If you prefer to receive these recaps weekly instead of daily posts, you can manage your subscription preferences right by viewing this email on the web. Look for your profile icon in the top right of the browser, and you can update your settings from daily to weekly (and vice versa) there. However I can get you the full narrative arc without it feeling cluttered - I'm just happy you're here!

Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...

Brian Portnoy's second volume is here, and I have a chapter in it (which is very exciting!). Fifty contributors across the two volumes and no two chapters look alike - let’s call it diversification. My contribution is about the five capitals (human, intellectual, social, wisdom, and financial) and how you can build debt in any of them just as easily as equity. I share some of my personal experiences with positive and negative compounding, and how it shapes my decisions today. Get your copy here.

Brian and I talked through the book on Excess Returns. Here’s an audio/visual companion to the book for you:

Over on Panoptica - Chris Arnade spent a decade talking to Americans across the country before he finally opened Democracy in America, and he found a 19th-century Frenchman had reached many of the same conclusions as he has now. So what does a nation carry from its beginnings, and what happens when the thing holding it together quietly wears away?

We ran his essay on Panoptica for Stories of America. It's not mine, and it's absolutely worth a read. Chris Arnade on Democracy in America

Nyle Bayer pitched us a song from 12 years ago that somehow slid past me, and Joseph Moore and I spent an episode on why it belongs on our “Songs that describe American Life” playlist. Homeboy Sandman built what Nyle calls a “protest of protest songs,” grateful and annoyed in the same breath. This is a profound piece of music, I really encourage you to listen to the song (and our chat about it).

Quote from the Personal Archive - my closing note on the song

It’s a land of tradeoffs with an unusually positive current outcome. We shouldn’t take it for granted.

My neighbor vacuums and hoses out the trunk of a 10-year-old SUV every weekend, spare tire in and out, radio blasting, and I have concluded he's either a contract killer or the most disciplined man on the street. I have a high tolerance for chaos, which makes it weird that this is the thing that gets me. Dostoyevsky's line about getting used to everything, the scoundrel, gets a real workout. Everyone has a trunk guy.

Quote from the Personal Archive - me, writing through the vacuum noise

But. I’ll get used to it. My damn neighbor certainly is.

Ashley Quamme spent roughly 15 years as a marriage and family therapist before crossing over to help financial advisors with the words they use around clients. It started with a teenage Ashley figuring out which framing got her out to the party that weekend. The “thinking face” story is waiting for you in the video, and “stay curious just a little bit longer” is the kind of line that earns a spot in a Personal Archive.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Ashley on what she'd ask couples during her therapist heyday

Can you stay curious just a little bit longer?

Shannon Nutter, a self-described recovering corporate America veteran, co-wrote Walking on Broken Glass with Julia Carreon after noticing that nobody ever hears a woman described as just right, because the praise always arrives with a “but.” Her best practical advice is to say the hard line out loud in the car before you need it. I left my copy of the book downstairs for the interview, because of course I did, but I went and got it for the intro!

Quote from the Personal Archive - Shannon on the leader you personally needed

I would hope that more people would be the kind of leader they wish they had.

Jared Dillian asked me to sit down at DirtCon in Nashville and talk literature, which sent us and a room full of traders and strategists into MFA vs. CFA, book deals, and a cat psychic tangent that started with Us3. The hallway conversations afterward were the best part, because so many people said writing is how they find out when and where they're wrong. It was an espresso shot of confirmation, and Jared's old Lehman newsletter is the reason any of this exists. So cool.

Quote from the Personal Archive - what kept coming back to me in the hallways

You find out when you’re wrong. You find out where you’re wrong. And if you’re not writing it down, how else would you find out?

I figured a record deal would make it easier. Then a booking agent, then a studio job, and now, 20 years later, I'm still looking at what would improve the odds. A Sherman Alexie quote Jared sent me, about talking up a short story collection on morning TV between the cooking segment and the weather report, sums up how much the ground has shifted. I like knowing how hard it is, and I like that the violinist still wins the party.

Quote from the Personal Archive - my closing note on making things

Consume whatever you consume, wherever you consume it, but then get inspired and go make something.

Steve Sanduski had me on Between Now and Success to make the case that the advisor of the future looks more like an underground music scene than a startup. A scene doesn't scale, and that turns out to be the point. Rick Rubin, De La Soul, and Flea all make an appearance, and I'm counting every De La Soul mention on an advisor/finance podcast as a win.

Jack Forehand and I also did the Excess Returns Weekly Wrap, revisiting our conversations with Barry Ritholtz, Jim Paulsen, and Ben Hunt on the AI boom. The question running through it is how much pain arrives before the rescue does.

What's one thing you've quietly gotten used to that deserves a second look this week?

WHAT WORDS DID YOU INHERIT FROM YOUR FAMILY, AND WHICH ONES ARE YOU READY TO REWORD?

Think of the next conversation where you'll need to ask for something. What does the person across the table most want to know?

WHAT PHRASE COULD YOU REHEARSE OUT LOUD IN THE CAR BEFORE YOU NEED IT?

Where do you react first and get curious second, and what would one more beat of curiosity change?

WHAT HAVE YOU WRITTEN DOWN LATELY THAT TOLD YOU WHERE YOU WERE WRONG?

What are you compounding right now in your human, social, or intellectual capital, and who could you share it with?

As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)

ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules