If you know me in real life, especially if you have known me for a while, this next sentence will probably come as a shock: I barely watch television these days. Sure, R and I typically take in an episode or two of a cosy mystery of an evening, but since UK series have such laughably short runs, even when we find something new-new to watch (in recent weeks Seasons 2 of Death Valley and the Bergerac reboot), they don't even provide a week's distraction from reruns of Murder, She Wrote or the original Bergerac.

Originally, I (unintentionally) weaned myself off television with YouTube. For several years I've watched at least an hour of YouTube a day--much more on weekends--and even I have to admit that it's mostly rubbish. I've watched tech YouTubers (all hail Mrwhosetheboss); Pokémon Go YouTubers (don't judge), almost all of whom have become worn-out husks before my very eyes after years making videos about XP-maxxing; craft YouTubers (my favorite one--who annoyed the crap out of me but whose work I spent dozens of hours of lockdown replicating--gave it up a while ago and now I just watch the occasional bookbinding video), studyTubers (I must've spent five times as long watching eager young things highlighting PDFs and eagerly setting up Notion databases for their reading notes than I have ever spent studying), PKMTubers (if you don't know what PKM stands for, there's no point my telling you who makes the best Obsidian videos), housework YouTubers (women who make videos of themselves making coffee, washing up, and watering their plants, somehow attracting hundreds of thousands of views--including me!), men's style YouTubers (every Sunday a new GDWM--that's "get dressed with me" for the uninitiated), productivityTubers, PhDTubers, journalerTubers, stationeryTubers, and recently economicsTubers. I hate the whole trend of "video podcasts," but that hasn't stopped me from spending several hours a week watching staffers at magazines like the Spectator, the New Statesman, and Private Eye taping their podcasts in front of a camera.

Obviously, I replaced one bad habit (watching too much pro television) with another bad habit (watching too much amateur television), so I tried to correct by re-connecting with my old obsession.

Reader, it didn't take! It was as if I'd developed a mild allergy to scripted TV. Could not make it through a full episode.

Then it struck me that the best way to cure an unlikely problem was to try an unlikely show. It worked. I gobbled up all eight seasons of Netflix's F1: Drive to Survive over the course of a few weeks. (Why was this unlikely? I can't drive, I've never wanted to, and I'm still not convinced that people driving cars around a track constitutes a sporting event.)

Don't worry, this won't become a Formula 1 newsletter. For one thing, I'm not into F1, I'm into F1: Drive to Survive. But let me tell you why I fell for a documentary series in which each season of TV follows a season of car racing--one reason for each season so far.

1. It's Game of Cars. Never mind the recent dragon shows, Drive to Survive is the nearest thing to Game of Thrones. It's mostly wolves fighting for pack dominance (there are only 20 seats and a lot more than 20 people wanting to get into the sport), bending the knee (to the team principals), and a crap ton of swearing. A lot fewer women in the F1 world world, though!
2. As someone who thinks speaking foreign languages is the apex of cool, it is crazy how polyglot this world is. At the same time, guys who can switch from French to Italian to Japanese to English six times in a sentence don't use those languages for much other than swearing. I'm a potty mouth from way back, but boys, you gotta learn some new words other than fuck.
3. This world has more catchphrases than RuPaul--and they're all solid gold. "I've got to call Gene." "Suck my balls!" (See 2, above.) And, of course, "Box, box."
4. I'm still shocked to realize that a sport that is a competitor for the most popular in the world is (1) dominated by Brits (2) whose teams are based in places like Woking, Milton Keynes, and Banbury. Huh?
5. The full names of the teams are such word salad--and the drivers/principals always have to say that full name when they identify themselves. ("I'm Kolly Kibber, I'm a driver for Visa CashApp Racing Bulls F1 team.") It makes me want to introduce myself--EVERY SINGLE TIME--as "I'm June Thomas, author of A PLACE OF OUR OWN: SIX SPACES THAT SHAPED QUEER WOMEN'S CULTURE and an upcoming biography of Rita Mae Brown."
6. This is a sport where a guy who grew up in Monaco counts as working class. (To be fair, his mom was a hairdresser.) Do billionaires' sons just decide to be F1 drivers because they know their dads can buy them a seat on a team, or does a kid develop a desire to spend their Sundays driving in circles once their dad's assets tick over beyond the eighth digit?
7. If you are an F1 driver or crew member and you are not Lewis Hamilton, you have to wear the team uniform every minute you are in public. We're talking a weird-colored shirt with a million logos on it and matching pants and hat. Look, I worked at Microsoft in the '90s, I'm familiar the concept of "boosting team morale by making everyone wear the same logo polo shirts," but good grief. I almost feel bad for these gazillionaires having to dress that way.
8. Will Buxton--best stater of the obvious ever. One of the things that is genuinely excellent about Drive to Survive is its ability to communicate how this very complicated sport works without wasting too much time in explanation. When they need to explain something, they bring on motorsports journalist Will Buxton, who has absolutely zero cringe about saying the most obvious thing that a person could possibly say, "They'll all be wanting to win," "Every new season presents a brand new opportunity," etc. Truly, though, he's the GOAT. I hope he's made millions from the show. (Also, when I wanted to check the spelling of his name, I Googled, "guy who states the obvious on dr..." and the AI summary already knew, "The guy you are thinking of is Will Buxton.")

OK, that'll be the last time I mention the show in this newsletter. Probably!

COME SEE ME: I have two Edinburgh events coming up.

On Wednesday, June 10, 7-8:15 p.m., I'll be chatting with A.J. West about his new book, How Queer Bookshops Changed the World, at Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicholson Street. (My favorite bookstore in Edinburgh.)

On Thursday, June 11, 6:30 to 8 p.m., I'll be by the seaside at the Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, for a Hachette Pride in Writing event. I'll be reading and meet-and-greeting along with Sarvat Hasin (author of Strange Girls, which I am currently reading and LOVING!), poet Michael Mullin, and novelist Madeline Docherty.

LISTEN TO ME: Last week I joined my old Working co-host Isaac Butler, and my old Slate colleague Sam Adams (we're all "friends" on Duolingo too, BTW) for a very special episode of the Culture Gabfest where we chatted about romcom-inflected hit horror movie Obsession, Matthew Rhys' latest Apple TV series Widow's Bay, and the kidlit kerfuffle over Mac Barnett's new book.

RECOMMENDATIONS: I feel a bit guilty to be repeating my Culture Gabfest endorsement, but ... British politics have been bonkers in the last few weeks (ha ha, years). If you're wondering how the Labour Party got into the state it's in, I recommend two books by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund: Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn and Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer. The titles don't lie, they really are tick-tocks from inside the party. It's all very depressing and worrisome but also absolutely fascinating.