Blog

December 14, 2025 • Michael Erard

Reflections on framing book talks out of care

As I’ve been talking about language at the end of life, one thing I have learned to do is alert people to the nature of the topic at the start of a presentation. After some years, I think I’ve figured it out. I learned the hard way. Early on, I was presenting my analysis of the William Osler study online and saw one person drop off the call. Later they emailed me: I just lost my father, the topic surprised me, I had to take a break. That’s when I realized I owed it to my audiences to take better care of them. The next time I spoke it was in person, in Amsterdam, to a group of scholars. (The first audience was an academic one too.) I was speaking about first words but last ones would inevitably come up, and death and dying, which I signaled this to the audience.

Lessons about grief and death
Bye Bye I Love You

Bike Brain

I love my bike life and wouldn’t trade it for anything. Right now I ride a Batavus city bike, five years old. Black. Not a great bike—the crank has been faulty from the start, but it’s smooth enough, it’s heavy, and the lights are reliable. Brakes are good. Before this one, I rode an old clanker that I bought used for too much money at the train station.

October 31, 2025
Michael Erard
migrant life

Comments at FASoS Book Talk, 1 October

On October 1, I gave a presentation about Bye Bye I Love You to friends and colleagues, hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht. I was in conversation with Leonie Cornips, professor at FASoS and linguist, but before we began talking, I read this for some context. It begins with the start of an essay that I wrote two years ago, then continues:

October 31, 2025
Michael Erard
Bye Bye I Love You

Last Words the Other Way

In Bye Bye I Love You, “last words” refers mainly to what a dying person produces. However, I realize that “last words” can also encompass what family members, friends, and others say to the dying person, and that composing the “right” thing to say, and how to interact with a person who is dying and/or unconscious, can be a matter of considerable anxiety.

September 19, 2025
Michael Erard
Lessons about grief and death

Afterword to Babel No More (French & Mandarin editions)

This is an afterword I wrote for the French and Mandarin editions of Babel No More in 2016. Unless you read the book in those editions, you haven't read it. I'm putting the original English version here, virtually as I wrote it. If I were to write another afterword, there would be even more to add in the way of science and the impact of my book.

September 6, 2025
Michael Erard
hyperpolyglots

My Asimov Story

Among my stories about writers is an experience with Isaac Asimov. When I was in junior high, my dad connected me, an ardent writer of what I thought then was glorious science fiction (and which has been revealed by time and maturity to be atrociously simplistic), with a sci-fi writer club of graduate students. Somehow after school I'd get to his office, then have a workshop session and dinner.

September 2, 2025
Michael Erard
lessons in writing

With Sex Comes Death

I realized something important today, thanks to a post by James Marriott who quoted a long passage from an Orlando Figes description of Russian peasant life: In every aspect of the peasants’ lives, from their material culture to their legal customs, there was a relentless conformity….The peasants all wore the same basic clothes.

August 22, 2025
Michael Erard
Lessons about grief and death

Leaving the Garden

Number 38. That’s the number of our plot in the garden club, also known as the volkstuin. I should say rather that it was our number, as we just canceled our membership. (Note: This was written in the spring of 2024.) We took our shovel and rake home, informed the directors, said goodbye to neighbors. We’re done. Do you feel the need to defend the decision?

July 2, 2025
Michael Erard
migrant life

American Stain

Last week, I attended a summer school on ethics at the end of life, one of whose faculty members was an American bioethicist who teaches at a school of medicine in the US. On the first day, he began his talk lamenting the political situation in the US, its impact on science, and more generally its radical departure from long-standing American ideals.

June 25, 2025
Michael Erard
migrant life

What's their aptitude for immigration?

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post about calls to bring US-based scientists to Europe and other countries, given the US regime’s sabotage of American scientific research, both in universities and federal agencies.

May 28, 2025
Michael Erard
higher education

Why cultural journalism?

I’m a creature of cultural journalism. I read it; I write it; I buy it; I read aloud juicy bits to my kids. And so I want it to live.

April 23, 2025
Michael Erard
lessons in writing

My ouevre, my briarpatch

This is something I wrote in the middle Obama years and recently pulled from the vault. Back then, the cloud wasn't a thing, so backing up to the cloud wasn't as easy as it is now. You don't hear many people mourning lost data in crashed hard drives like we used to.

March 26, 2025
Michael Erard
lessons in writing