Cultish Creative Weekly Recap (10/5/2024)

The joy of finding a thread you could, on one hand, unravel an entire sweater with, but also that makes the entire sweater a unified article of clothing—all while you spend some time flipping it over, turning it inside out, and spacing out a bit, it’s one of my favorite things.

Drew Dickson is my guest on The Intentional Investor this week, available on Epsilon Theory YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, and the threads that weave him all together include the (probably obvious) “Stay in the Game” essay and mentality, but also the key to that mentality: civility. Read my notes on the interview here, but watch/listen as Drew ties lessons from his father, to lessons demonstrated by teachers, to lessons experienced through his kids.

Meanwhile, on Excess Returns, we (checks notes) just crossed 20,000 subscribers?!

Thank you.

When I started contributing and learning from Jack and Justin, all of a year and a half ago, we were wondering how and when we might crack 10k, and my how the snow ball rolls when you’re focused on making things you’d watch (if you are somebody likely in the finance industry with spreadsheet oriented tendencies and a tolerance for when I show up and make obscure music references, clearly).

Here’s Jack and I this past week, breaking down lessons from Chris Davis, who I’d really love to get on the Intentional Investor at some point. His firm used to order reprints of classic investment books as marketing and leave them with old brokers who would never read them, back when I started. As those old brokers left, I raided their bookshelves, and someday I need to thank Chris personally for all the wisdom those books passed to me.

Don’t judge it by the subscriber count, but do subscribe if you haven’t to Cultish Creative on YouTube too, because we got a fresh book review up this week. Find Your 9 Others is both a business networking book, David Burkus level good, and a meaningful event creating book, Priya Parker level complimentary.

Posts you might have missed:

Over on Epsilon Theory, we have a trilogy of sorts between Scott Bradlee’s piece on the Contentapocalypse, my piece in response - drawing in a musically informed reaction to AI making art, from when alternative went mainstream, and then Ben Hunt getting metaphysical about the whole thing, with a piece that might make you challenge anything and everything you think you know about where AI is leading us, in “Generative AI is a Resurrection Machine.”

D’Angelo interviews will always stop me in my tracks. This one, which is a few years older, getting resurfaced on YouTube recently, let’s just say a healthy portion of those views are mine.

Did you know who wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest” because I didn’t and you didn’t tell me (unless you’re Peter Atwater, in which case, then you did tell me).

John Mulaney being brutally honest to the AI tech kids brought me such joy. It won’t matter. But it matters. Something wicked this way comes, and we must not forget to laugh at it.

Josh Spector wrote a post about awe recently, and maybe it’s just because I’m on a Feynman re-reading kick, but it all kicked me in the butt. Watch for Josh on an upcoming Just Press Record, perhaps in no small part to him saying brilliant things like this on the regular, that get me to do stuff like say, “Hey, wanna talk?”