Media – Page 34

10 inspiring and entertaining Youtube videos

I keep a list of favorite Youtube videos that I go back and watch regularly. They all move me in a different way. Here are 10 of the more “inspiring” ones.

1. Frozen Grand Central – from the folks at Improv Everywhere. I like the social commentary in this one.

2. Dog playing by himself – as an only child…I can relate

3. Bruce Lee commercial – back from the dead, and narrated by Jackie Chan? Sold.

4. Child of the 90s – the older I get, the more vulnerable I am to nostalgia

5. Audi Prom – “Bravery. It’s what defines us.” Somewhere, Don Draper is smiling.

6. Nick Vujicic – it’s good to be reminded

7. Ueli Steck – my hands started sweating about 10 seconds in

8. Christian the Lion – oldie but goodie…some things are universal

9. A man reunited with his dog – exhibit #1 in why they’re man’s best friend. Think a cat would do this?

10. Bully bodyslam – I couldn’t help laughing at the little boy as he struggles to get up

What are your favorite videos? Bring ’em on!

How and why I’ve spent 377 hours listening to podcasts since June 2012

Bill Simmons - The BS Report That’s almost an hour a day. Yes, it’s made-up, but the real number isn’t far off.

I think everyone should listen to podcasts, and it’d be sweet to host my own someday. So let me explain how I got into them, why they’re so great, and which shows are my favorites.

How I got into podcasts

I’ve always enjoyed audiobooks. Audible is expensive but I’ve never regretted a purchase.

Like an Economist subscription or a Skritter membership, the price you pay pales in comparison to the value of what you learn. I’m a firm believer that knowledge – of any kind – increases life satisfaction and improves your view of the world.

Yes, it can make you more cynical at times, but ignorance is definitely not bliss. It’s just lazy. You wouldn’t operate on a sick patient or create a web app without learning everything you can about it, so why the heck would you take a hands-off approach to the bigger and tougher problem of understanding the world around you?

Plus, random knowledge makes me more interesting at cocktail parties, which I need since I’m good with cocktails and bad with social skills.

It wasn’t until recently that I began listening to podcasts. In some ways they’re better than audiobooks – they’re shorter and they’re free.

Podcasts have exploded in variety and quality, driven by smartphones, broadband, and marketplaces like iTunes. Like Spotify is doing for musicians and Kindle Direct Publishing is doing for authors, podcast creators (ranging from educators to comedians to entrepreneurs) can now reach a large audience and make enough money to support themselves.

Listening to podcasts used to be a hassle. I would search the internet haystack, find the mp3 needle, load it into iTunes, and sync it with my iPhone, all before I listened to a single second.

I’d often remember the podcast was in my phone after the fact, then mentally flog myself for spending half an hour driving in the car, listening to Selena Gomez or some mindless EDM crap, when I could have been using my time productively.

The Stitcher app removed all that hassle and made me into a podcast fanboy. I could easily find the best shows. Stitcher would automatically download them to my phone. The app would resume playback from where I was last.

Ironically, I switched from Stitcher to Apple’s Podcasts app in the last 6 months (the main reason: Stitcher has ads and Podcasts doesn’t), but I’d already spent 150 listening hours (Stitcher tracks that data) and it’d become a habit. Now I automatically open the Podcasts app when my ears have 5+ minutes to spare, like when I lift weights, or drive somewhere, or do laundry. It’s probably saved my life, because podcasts keep me awake when I’m driving home at 2am after carousing with friends. I like that word, carousing.

Why they’re great

You learn unique stuff. Since 90% of my reading time is spent on blog posts about startups or China, I don’t branch out much. But with the Podcasts app, I listen to everything from Dan Carlin discussing the Mongol rise under Genghis Khan to Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal predicting NFL lines to This American Life interviewing people at popular highway rest stops. It’s intellectual potpourri.

You learn in a different way. My preferred learning style is reading. That’s why I’m obsessed with clipping articles and with my Kindle ebooks. It’s also why in elementary school I was named the “person who always had a book in his hand”. You can tell I was quite the popular 3rd grader. Podcasts force me to learn by listening, which balances out the mindless feed-reading and email-surfing that I do on my laptop and stretches my brain.

You’re more productive in your downtime. This is a harder argument to make, because you could argue that downtime is necessary for your brain to relax and free-associate, which is why Gretchen Rubin has a rule that she doesn’t use her phone when she’s on the subway, bus, car, or taxi. She says it’s because all her best big ideas have come in that downtime. But its harder to argue listening to that Hardwell set for the 27th time is equally productive.

What I listen to

Every episode of these:

1. Bill Simmons’ BS Report (except when he discusses Breaking Bad, because I usually haven’t seen the latest episode…there’s too much good TV!)
2. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (in particular, his mind-blowing 5-part series on Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire)
3. 60-Second Mind and 60-Second Health (improve your life in 60 seconds? I’m there!)
4. New York Times Book Review (I skip the boring reviews)
5. This American Life (there’s something about Ira Glass’s voice and the way he tells stories)

Some episodes of these:

1. The Adam and Dr. Drew Show (I was obsessed with Loveline but this podcast is sometimes too “Adam Carolla bitch-fest”)
2. 60-Second Space, Earth, and Science
3. Freakonomics Radio
4. NPR: TED Radio Hour

Pick-and-choose from these:

1. Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin
2. Common Sense with Dan Carlin
3. The Dr. Drew Podcast
4. Dan Pink’s Office Hours

Occasionally, I’ll go through Loveline, This American Life, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross archives and download interesting episodes. I would share a list with you, but it’s a pain to find the right links and I usually delete the mp3s when I’m finished.

Starting today, I’ll keep a current page of subscribed podcasts. Check there for the latest, since there’s an ~5% monthly turnover.

Pretty please?

The worst part of podcasts is that if I hear something great, like this beautiful Jesus and MLK story, it’s difficult to clip that section, annotate it, and share it. Written text wins here. Can someone please solve this problem?

Alrighty readers

I hope you give podcasts a shot, and if you do, try the Podcasts app or Stitcher. Perhaps audiobooks will be the topic of a future post. Here’s one of my favorite audiobooks, courtesy of Tim Ferriss.

If you listen to great podcasts not mentioned here, please share. Thanks for taking 6 minutes to read this post!

Entrepreneurs as predators, not risk-takers: Malcolm Gladwell’s The Sure Thing

Malcolm Gladwell in high school track Another classic article from the Gladwell archives.

Gladwell argues that the conventional view of entrepreneurs as hot-headed risk-takers is wrong. The most successful entrepreneurs are actually cold-blooded, calculating predators. From Ted Turner to John Paulson to Sam Walton, Gladwell arrives at the conclusion that the most successful entrepreneurs aren’t taking risks at all – they simply see an opportunity that others miss or undervalue, and consistently minimize chances for failure along the way.

Full article here.

The write-up below is included in my 1-Read-A-Day newsletter.

Highlights from the article

Gladwell starts by explaining how Ted Turner bought a local broadcast station and built it into TBS – against the advice of everyone around him:

“We tried to make it clear that—yes—this thing might work, but if it doesn’t everything will collapse,” Mazo said, years later. “Everything you’ve got will be gone. . . . It wasn’t just us, either. Everybody told him not to do it.”

[Turner] was a drinker, a yeller, a man of unstoppable urges and impulses, the embodiment of the entrepreneur as risk-taker. He bought the station, and so began one of the great broadcasting empires of the twentieth century.

The character portrait is a romantic one, but inaccurate. Turner had significant advantages from day one: the billboard company he inherited from his father gave him plenty of cash and excess inventory to advertise the new network.

Further, Turner paid a reasonable purchase price and didn’t put a penny down.

The truly successful businessman…is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting.

Examples of other risk-minimizing entrepreneurs include:

Giovanni Agnelli (the founder of Fiat) who kicked out his initial investors to gain majority control
George Eastman (the founder of Kodak) who shifted early financial risk to his wealthy friends
Ingvar Kamprad (the founder of Ikea) who had his furniture built in Poland instead of Sweden – at half the cost

Then there’s hedge fund manager John Paulson. By 2004, Paulson was managing $2B and was,

“Zuckerman writes, a “solid investor, careful and decidedly unspectacular.” The particular kinds of deal he did were “among the safest forms of investing.”

In the housing boom of 2004-2005, Paulson began shorting subprime mortgages – to the tune of $25 billion dollars (!).

Most people thought the trade was too risky; they believed Paulson was crazy. But Paulson – through meticulous research – saw an something they missed.

“There’s never been an opportunity like this,” Paulson gushed to a colleague, as he made one bet after another. By “never,” he meant never ever—not in his lifetime and not in anyone else’s, either…In 2007 alone, Paulson & Co. took in fifteen billion dollars in profits, of which four billion went directly into Paulson’s pocket. In 2008, his firm made five billion dollars. Rarely in human history has anyone made so much money is so short a time.

Paulson and Turner are PREDATORS. They’re not braver or crazier than the rest – they’re MORE ANALYTICAL. They see opportunities that others miss and they act immediately and aggressively.

In Turner’s case, he even became physically sick when his family purchased a competing billboard firm, a deal he considered too risky:

It was a good deal, not a perfect one, and that niggling imperfection, along with the toll that the uncertainty was taking on his father, left Turner worried sick. “During the first six months or so after the General Outdoor acquisition my weight dropped from 180 pounds to 135,” he writes. “I developed a pre-ulcerative condition and my doctor made me swear off coffee. I’d get so tired and agitated that one of my eyelids developed a twitch.”

When you look at the winning hedge funds in the subprime mortgage collapse, they all shared the same behavior: predators who did their homework, found a marketplace anomaly, and made a big, calculated “bet”.

You could even argue that the entrepreneurs who take the most risks are most liable to fail.

Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch. Ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses; failed entrepreneurs usually try selling to consumers, and, rather than serving customers that other businesses have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do. The list goes on…a good many of these risks reflect a lack of preparation or foresight.

And some science to back it up:

When the sociologists Hongwei Xu and Martin Ruef asked a large sample of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs to choose among three alternatives—a business with a potential profit of five million dollars with a twenty-per-cent chance of success, or one with a profit of two million with a fifty-per-cent chance of success, or one with a profit of $1.25 million with an eighty-per-cent chance of success—it was the entrepreneurs who were more likely to go with the third, safe choice.

Gladwell’s a tremendous writer, social theorist, and story-teller. Highly recommended article.

Great reads – from Facebook Platform to Craigslist Missed Connections

Read all the books Benedict Evan’s mobile presentation at BEA. Like Mary Meeker’s famous presentations, but more Apple, less McKinsey.

Hamish McKenzie’s Move fast, break things: The sad story of Platform, Facebook’s gigantic missed opportunity. Hamish is my favorite PandoDaily writer. I recently finished his China book. Covers how Facebook conceived, launched, and evolved Platform over time, and Platform’s impact on the startup ecosystem (ie, Zynga).

Cennydd Bowles’s Slow swordfighting. Cennydd (Twitter product designer) travels to the World Chess Championships and beautifully narrates his experience. Another Kottke find.

Gary Rubinstein’s The Three Biggest TFA Lies. I share this link not because I agree with his arguments or agenda, because it reminds me to read stuff I find uncomfortable.

Craigslist Missed Connection to end all missed connections. I read half the post thinking it was real. It feels so real that your brain doesn’t need to make believe. I mean, who hasn’t experienced this? Seeing a beautiful girl, and not having the courage to even say hello?

Jeff Weiner’s The Importance of Scheduling Nothing. Keep 1-2 hours of free time in your day to reflect. Confucius said that’s the noblest way to gain wisdom :) I enjoy reading Jeff’s posts. They remind me of Ben Horowitz’s, the gold standard for startup-CEO content.

Bonus: Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. Long but, like a 5-mile run, worth every minute of pain.

For those who like clicking things and browsing media, here’s an archive of everything I read/highlight.

If you’re talented, 5000 hours is enough (and if you’re not, even 10000 won’t cut it)

Dilbert - 10000 hours Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that 10000 hours of practice are necessary to attain mastery in a range of skill-based pursuits (for example, chess, programming, basketball, journalism).

As a writer, one of Gladwell’s responsibilities is to turn nuanced concepts into simple messages. “10000 hours” is the perfect example. Its popularity has helped make Gladwell a household name and a “public intellectual”, one of those hand-wavy terms for well-known writers who weigh in on public-interest topics, but aren’t academics or politicians.

Of course, the devil is in the research details and after reading Practice Isn’t Everything, another great Wilson Quarterly article, I was compelled to share another perspective.

In 3 sentences:

Critics have lambasted the theory. What about the hard-working strivers who fall short, and the prodigiously talented people who practice less but shine anyway? Now the doubters have data to back them up.

In 5 bullets:

Researchers analyzed data from 14 studies of chess players and musicians
Among musicians, the best pianists had all practiced at least 10000 hours (supporting Gladwell and the original researchers), but some had required more than 30000 hours to get there. Whew
25% of chess players achieved “mastery” in 7500 hours; 20% achieved mastery in less than 5000 hours
The number of hours spent practicing only accounted for 34% of the variation in chess player skill levels
What explains the remaining 66%? Starting age (younger is better), working-memory capacity (larger is better), and grit (more is better), among others

Here’s the full research paper. I’ve yet to read it closely.

It’s an understatement to say this is a complicated topic, but one that highly interests me. If you haven’t already done so, check out my 1-page cheatsheet of Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, which also discusses how people become the best in the world at a particular skill.