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:
- A Short History of My Last Six Years – Wait But Why. “The divide between red and blue towns along our journey through the US has been striking (more on that journey in the next link below). We’ve been splitting the time between playlists, true crime podcasts, and Tim Urban‘s new audiobook, What’s Our Problem. If you’re paying any attention at all, whatever your political stripes, you know that something is off. We’ve turned politics into entertainment, and entertainment into politics, and we’re so lathered up with justice and freedom we’ve forgotten to actually work on big things. Tim’s an amazing explainer, and he devoted six years (as this post details) into a nonpartisan—or rather, controversially bipartisan—deep-dive into how society is organized, its dysfunctions, and what to do about it. Driving past abject poverty, Ivy League campuses, past ‘not my president’ signs, fields of rusted cars, Civil Rights monuments, and more, this has been an incredible, mind-expanding soundtrack. I will be talking about it insufferably for months, maybe years, to come (and like our road trip, I’m only halfway done.) So here’s the story of how it came to be.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Unusual Wikipedia. “Over the pandemic, my now-12-year-old met plenty of friends online. They’ve been collaborating on an animated film. They’re from all over the US. So, when it came time to plan Spring Break, with airfare sky-high, we decided to road trip to Kentucky. It’s been a fun few days: The world’s largest ball of paint; a collapsed train bridge you can walk out on; silos that look like Minions; Angry Mom Records in Ithaca; a ginormous underground cavern full of animatronic dinosaurs and ziplines and motorboats. We narrowly missed the Mothman Museum thanks to some detours and backroads in Philadelphia, and a fire tower was closed for repairs. But mostly, this new reality of pointing Google Maps at your destination and then just typing in ‘attractions’ along the way and rolling the dice changes road trips entirely. In that spirit, here’s Unusual Wikipedia—a curated, random page generator of the strangest stuff on Wikipedia. Seemed apropos.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- If You Thought Quantum Mechanics Was Weird, Check Out Entangled Time – Science Alert. “Quantum entanglement, where a change in the property of a particle next door can influence the properties an entangled particle millions of light years away is the ‘spooky’ part of quantum physics. Turns out the those properties can be even spookier, a particle now influencing a particle nine billion years ago.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Dots Out of Line: On Neuroatypical Curiosity – The MIT Press Reader. “How do each of us go about being curious? What if school was tailored to that special form of curiosity we each have?” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Where Did Water Come From? – PBS Eons – YouTube. “When I saw the title for this YouTube video, it made me laugh out loud (for real)… and then I asked myself: Do I know where water comes from? I do not. So.. now I do… and so do you! Oh, and a reminder: I love science!” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Inside the Secret Shady World of Corporate Concerts – Vice. “I’ve been in the music business since the late eighties. I know many artists, managers, record company executives and beyond. Before the publicness of the Internet, the ability for a famous artist to get paid a ridiculous amount of money to play a private event for a company… or someone with the means to pay their fees was commonplace. Artists didn’t want the public to know that they were getting six, seven or eight figures to play some wealthy family’s Sweet Sixteen (or do a meet & greet for a ridiculous amount of money). Now with social media, it’s hard to hide. Now with billionaires being minted daily, the demand intensifies. So, what’s it like to play these private events, and what else goes on behind these doors? Take a read…” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.