This week I finished: The Devil’s Climb, starring Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell: I got tickets to watch this movie followed by a talk including Honnold and Caldwell. My nephew is a rock climber, so I invited him, who invited a climbing partner friend, plus a coaching client is a climber, so the four of us attended. The movie was engaging, heartwarming, and thrilling. It touches on climate but not[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of our Ira, by Akhil Reed Amar: I have been studying the Constitution like never before. The path to it was realizing sustainability meant changing culture, which forced me to ask if it was possible, which pointed me to abolitionism, which pointed me to Lincoln and abolitionists, which led me to the Thirteenth Amendment, which led me to[…] Keep reading →

When people talk about industries sowing doubt to avoid being scrutinized or regulated, people often say that those industries are using the tactics of big tobacco. It happens a lot with businesses the pollute and deplete a lot. I think they’re mostly relying on the book Merchants of Doubt, which wrote about how the tobacco industry created uncertainty and other tactics, not to defend themselves so much as to deflect[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Common Sense, by Thomas Paine: I read this book because the more I read about it, the more my book seemed to be following its legacy, though I want to be careful about flattering myself, given its sales and influence. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of this book made common sense though the language was hard to understand. I didn’t realize a book had[…] Keep reading →

I avoid Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most other social media. I still used LinkedIn more than weekly. Still, I had come to think of it as a place of spam. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but as best I can tell, the words “coach” or “author” seem to invite people I’ve never heard of to promote “quality leads,” book promotion services, and so on. I wondered if[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho: I had heard people and critics liked this movie. I hadn’t heard much detail about it. The title didn’t sound appealing. While watching it, I didn’t find it credible. Too many suspensions of disbelief caused me to pop out of being lost in the story to saying, “Okay, that part wasn’t believable, but let’s imagine it was and go with it”[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton: I’m sure I’ve written about this book before. I first read it when I was CEO of Submedia, so over twenty years ago. I’ve given away more copies of this book than any other that I didn’t write. I reread it now because it’s the choice for the book club[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Problem of Social Cost, by R. H. Coase: I heard about this paper months ago, or maybe years. I read it because it came up in the Cato Institute podcast I wrote about in Libertarians confused on pollution, sacrificing their core values. At the root: lack of hands-on practical experience. I believe I see Coase’s starting point that conflicts don’t necessarily mean one person harming[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, by Janna Levin: Somehow I started receiving Janna Levin’s Substack (that Is, Substack spammed me, though I doubt Levin caused it). I looked her up. She teaches physics at Barnard. I got my PhD at Columbia and worked with a professor at Barnard, who was one of my main reasons for returning there after starting graduate school[…] Keep reading →