Thoughts + Things #1 - 5/20/20
First time trying this! Figured I'd start sharing my favorite things I consume (listen, watch, read) each week. Not the most novel idea, but I hope you enjoy and maybe even find something new.
Listen 🎧🎼
Alex Danco on David Perell’s North Star Podcast
Shopify’s latest acquisition, Alex Danco, and David Perell talk about capital models for startups, entrepreneurship in different flavors, modern cities, writing online, the psychology of audio media, and a bunch of other good stuff. A long, winding, thoughtful conversation. I learned a lot. A few highlights:
essential ideas of Venture Capital and the “number go up” framework for growing a business (stemming from Carlotta Perez’s Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital) — really good stuff for understanding baseline dynamics of the VC industry
communities and cultural centers in cities and why they’re increasingly outside of city-centers (downtowns) in places like NYC and Toronto
hot media vs. cool media as a branch of “the medium is the message.” The most fascinating part of the episode, with incredible examples in what we all missed about the Nixon/Kennedy debates and Obama vs Trump. He essentially details that podcasts/audio are the hottest forms of media, as they’re the highest “resolution” (most information-dense so much as it relates to information that is actually understood). Really fascinating stuff.
LIVE “In My Room” Celebrating 54 Years of Pet Sounds
A new artist named Ashe (as an aside, I discovered her via this TikTok where she hears her song on the radio for the first time… good stuff) put together an amazing cast to play Pet Sounds in full. Some personal favorites (Finneas, Ryan Tedder, Jacob Collier) and some new discoveries. What an album, and what a collection of performances.
Had I written this first newsletter sometime in the last few weeks, I probably would have just spent the entire time talking about Jacob Collier, another recent discovery. Maybe sometime soon. I’ll just say he’s a virtuoso and leave it at that.
Watch 🎥 📺
High Fidelity (series) on Hulu
My latest binge. Record-store owner Rob (Zoë Kravitz) is unlucky in love and recounts her “desert island top 5 breakups.” It’s based on the John Cusack film of the same name, and I’ll say it: the show is better than the movie.
Rob is relatable, vulnerable, effortlessly cool and a total asshole, all at once. The show is full of real characters and great music, but is really about selfishness, self-awareness, and the people we take for granted.
I’m not sure how it took me this long to realize it, but Zoë Kravitz is a *star*.
Read 📖📄
Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
I’ve only read a few of the short stories compiled in this collection, but they’re thought-provoking and inspiring.
Ted wrote Story of Your Life, another short story that the film Arrival is based on. If you missed the film, for some reason, it’s a must-watch. I’m not sure I appreciated it enough the first time, and re-watched it recently. It’s superb.
Most of Ted’s stories (including Arrival’s) play with the idea of free-will, and subsequently, time. His first and third stories in Exhalation are precisely this, and left my scratching my head and wondering about the past, the future, and most importantly, the present.
To give you a taste, I’ll share two quotes. The first isn’t from Chiang, but apparently inspired his thinking around his stories, and specifically, Story of Your Life. It’s from Kurt Vonnegut’s introduction in the 25th Anniversary edition of Slaughterhouse-Five:
Stephen Hawking… found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now… To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are. (Kurt Vonnegut)
That final line has stuck with me for weeks since I first read it. If you’re interested in this idea of time, determinism, and the ambiguity (or lack thereof) of our futures, I think you’ll like Exhalation.
My favorite quote from Exhalation so far is from the first story, The Merchant and The Alchemist’s Gate (available in full here). It’s a story about a man who hears stories about people traveling into their futures, yet elects to travel into his past. Nonetheless, his conclusions are similar:
If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons. (Ted Chiang)
Chiang’s conclusion is that our focus and interest should not be in the “what” of our stories, but in simultaneously living (players) them and experiencing/watching them (audience). I know I’m often too concerned with the plot of my story and not simply living and being.
Ok, that’s it for this week. Please let me know if you check out any of this stuff, or if you have any like-minded recommendations. You can tweet me @jacksondahl.
Definitely going to check out that podcast!