Title Consider the Lobster

Author David Foster Wallace

Kind of Book essay/Journalistic/philosophy

How strongly I recommend it 9/10 

My Impressions A great introduction to the ethics of eating animals. Wallace approaches the subject from a place of genuine curiosity and brings us some of the major ethical concerns with our current practices of boiling lobsters alive and eating them.

Big Ideas

Listen to my full podcast episode on this piece Here

Surprising Facts

• Pain reception doesn't take place in the prefrontal cortex. It takes place in the more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandinas that are mangaged by the brain stem and thalamus.

• The whistling sound lobsters make when you boil them is vented steam from the layer of seawater between the lobster's flesh and its carapace. Not them screaming

• Some people with frontal lobotomies feel pain, but don't dislike it. They don't feel any sort of way about it