke volumes to the icy President Snow.
-JB
READ
A Substack post & a book about wild fires
2025 might be remembered as the year it became undeniable: the world is on fire. It literally started with Los Angeles in flames. And while the situation in L.A. got a lot of coverage, I was especially moved by the first-hand account of fellow Substacker
. This post narrowed the macro-news story down to the individual. Reading it made it all the more real.
But the world has literally been burning for awhile now. And for Canadians like me, the scales of deniability flipped not this year, but nearly a decade ago already, when fires decimated the petro-town of petro-towns, Fort McMurray. I haven’t reached the end of it, but so far, John Vaillant’s 2023 book on the disaster, Fire Weather, lives up to its reputation as the definitive text on the subject. This veteran of non-fiction is just the person you’d want to tell this story. Whether looking to learn about it for the first time or spark your memory, I’d say it’s worth a read.
-AK
We hope you enjoyed the picks we cooked up for you this week. Join us next time to see if our suggestions are worth the