This week’s highlights: Netflix, Family Businesses, and Heart Disease
Issue 341
Hope everyone has a pleasant weekend.
What I’m Reading Now:
- Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland. Wrapped this up yesterday – cannot say enough good things about this one.
David
Food for Thought:
Why It Matters: Given the near-universal fascination with Netflix, this was a helpful way of clarifying what business Netflix is actually in. “As I look at discussions of Netflix today, all of the questions that matter are TV industry questions. How many shows, in what genres, at what quality level? What budgets? What do the stars earn?”
Consider as well:
- NewYorker – The Last Robot-Proof Job in America? Robert DiGregorio, known in the Fulton Fish Market as Bobby Tuna, possesses a blend of discernment and arcane fish knowledge that, so far, computers have yet to replicate.
- NYT – The ‘Preppy Handbook’ & Me As a kid in the ’80s, I hated the preppy craze. But did I really understand the book that started it?
- TheAtlantic – The Diet That Might Cure Depression
- WashPo – Caught between young kids and a parent with Alzheimer’s, I found a lifeline on the playground
Business/Economics:
Top Read of the Week: NYT – What’s Left After a Family Business Is Sold?
Why It Matters: “After so much attention to running things, little thought goes into what comes next. Relatives should focus on their values, not money, advisers say.”
Consider as well:
- II – David Swensen Is Great for Yale. Is He Horrible for Investing? How the Yale Model ate endowments — and everything else.
- LatticeWork – Peter Kaufman on The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking: Transcript
- NYT – Can Britain’s Top Bookseller Save Barnes & Noble? James Daunt fought Amazon and rescued the country’s biggest bookstore chain. Now comes Chapter 2.
- Fortune – Should Companies Bolster Their Cybersecurity by ‘Hacking Back?’
Culture/Tech/Science:
Top Read of the Week: NYT – Evolution Gave Us Heart Disease. We’re Not Stuck With It.
Why It Matters: Heart disease is still a new disease, and we can adapt accordingly.
Consider as well:
- Golf – ‘Tinder’ for tee times: How golf-club members are using digital networks to partner-up – Credit MA
- Variety – ‘The Sixth Sense’ Turns 20: M. Night Shyamalan and Haley Joel Osment Tell All
- FastCo – No more cardboard boxes? 3M invents an ingenious new way to ship products The company is launching a new material that could reduce the time, materials, and space required to ship products by 50%.
- CNBC – Einstein showed Newton was wrong about gravity. Now scientists are coming for Einstein. New research confirms Einstein’s theory of gravity but brings scientists a step closer to the day when it might be supplanted by something new.