Dear Newsletterest,

The news cycle this week was dominated by US politics and my first story is about an essay that offered some historical context behind the assassination attempt of former President Trump and why the obvious explanations are often wrong. In other stories, you’ll read about new small business marketing options that could soon fuel an advertising revolution, whether Katy Perry missed the mark or offered an insightful social commentary with her latest video, food made out of air and one journalist’s ill-fated quest to make a new friend within 30 days.

Aside from the stories, we’re getting ready with some of our book launch plans and many of you have already received an advance reader copy of the book. If you haven’t gotten one yet, there is still time to join our official launch team »

Enjoy the stories and stay curious!

Rohit

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The Assassination Attempt and Why the “Obvious” Conclusions Are Usually Wrong

The biggest news story of the past week was certainly the assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life and almost immediately in the aftermath of the shooting there were plenty of theories about what had happened and who was behind it. The media dutifully reported on all of it, from conspiracy theories to early guesses about motives and intentions. The best thing I read this week, though, was an article from writer Dan Gardner retelling the story about the assassination of Senator Huey Long in 1935 by a man with a pistol. In the days after that seismic moment in American history, most people and the media just assumed the shooting was politically motivated. The theory made sense, since Long was indeed a divisive figure.

Eventually, the truth emerged. His assassin was motivated because Long had hurt the re-election chances of the shooter’s father-in-law for a local election. Years later, when John F. Hinckley shot President Reagan in the 1980s, Hinckley’s motivation also wasn’t political ideology but the delusion that shooting the President would be the best way to get the attention of actress Jodi Foster, who Hinckley was infatuated with. The point, Gardner writes, is that “the world is fantastically complex — so complex that any time a major event happens the number of possible explanations for that outcome is huge. Now, a big chunk of those possible explanations will be extremely improbable.”

It’s a valuable historical reminder that despite the media (and our own) rush to assign obvious and logical motivations to violent acts, the truth may turn out to be something completely unexpected and impossible to predict. So the real lesson is that we best avoid jumping to the easy, but often incorrect, conclusions.

New Options May Bring A Small Business Advertising Revolution

Over the past several weeks, travel and media brands with access to plentiful user data are finally following the path of social media platforms to create new ways to monetize it. United Airlines announced "the airline industry's first media network" and just this week the Paramount Plus streaming network opened up their self-service Ads Manager to allow businesses of any size to advertise against programming on the platform.

Obviously, the creative challenge of how to make a good 15 or 30 second spot will present an intimidating barrier for many small businesses, but there are AI tools integrated into the platform to help solve this challenge. Making a good ad from these tools will still require some skill, but the level of personalization and targeting abilities here could be the a game changer for small businesses. Imagine the opportunities for restaurants or tourism experiences being promoted on in-flight screens. Or promoting hiking gear or outdoor wear during episodes of The Amazing Race. It is still early days, but the possibilities and early case studies will be worth watching.

Is Katy Perry Holding Empowered Women Back, Or Are We Missing the Joke?

There is a moment in Katy Perry's new video for "Woman's World" where she sticks a gas pump into her backside and turns the clock backward to a 2010s era pop video that had Rolling Stone magazine offering some heavy criticism: "rarely has someone so misread the room." For her part, Perry defended her video suggesting that it was supposed to be satire and "a bit sarcastic," which had others wondering whether the video and ensuing controversy was just another example of how our culture seems unable to appreciate a joke anymore.

The video, if you watch it, may strike you as over the top in many ways. If you know ahead of time that she means it to be sarcasm, you'll probably see it that way and notice moments where the unrealistic expectations of women are depicted. If you don't know, the video could easily come across as objectifying women or at the very least, offers an extremely dated look. And possibly the video manages to be both offensive and insightful at the same time.

This Journalist Tried To Make A New Friend In 30 Days And It Went … Badly

What if you set out to make a new friend and gave yourself 30 days to make it happen? That's the intriguing challenge that forms the backdrop for an article from this month's issue of Esquire magazine where journalist Kelly Stout tries everything from taking a mommy and me swimming class to signing onto the "Bumble for Friends" app in an effort to find an "entirely new person entering my life and becoming a friend."

Publicly declaring this goal to family and current friends is an impressive exercise in bravery, and falling short (not to mention writing about it) is a form of public embarrassment most of us would be reluctant to volunteer for. But reading Stout’s journey is a perfect reminder that friendship, whether new or old, takes effort and intention.

My version of that is reaching out to people while traveling to try and use my visit as an excuse to bring people together. Sometimes my requests get missed or ignored, but just as often I get a surprising yes and reconnect with someone I hadn't seen for years. Or introduce two people who live in the same city to one another. What I've realized after doing this regularly for the past few years is that people are genuinely grateful for the invitation. I love getting invitations like that too. Even if a gathering doesn’t end up happening, it’s always nice to know someone still wants to get together and share a drink.

Welcome To A Future Where Food Is Made From Thin Air

Last year when Henry and I were writing The Future Normal, we wrote about a trend we named Unnaturally Better and profiled Solar Foods, a company that had created a protein called Solein synthesized from carbon dioxide. Literally food from air. This week, I came across another story of a similar company called Savor that can create fats from air and is starting specifically with a butter product that looks and tastes like “real” butter produced from dairy sources. Some reports share that the real genesis for these initiatives started with NASA, which makes sense since these foods would be ideal food sources for eventual humans living in space.

In our rush to talk all about the future and focus on the role of technology and AI, innovations like this are easy to miss … but potentially far more widespread in the impact on our daily lives they could have. Transforming the way we feed our planet is a category of innovation that could touch everyone everyday no matter where they live or what they do for work. So if you spend a lot of time right now watching videos and trying to learn about what an AI-enabled future might look like, this week might be your ideal moment to spend a bit of time imagining what our future might look like if we could produce food out of air.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

The Art of Gathering - How We Meet and Why It Matters

Several years ago I read this wonderful book by Priya Parker and it really stayed with me so I thought I’d resurface it this week as you may be in the midst of some summer gatherings yourself. While the book may seem to focus more on events, it’s equally valuable as a primer on how to become a better and more social host and attendee in any situation. Parties, meetings, and casual encounters alike—if you approach them with more intention, you can create memorable bonding moments for yourself and those around you. As a companion to the book, while her pandemic-era Together Apart podcast from 2020 is no longer regularly updated, it’s also a good archived compilation of some of the lessons from the book if you prefer to digest them in a different format. The Art of Gathering is altogether a life-affirming handbook of how to be better at bringing people together and being among them yourself.

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?