Five Things #71

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. A great conversation with Benny Greb (one of my favourite drummers) on the Chocolate Croissants podcast. They talk drumming, music, life and much more. Benny's a fascinating chap.

  2. If you have any doubts about climate change or just care about this planet, this one's for you. Sam Harris interviews Joe Romm on What You Need to Know About Climate Change.

  3. Food for thought: "Ideas can hurt, it’s true. But the worst fate isn’t being troubled by another person’s idea: It’s settling for intellectual and moral stagnation, refusing to ever encounter any ideas besides the ones you currently hold."

  4. I recently read Sarah Manguso's new book 300 Arguments. It's a collection of aphorisms and a quick read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  5. This week's music recommendation is Dawn Of Midi's album Dysnomia. The music slowly evolves as they layering different rhythms over one another. The effect is quite hypnotic.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Five Things #70

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. Marc Maron interviewed drumming legend Steve Jordan on his WTF Podcast. They talk about music, drumming, Steve's background and his collaborations with Keith Richards, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry... I could go on, he's played with pretty much everyone!

  2. J.K Rowling on tolerance and free speech.

  3. One of many stunning photos of Jupiter taken by NASA's Juno probe and edited by Sean Doran. Being able to see Jupiter in such detail is an amazing thing.

  4. A good post on how to get more out of what you read.

  5. This week's music recommendation is actually a collaboration between the podcast Song Exploder (one of my favourites) and Google called Inside Music. The experiment lets you explore the different musical layers of a number of songs, recombining them as you see fit. Pretty cool!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Five Things #69

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. Netflix's documentary thriller Icarus (available on Netflix) is one of the most gripping documentaries I've seen. Filmmaker and cyclist Bryan Fogel set out to make a documentary on doping in cycling and ends up uncovering the biggest doping scandal of all time. I highly recommend you watch it!

  2. Following on from Five Things #68, another mind blowing optical illusion!

  3. You make solid, rational decisions... right? 20 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Your Decisions

  4. Brighten someone's day: Waves are free.

  5. This week's music recommendation is Haunt by Rival Consoles. If you like it, check out his album Howl (it's one of my favourite albums).

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Five Things #68

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. Prepare to have your mind blown! I love a good optical illusion and this is one of the best I've seen.

  2. An interesting and thought provoking article on The War on Reason.

  3. If you spend much time on the internet, you'll have probably noticed that on huge swathes of it civil debate appears to be a thing of the past. This Brain Pickings article on How to Criticize with Kindness might come in handy. — "let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”

  4. Socrates would like a quick word: Philosophy Infomercial.

  5. This week's music recommendation is actually a podcast about a piece of music. In this week's episode of Song Exploder, Annie Clark (aka St.Vincent) breaks down her song New York. (A warning, it contains some explicit language!) 

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

ps. I'm taking a week off next week as I'll be on holiday. But fear not, Five Things will return the following week!

Five Things #67

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. Episode #1 of Radiotopia's new mini-series Ways Of Hearing explores how digital audio changes our experience of music and time. If you are a musician or big music fan, I think you'll love it.

  2. Austin Kleon hits the nail on the head in his post You can be woke without waking up to the news. Give it a try, no phone, no social media and no news for the first couple of hours of your day.

    "A friend of mine said he didn’t know how long he could wake up to such horrible news every day. I suggested to him that he shouldn’t wake up to the news at all, and neither should anyone else. There’s almost nothing in the news that any of us need to read in the first hour (or two or three or four…) of our day."
  3. This is quite the long-read, but if you are a big user of Facebook and have any concerns about your privacy, it's probably worth your time: You Are the Product.

  4. I've just rediscovered James Clear's excellent blog. He has a wealth of articles exploring habits, thinking and learning. I found this one particularly interesting: Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways.

  5. Over the last week, I've been making a concerted effort to listen to more albums by artists I like, that I've not really listened to previously. This week's music recommendation is Blanck Mass' self-titled album, which in spite of liking their other music, I'd neglected to listen to at all!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.