Your Mid-Week Experiment
BREAKING: Frank Spring has a new Substack. This is not a drill.
Thanks for all the responses to the weekend essay on what I learned about my Dad from his latest hit podcast. Seeing a big uptick in new subscribers, including my old friend from Moscow, Dave Addis! (Dave, you really need to check out Red Ticket, Robin Whetstone’s serialized memoir of her time in Moscow.) A special thank you to Austin Kleon who sent a lot of you our way from his wonderful blog, and welcome to every one. Thanks for joining The Experiment.
This is the weekly cobble up of everything I’m reading, listening to, watching, and cooking. Enough dilly-dallying. Let’s get to it.
A hail, as it were, Frank Spring, a frequent contributor here and now the publisher of his very own Substack. Recommended. (Disorder Up)
Bruce Mehlman is out with his latest trends deck, “Disequilibrium” (Mehlman Consulting)
Good long read from Mimi Swartz —> “The Campaign to Sabotage Texas’s Public Schools” (Texas Monthly)
This news from SCOTUS is both harrowing and encouraging (RealClear Education)
Speaking of losing hope: “I had long since given up on any hope of a conclusion as satisfying as this one is.” (LeVar Burton)
“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but we’ve been in a bit of hellscape for women this past year.” (Monica Hesse)
This is a lovely look back at the career of a woman who has fallen into disfavor. (Karen Tumulty)
This woman’s career makes me feel like a failure. (Intelligencer)
“When will you be a success?” (Tiffany Yates Martin)
What if your biggest success was so huge that it overshadowed your entire adult life and subsequent career so much so that you never wanted to talk about it ever again? (Smithsonian Magazine)
“You either win or you learn.” (Jalen Hurts)
This essay about the Oscars makes me feel like nerdy Gen Xers are winning. (Glen Weldon)
Expiration dates are not expiration dates. (The New York Times)
The argument for using Latinx and Latine (Zocalo Public Square)
The argument for having more sex (Magdalene J. Taylor)
The argument for regular assessments of meetings (MIT Sloan Management Review)
I wish I had read this piece on managing in an era of outrage before my last job. (Harvard Business Review)
I wish I had followed the directions for pan-seared chicken with harissa, dates and citrus more closely, but it was still pretty dang good (New York Times Cooking)
“There’s a ton of crap in the sky we haven’t shot down (yet)” (Dan Zak)
Holy crap, I loved this movie. Jennifer Lawrence is quietly terrific, and Brian Tyree Henry deserves his nomination for Best Supporting Actor in his portrayal of someone supporting Jennifer Lawrence the best way possible.
I am a Magic Mike truther, and I am here to tell you that Magic Mike’s Last Dance isn’t good, but it’s not for any of the reasons that critics are panning the movie. This movie is a fairy tale about how humans communicated through dance before we had words, and that dance is a primitive way that humans access joy. Last Dance does that well, and inventively. What this movie fails at is depicting any chemistry between the two leads outside of one scene early on that is, paradoxically, one of the great dance scenes in the history of movies.
Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds over 2020-21 and have kept it off since then. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is how I have fun.
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. The New York Times bestseller is 44% off and the same price as a paperback now!