Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Issac) in his laboratory. Image: Netflix
Hello, 2026.
2025 was a rollercoaster—professionally, personally, societally, and biospherically. Setting aside the political and biospheric turmoil, which I’m sure we’ll return to soon enough, I’m cautiously optimistic for 2026.
I’m headed into the year with huge and exciting professional projects underway—including this newsletter, which I’m thrilled to be publishing on a more regular basis with the support of the Important, Not Important team—as well as some big investigative stuff that’s going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but hopefully in a good way. I can’t say much more about that work at the moment, but when the time comes, I’ll be sure to publicize it here, even if it means using Avengers analogies to explain how corporations have captured science.
Personally, I’ve got two amazing kiddos to continue raising, and I’m looking forward to another year of growing, learning, and being an absolute goofball with them.
To kick it all off, today’s newsletter discusses Frankenstein and the radical history of electricity—a history that shows how science, politics, and our most unhinged technological fantasies have always been intertwined. Enjoy!
— Maddie
Frankenstein's electrifying take on the nature of life
There’s no shortage of melodramatic moments in Guillermo del Toro’s new Frankenstein adaptation.
But nowhere does del Toro’s cavernously emotional take on Mary Shelley’s classic novel crackle with dark energy more than it does on the fateful night in Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory when, in the midst of a nightmarish electrical storm, the creature he’s cobbled together from discarded limbs is brought to life.
It is, of course, a scene that most viewers will find at least passingly familiar. Because if there is one image that Shelley’s Frankenstein, and countless adaptations and derivative works since, has planted firmly in the public consciousness, it is that of an unsavory pile of meat getting jolted to life.
But what is less well appreciated is that this unholy awakening was inspired by real scientific experiments of the 18th and 19th centuries that attempted to elucidate the connection between electricity and life.
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