Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
The problem with most news feeds, whether mainstream or social, is that they feed off of the energy of division and separation. Yet wherever I go, I notice that we humans are more alike than different. I'm with Sun Ra. Let's celebrate coordination, discipline and tradition.
Happy Friday.
How We Live
"We’re a social species, which means we need each other. So instead of avoiding strangers, we need to get good at interacting with them, both to get help when we need it and to be of use to them."
"Let’s start with actual strangers — like the people you pass on the street or in a store. You may not think you’re in a relationship with them, but you essentially are.
"Research shows that when you look right through someone as if they aren’t there, they feel a small sting.
"The reverse is also true. When you give someone eye contact and a smile, it demonstrates 'You exist, fellow human, I see you,' and it makes them feel good. And you feel good too when they do it back to you." - Julie Lythcott-Haims
Article: Why Talking to Strangers is Good for You, Them and All of Us
Culture, How We Live
A charming film about how one person from a very different culture is learning to cross cultural barriers.
"Have you heard this one before? An ultra-Orthodox Jew breaks the rules by going online, falls in love with stand-up comedy, and starts performing in bars and clubs to help manage his crippling social anxiety. With a killer deadpan delivery, David Finkelstein has developed a comedic sensibility that connects with audiences at open mics in New York City. But, despite growing more comfortable on stage and finding a second home in the comedy community, the experience is rife with challenges and compromises. Finkelstein is still devout and attempts to adhere to as many of his religion’s rules as possible, even as he operates in a cultural ‘grey area’ by performing. This means no physical contact with women, no vulgarity, and no shows on the Sabbath, which nixes the desirable slots on Friday and Saturday nights. And, most difficult of all, it means navigating between two very different worlds." - Adam D’Arpino
Film Review/Film: A Jew Walks Into a Bar
How We Live
Ritual can impact health and well-being in subtle but important ways, and these impacts can be studied, understood and measured.
"India is the home of some of the world’s most ancient ritual traditions. It is thus not surprising that a lot of field studies on ritual come from India too. In one such study an international group of researchers examined the effects of participation in Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Originally held as a harvest festival, Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness with a five-day observance that includes a series of collective prayers and shared meals and culminates with a firework display.
"In this context the team recruited people who celebrated Diwali in two different metropolitan areas in the northern part of India. They visited them before, during and after the festival, each time carrying out a battery of interviews and surveys to assess their social, mental and emotional well-being. They found that, as the festival unfolded, people were in a better mood, experienced more positive emotions and felt more connected to their community. In fact, these effects started to kick in even before the festival began. The more time people spent engaged in the preparations the better they felt, suggesting that the anticipation of the activities may already have beneficial effects." - Dimitris Xygalatas
Book Excerpt: What Rituals Across Cultures Reveal About the Human Condition
Psychedelics, Personal Development
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (PAT) as employee benefit
"In 2020, Sherry Rais, along with business experts Joshua Barber and Keith Lietzke, as well as psychiatrist Dan Rome, co-founded Enthea to provide insurance coverage for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The Microdose spoke with Rais about how psychedelic insurance coverage works, the company’s plan for growth, and how they’re planning to adapt to psychedelics’ quickly-changing legal and regulatory landscape." - Jane C. Hu
Article: Insurance Coverage for Psychedelics: 5 Questions for Enthea Co-Founder Sherry Rais
Design, Futures Thinking
"The narrative structure has to change. The standard narrative that gets used in storytelling — a structure of one climax, or one challenge, to be resolved — no longer suffices."
Image by Beatrice Sala
"There is an urgent need for guardrails to ensure that future design, or any kind of design pedagogy, isn’t framed by a privileged perspective, or overly focused on either the historical or the future. Design must defy the constraints of the past, while simultaneously not succumbing to a glamorized novelty of something that has yet to be created. Like history, the future is not apolitical. It can be trapped inside of a settler-colonial mindset: it can be a space to plant a flag." - Forest Young
Article: Creative Director and Teacher Forest Young on Designing a More Inclusive Future
History
A researcher leaves behind an indelible legacy on both scholarly understanding and public perception of America’s colonial past.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
"In the 1980s, while conducting research at a courthouse in Louisiana, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall discovered a book written by 18th-century notaries that meticulously recorded details about hundreds of enslaved individuals: their names, where they came from, their skills, even their inclination toward rebelliousness.
"As Hall told the New York Times’ David Firestone in 2000, she was 'astounded'; English colonists rarely documented such information about the individuals who were brought from Africa to toil as enslaved laborers in America. Most scholars had assumed that details about their identities were simply lost to the passage of time.
"Hall, a scholar of Caribbean and African-Latin history, subsequently began a years-long investigation of neglected archives in Louisiana, France and Spain, where she found similarly revelatory records about enslaved individuals in colonial-era Louisiana. With the help of five assistants, she compiled that information into the “Louisiana Slave Database and Louisiana Free Database 1719-1820,” a revolutionary digital compendium that included searchable information about some 107,000 individuals.
Hall died on August 29, at the age of 93, reports the New York Times’ Clay Risen. She leaves behind an indelible legacy on both scholarly understanding and public perception of America’s colonial past. As Steven Mintz, a historian at the University of Texas, said on her 90th birthday in 2019, Hall was 'someone who has utterly transformed our understanding and restored the voices, lives and agency of those who made our world.'” - Bridgit Katz
Article: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Whose Database Identified Thousands of Enslaved Laborers, Has Died at 93
Biomimicry, Learning
Why we want to be more like the ugliest fish on the planet.
Anglerfish. Photo by Danté Fenolio, Ph.D
"The ultimate freak show is an understatement: Armed worms, sex-crazed fish, poison-hungry butterflies, polka-dotted flying good luck charms, and the most despicable creature born with a grin whose blood fights gravity. No one knows all the secrets they hold, but what’s clear is that the strangest amongst us are showing us a better way to live.
"The catch? They are teaching us their survival skills as they disappear.
"It’s natural to resist the idea that we can learn from what makes most do a double-take for the wrong reasons. But no one can deny that these oddballs have passed the most brutal of selection tests by tinkering with their inherited traits. As others wiped out, they whipped up fascinating tricks to get by.
"Maybe most perplexing is not how eccentric they are (and they are full-blown gloriously bizarre), but that we would be ambivalent about losing them. This is irreplaceable data. So putting aside these creatures are a pure source of wonder, the linchpin to a thriving, humming planet, and have an inherent right to be here: if we are obsessed with, and arguably dependent on, cutting-edge technology–why are we wiping out the true masters of innovation?" - Katey Losey
Article: Disappearing Freaks of Nature—and the Secrets Going With Them
One-liners
Article: Cognitive biases and brain biology help explain why facts don’t change minds.
Article: People often underestimate the positive emotions and outcomes people who are the recipients of random acts of kindness feel.
Article: Google examines how different generations handle misinformation
Playlist
Audio Recording: Duke Ellington: Queen's Suite
In 1959 Duke Ellington "created a unique album solely for the pleasure of giving it to Queen Elizabeth. With the help of Billy Strayhorn, he composed The Queen’s Suite, had one record manufactured—and sent it directly to Buckingham Palace, solely intended for Her Majesty’s ears.
"In a historic Duke-meets-Queen encounter the previous year, Ellington served up his famous charm for the monarch. When she asked him whether this was his first visit to Britain, Duke replied that his initial trip to London was in 1933, 'way before you were born.' This was out-and-out flattery, because Queen Elizabeth had been born in 1926—but she played along with the game. 'She gave me a real American look,' he later recalled, 'very cool man, which I thought was too much.'
"Give Duke credit for savviness. He understood that even a queen wants to hear how young she looks. Ellington followed up saying that Her Majesty 'was so inspiring that something musical would come out of it.' She told him that she would be listening.
"According to Ellington’s son Mercer, his father began working on the music to The Queen’s Suite as soon as he got back to his hotel room. He enlisted colleague and collaborator Billy Strayhorn. In addition to royal inspiration, the work also borrowed from the natural world: the opening movement draws on birdsong heard during a Florida visit, another section was a response to an unexpected encounter with 'a million lightning bugs' serenaded by a frog. The best known part of the Suite, 'The Single Petal of a Rose,' was spurred by a floral display on a piano at a friend’s home.
"By early 1959, the finished work was ready for performance. The Queen’s Suite was now a 20-minute work in six movements. The band recorded it over the course of three sessions in February and April 1959. A single golden disc was made, and sent to Buckingham Palace. In order to ensure that no other copies were released, Ellington reimbursed Columbia, his label, some $2,500 in production costs, and thus retained personal ownership of the master tapes.
"The original score to The Queen’s Suite is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History. I’m not sure where that single recording is nowadays—but Duke made certain that the music was never released during his lifetime. Not many people even knew about the existence of this recording, which was a kind of secret between him and the Queen. Yet, according to producer Irving Townsend, Ellington worked harder on this music than any other piece during that period." - Ted Gioia
Article: When Duke Ellington Made a Record for Just One Person—Queen Elizabeth
Image of the Week
Banksy's "Swing Girl". Photo by Matt Stromberg/Hyperallergic
"Earlier this month, it was reported that a historic building in downtown Los Angeles would be coming up for auction. Normally this story would be relegated to the real estate section, were it not for an iconic mural on one side of the building. In 2010, the famously surreptitious street artist Banksy painted an image of a girl on a swing hanging from the letter “'A' in a 'PARKING' sign on the building’s south face. The letters 'ING' are whitewashed, leaving the word 'PARK.' Dubbed 'Swing Girl,' it is the British artist’s only extant public artwork in LA. The building’s owners have estimated the value of the building at $16 million, but are hoping to get at least $30 million for it when it hits the auction block in October, the added value pegged to the existence of the Banksy mural." - Matt Stromberg
Article: The Real Story Behind Banksy’s “Parking” Mural in LA
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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