Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

• The Visual Telling of Stories – Full Table. “A life’s work collecting visual stories. This is a horribly structured resource, but that’s part of the fun. Dr. Chris Mullen started the site for the University of Brighton in 2004. It feels very post-MySpace. But it’s packed with surprises, and worth a browse.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• That Mitchell And Webb Look – Old Holmes – YouTube. “I’m going to tell you a story that breaks my heart. If you watched all three seasons of Blackadder, you know that the final episode was not funny. The series spanned three eras, ending in World War I. And that ended with the brutality of trench warfare. Years later, Mitchell and Webb ended their sketch comedy series on a similar note. For a series that occasionally punched down—but was generally brilliant and subversive—this final sketch is a sobering reminder that all things must end. I’m sorry for making you cry, but it’s good for you.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  
• Party supporters shift views to match partisan stances – The Academic Times. “There’s a Great Person theory of history, which says that strong individuals like, say, Napoleon, shape history; with an opposing Hegelian view that social, economic, geographic forces push societies in inevitable directions, and that the Great People just happen to be the right person in the right place at the right time. As with most of these debates, I usually come in with ‘well, it’s a bit of both,’ but without answering this perennial conundrum, some recent research from Denmark suggests that leaders/political parties have a huge influence on how their members think about certain topics, with a reversal on policies resulting in a substantial change in opinions about those policies.” (Hugh for Alistair).  
• Tchavolo Schmidt and Alberto Weiss – Les Yeux Noirs – Swing by Tony Gatlif 2002 – YouTube. “Here’s some intense guitar action.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship – The Atlantic. “I’ve noticed something when people talk about how they have been handling things (at work… and at home) during the pandemic: It’s always a very myopic perspective. Like, how work hasn’t changed much, but it’s just from home, or some reference to one of the bigger issues in the world, but it’s usually something from the news. A macro perspective would be looking at how will this affect the company that I work for? What about the businesses that surround it? How is my lack of discretionary spending going to impact the local and national economy? What will happen if things have changed forever? I don’t believe that many people are able to even think beyond the tips of their noses, which is also understandable (I’m not convinced that I can do this any better than someone else). Within that, this article drives things home in ’smaller’ ways. The real ‘joys’ that we have are very little things too. The way someone smiles at us, having a coffee with someone we haven’t seen in a while, running into someone on the street… The days of our lives. The impact is (and will be) greater than we know. It’s going to be a long and slow road back.” (Mitch for Alistair).
• How To Buy Host-Read Ads At-Scale – Sounds Profitable. “I think that I read somewhere recently that advertising on podcasts is a business that will grow between five to ten billion dollars more in the next few years alone. Advertising and podcasting have always had a contentious relationship. Currently, the ads are still, somewhat, laughable (underwear or bespoke coffee or some kind of protein powder), but that’s going to change as more and more brands enter the fray. This is the story about the power of host-read advertising, the costs (they ain’t cheap), and what ’scale’ might look like. Jordan Harbinger is really working it.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends ;):