Christopher Nolan's IMAX interpretation of Homer's "Odyssey" has gotten people thinking and talking, which is a hallmark of great art. Nolan's version also holds up a mirror to the modern American moviegoing audience. If you lead an organization or care about the values that inform politics and societal norms, or even just see yourself as the hero of your own story, it may have something to say to you.

Stories have always been important to Homo sapiens – it's been argued that our ability to organize in large numbers around abstract, fictional concepts (like countries, religions, and sports) is the distinguishing quality that helped us outcompete other hominid species and put us at the top of the food chain. Stories help us find meaning in life and make sense of the experience of being alive. We make everything into a story! We tell stories about our relationships, our projects and companies and products and services, and even what happened to us just yesterday. The stories we tell ourselves define our ideas about who we are. Stories can also serve as mirrors to help us see and understand the times in which we live – vampires were the media monsters of the "greed is good" (the vampires of Wall Street and Bonfire of the Vanities count) bloodsucking eighties, while more recently zombies have taken center stage. [Note: It's easy to see where the zombie writers get their inspiration – check out the family sitting together at the restaurant table, all glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the woman in the crosswalk outside getting struck by a delivery van because both she and the van driver were also head down on their phones.]

Events unfold as they do, and we regularly report on them because we're wired that way, but thematic stories only happen on purpose. They are written with intention by motivated people who dedicate themselves to the task over time. Most American students only read excerpts of the Odyssey by Homer as adventure stories – Homer defeats the cyclops! Homer listens to the song of the sirens while tied to the mast! – but apart from being spared the rest of the original 12,000 lines of poetry, not to mention all the sex and violence that makes stories [a] compelling and [b] inaccessible in school, most of us didn't learn much about why Homer wrote the story, or how it got famous enough to be passed down through the generations.

Campbell pointed out to me in the car that Peisistratos, the ruler of Athens from c. 600 BC – 527 BC, standardized Homer's 12,000 spoken word poem in writing to serve an important purpose: "It was Peisistratos' idea that an urban mythology should be fashioned for Athens. Now this is something that also happened in the biblical tradition: to fashion, to make up, to invent a mythology that will validate and support and give historical prestige to this newly merged people, or city."

Campbell's explanation of Moses returning with the tablets as the story's scribes' way of saying "so here are the rules we're gonna live by" was pretty straightforward. It led me to reflect on the emphasis Nolan's script put on values. Matt Damon eventually gave into the will of the gods and lamented breaking Zeus' law, right there in 70mm IMAX.

Nolan's and Damon's Odysseus was very 21st century American. We see his virtuous traits: fidelity to his wife Penelope, love for his son Telemachus, guilt over dishonoring the law of Zeus and the rules of combat by using the Trojan Horse to "turn the fight into a hunt."

But... hang on a sec. That might be the whole movie picture, but it's not the whole story. The movie depiction of Circe (which Maureen Dowd writes "is like a vindictive feminist hippie making ceramic pots in Vermont") turns Odysseus' men into pigs, which is true to the tale, but in Homer's text, Circe is a nymph (as in "sexy nature maiden" and the root of the word nymphomaniac). She is the seductive daughter of the sun god and a titan, a powerful sorceress who has sex with Odysseus. A lot. And he likes it. He stays with her for a year, ignoring the homesick pleas of his men, and has two sons by her.

Then there's Calypso, which Charlize Theron plays as a therapeutic guide who may as well have been pimping ayahuasca or ibogaine to a tech bro. Athena shows up – and disappears – a few times, but the movie gods aren't nearly as selfish, capricious, and manipulative as I remembered from reading the story. And Athena didn't even have to persuade Calypso to release her sex slave, as she did in Homer's version. In the movie, Calypso is oddly maternal as she nurses Odysseus back to consciousness (I don't think he even ate the lotus in the original story, it was just seven years of great sex) and sends him home.

The movie's biggest departure from the Odyssey as I learned it was on the island of the Cyclops. Again, just to be clear: I think the movie is amazing. I'm glad I saw it, especially on a screen big enough to see what Nolan saw. I love that he even built special housings for the IMAX cameras to reduce noise. But there was so much more to Homer's story, and here that matters precisely because Nolan advanced the use of technology with this film. So I wish he would have included the dialogue where Odysseus told Polyphemus (the Cyclops) his name: "Outis (Nobody)." I wish Nolan would have included Odysseus getting the Cyclops drunk, and then stabbing him in the eye, so that when all the other Cyclops heard Polyphemus howling of pain and said, "Tell us who did this to you so we can kill him!" all the blinded Cyclops could reply was, "Nobody! Nobody did this to me!"

Why is that scene so important? Because it's Odysseus the master strategist at work,

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and to ancient Greeks this was a perfect example of techne, the Ancient Greek word for cleverness. Techne is the root of the English word and concept of technology. American movie audiences – everyone, really – would be better off if we understood more about the roots of technology in our culture, and how/why our ability to effectively use tools is essential to ensure that our tools don't wind up using us.

As I walked out of the theater last week into the dazzling summer sunlight of a Los Angeles afternoon, I realized that Nolan's movie made total sense to the audience. No one had to struggle to understand it or argue over a key point. The guy next to me didn't take a break from snacking, texting, or slurping out of his giant soda bucket for nearly three hours.

I started this newsletter by mentioning traffic. Traffic is relatable, but it's nothing to complain about. I enjoyed air conditioning, called my wife twice, listened to music, and cued up a podcast to learn directly from one of the most insightful members of our species. Our ease and convenience undermine our ability to adapt, get stronger, and confront true adversity. Nolan's "Odyssey" is brilliant because it's so accessible, so easy on the eyes and the psyche – and that's it's biggest problem.

In modern societies from Hollywood to India, movie theaters are temples and movie stars are gods, "icons" and "larger-than-life idols" that we worship in the dark. So shouldn't our heroes be unapologetic master strategists who can not only string the bow, win the war, and save the day, but relish the clarity of their cause? Why worship the conflicted guy next door? Why is our Odysseus an ordinary-ish guy who has all this guilt about the war he won – if there had been a better, more honorable way to do it, shouldn't he have done that? Does he want to have amazing adventures and risky extramarital sex or does he want to go home? Does he have a decision-making disorder? Homer's Odysseus was himself a storyteller – who exactly is our guy? Did he succeed or fail?

The last thing Campbell said to me before I got out of the car was, "If you just look at these stories and see where you are, you'll be somewhere on the hero journey."

Maybe the word journey has recently become so popular because Campbell's point is the very thing more of us need to engage with – in our work, in our relationships, and even in our private minds. Gaining more clarity about our identity and purpose would certainly shed some light on shared values, like collaboration and organizational vision, and it might even help us fulfill our individual potential. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be challenged by heroes. I don't want to watch the Olympics if no one can run faster than me. And when I see a protagonist that's three thousand years old and 80 feet tall, I want to be inspired to become a better version of myself, instead of watching a multimillion dollar hero who kinda sucks and isn't sure about what he's done.

America, like Troy and Athens, is not just a place but an idea. A story built on a foundation of stories. And the story of America is changing. Our heroes are different now than they were when Campbell gave his lecture (one year after George C. Scott starred in "Patton," another general who would be difficult to portray the same way today). They are certainly different than when Homer first composed the Odyssey and Peisistratos used it to strengthen the culture of ancient Athens. Maybe it's worth viewing America through the Nolan Odyssey lens and ask what story we're reinforcing, or what we have lost by winning.

Christopher Nolan built a commercial masterpiece on the foundation of a great story, and I don't doubt his choices – I just wonder what they say about us.

_________________________

How do you define winning? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I'm Watching –

Last week was a tale of two hero stories. The day after I watched Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, a friend sent me a link to "The Boys" on Prime. To whatever extent Oscar Wilde was right about life imitating art... yikes.

Quote I’m pondering –

Some years back I heard Steven Pressfield (who wrote "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and "The War of Art," among other things) say that he began writing sessions by reciting the first few lines of Homer's Odyssey, the invocation of the muse, translated by (the one and only) T.E. Lawrence. Here it is:

INVOCATION

O DIVINE POESY
GODDESS-DAUGHTER OF ZEUS
SUSTAIN FOR ME
THIS SONG OF THE VARIOUS-MINDED MAN
WHO AFTER HE HAD PLUNDERED
THE INNERMOST CITADEL OF HALLOWED TROY
WAS MADE TO STRAY GRIEVOUSLY
ABOUT THE COASTS OF MEN
THE SPORT OF THEIR CUSTOMS GOOD OR BAD
WHILE HIS HEART
THROUGH ALL THE SEA-FARING
ACHED IN AN AGONY TO REDEEM HIMSELF
AND BRING HIS COMPANY SAFE HOME

VAIN HOPE—FOR THEM
FOR HIS FELLOWS HE STROVE IN VAIN
THEIR OWN WITLESSNESS CAST THEM AWAY
THE FOOLS
TO DESTROY FOR MEAT
THE OXEN OF THE MOST EXALTED SUN
WHEREFORE THE SUN-GOD BLOTTED OUT
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN

MAKE THE TALE LIVE FOR US
IN ALL ITS MANY BEARINGS
O MUSE

– from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

There will never be another Jimi Hendrix. What he brought to life through his guitar, his very existence… What he did both to and for the national anthem. His style, his voice. There will never be another Jimi Hendrix.

But there has always been, and there will always be, “All Along the Watchtower.”

I grew up listening to Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” As a kid I assumed the song was a product of the man, conjured up by the same creative magic that led him to kneel and conjure spirits from the guitar he sacrificed in fire at the Monterey Pop Festival. (I didn’t know at the time that he did this to upstage Pete Townshend and The Who.)

Years later, my mind was blown when I heard Bob Dylan – another one-of-a-kind artist – sing what sounded to me like a stripped-down, faster, folkier (Dylan, after all) version of the song. It also made sense, but in a very different way than I had become used to. The experience was like hearing a familiar saying spoken in a different language, or in English with a different accent.

My mind was further blown when I found out it was Dylan’s song in the first place. He wrote it and released it on the John Wesley Harding album six months before Hendrix recorded and released his version on Electric Ladyland. Dylan has played “All Along the Watchtower” live more than two thousand times, more than any of his other songs.

But the way Dylan plays his own song has changed, because Hendrix added – or, more likely, revealed – a quality that shifted perception of the meaning and energy of the song. It’s the Hendrix version of “All Along the Watchtower” (not Dylan’s original) that received a Hall of Fame Grammy and was ranked 40th on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Dylan got it. He understood what Hendrix did. And for decades now, Dylan’s live performances of “All Along the Watchtower” – his own song – have drawn so heavily on Hendrix’s version that they’ve been called “covers of a cover.” When he was asked about this, Dylan said, “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way… Strange how when I sing, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some way.”

For his part, Hendrix said, “Sometimes, I play Dylan’s songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that ‘Watchtower’ is a song I could have come up with, but I’m sure I never would have finished it. 

Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: two very different individuals, two very different artists, and both tuned into something that resonated and translated over time for the rest of us.

It makes you wonder: Does an idea really belong to a person? Is it really accurate to say, “That was her idea?” Or maybe the idea was present and available for everyone, and she was just more curious, or more intuitive, more aware of what was happening around her in the moment, or maybe she was more well-read and perceptive of how historical patterns or the collective unconscious fed the zeitgeist?

Some things we’re born with; most everything else we pick up along the way. Dylan’s “voice like sand and glue” (thank you, David Bowie) was the singular product of forces genetic and mysterious, but his music and lyrics – the signals of his unquestioned genius and the legacy of his art – were syntheses, pastiches of influences from Woody Guthrie to Robert Johnson, inspirations from the hollers of Appalachia to the Sermon on the Mount.

As Kirby Ferguson points out in “Everything is a Remix,” 11 of the 13 songs on Dylan’s first album were covers. One of the two original songs is “Talkin’ in New York,” performed in a talking blues style that Dylan learned from Woody Guthrie. The other is “Song to Woody,” an homage to the songwriter that Dylan revered. (This rabbit hole goes deeper; Dylan borrowed the melody for “Song to Woody” from Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre,” which Dylan performed at his first Carnegie Hall concert. Guthrie himself regularly put new lyrics to familiar melodies – he borrowed the tune for “1913 Massacre” from an old English folk song called “To Hear the Nightingale Sing” a.k.a. “One Morning in May.” As writer Paul Zollo put it in American Songwriter, “Peet Seeger spoke about this as the ‘age-old folk process’… He (Guthrie) wasn’t crafting tunes for hit parade. He was writing the truth, which to him more than having to be, as Pete put it, ‘so damn original all the time.’”)

Borrowing and remixing does not detract from Dylan’s art or craft, or make him less of an artist, any more than George Lucas borrowing visual styles and storytelling motifs for Star Wars (from sources ranging from Kurosawa and Joseph Campbell to spaghetti westerns), or Hunter S. Thompson retyping The Great Gatsby word for word just to “get the feeling, he said, of what it was like to write that way.”* (*Menand, The New Yorker, 2005). 

In fact, sharing stories and drawing on stories to create relevant, inspiring versions of stories that spike our adrenaline and galvanize us to action is the defining quality of Homo sapiens that put us at the top of the food chain. As Yuval Noah Harari put it in Sapiens:

“Fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of individuals that they know intimately. Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.”

Dylan didn’t limit himself to folk or blues for inspiration when he wrote “All Along the Watchtower” – he reached for some of the oldest, most familiar stories in the western world.

Instead of merely complaining about record company executives taking advantage of his talent without paying, or that our leaders have made society intolerable, Dylan implied biblical references and left the interpretation up to us. Was his honorable thief telling the joker not to get caught up in the absurdity of the crisis du jour? Were these two characters allusions to the pair who were crucified next to Christ on the hill at Golgotha, or the pair of riders in the Book of Isaiah, or the looming judgement in the Book of Revelations? And what’s with the wildcat? In the end, the enduring legacy of “All Along the Watchtower” is the imaginings it inspires.

In the next newsletter I'm going to have a go at a classic novel through this lens. (Spoiler: Reading this way is a hell of a lot more interesting than whatever you did in high school or college. In fact, thinking this way about art might just be the cure for the 2026 pandemic we're calling international politics.)

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_________________________

Some of the smartest, most successful people I've ever met used the simplest, most obvious tools and techniques. What's your favorite hammer? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

Three hundred fifteen million years ago, a photon slipped free from the clutches of its parent star and raced 93 million miles across the void. Some 99.9999999 percent of its fellow photons kept on sailing past eternity. A rare few, after billions of miles, bounced off the craters and canyons of some savagely bleak world in the outer solar system. Still others – after a billion billion miles more – mutely scattered off disembodied nebulae, drifting through space. But our photon was headed to the most interesting place in the known universe: the Earth.

So begins "The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything" by science writer Peter Brannen. From the New York Times Review of Books:

"This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology, including all the modern woes associated now with the troublesome greenhouse gas.

By the end, the reader feels convinced: Evolution and human prehistory and wars and the Dutch East Indies Company and the attack on Pearl Harbor and Reagan and Thatcher and and and and and and. … All of it looks like the story of carbon dioxide, after all."

Tech That Finally Solves Your Younger Self's Gmail Address Problem –

When I taught high school courses, I routinely advised students who were writing resumes to open new Gmail accounts with usernames that were more professional than their eighth grade choices.

Now, according to Android Authority, you can change your Google account username without losing your data. The path: Google Account settings → Personal Info → Email → Google Account email → Change Google Account email. Google started testing the feature earlier this year and it's now widely available across the US.

Quotes I’m pondering –

Back in late March, while I was huffing and puffing through the Ironman triathlon in Oceanside, CA, my wife and daughter attended the local version of "No Kings," the largest national protest in American history. They held simple signs with thought-provoking quotes.

You ask me what forces me to speak? A strange thing; my conscience.

– Victor Hugo

It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.

– Abraham Lincoln

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

It's not exactly a secret that once-reputable news brands (looking at you, CNN) have been squeezing money out of online eyeballs by publishing product reviews and recommendations with affiliate links and other non-obvious exchanges of data value.

They no longer even bother making these "articles" unique. The headlines follow the same formula: "I've tried (x) of [product] and only (y) deliver." Oh, really? Tell me more!

Readers don't know know they're purchasers until they read these suggestions and click through. What else can they be programmed to do? Is the power of suggestion limited to the dark side of ultra processed foods and divisive politics. Can (should) we use these powers for good and harness them in service to collective actions like volunteering or community composting?

I'd like to learn more about what's going right in your online world. If you've designed, led, or run across an example of effective online strategy that has recently galvanized viewers into becoming active participants – in a positive way – please let me know.

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

Get the white paper here

_________________________

Some of the smartest, most successful people I've ever met used the simplest, most obvious tools and techniques. What's your favorite hammer? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

Three hundred fifteen million years ago, a photon slipped free from the clutches of its parent star and raced 93 million miles across the void. Some 99.9999999 percent of its fellow photons kept on sailing past eternity. A rare few, after billions of miles, bounced off the craters and canyons of some savagely bleak world in the outer solar system. Still others – after a billion billion miles more – mutely scattered off disembodied nebulae, drifting through space. But our photon was headed to the most interesting place in the known universe: the Earth.

So begins "The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything" by science writer Peter Brannen. From the New York Times Review of Books:

"This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology, including all the modern woes associated now with the troublesome greenhouse gas.

By the end, the reader feels convinced: Evolution and human prehistory and wars and the Dutch East Indies Company and the attack on Pearl Harbor and Reagan and Thatcher and and and and and and. … All of it looks like the story of carbon dioxide, after all."

Tech That Finally Solves Your Younger Self's Gmail Address Problem –

When I taught high school courses, I routinely advised students who were writing resumes to open new Gmail accounts with usernames that were more professional than their eighth grade choices.

Now, according to Android Authority, you can change your Google account username without losing your data. The path: Google Account settings → Personal Info → Email → Google Account email → Change Google Account email. Google started testing the feature earlier this year and it's now widely available across the US.

Quotes I’m pondering –

In late March, while I was huffing and puffing through the Ironman triathlon in Oceanside, CA, my wife and daughter attended the local version of "No Kings," the largest national protest in American history. They held simple signs with thought-provoking quotes.

You ask me what forces me to speak? A strange thing; my conscience.

– Victor Hugo

It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.

– Abraham Lincoln

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Shanidar 1 couldn’t have survived without help. He suffered a severe blow to the head, lost his right arm at the elbow, sustained damage to his right leg, and experienced progressive, profound deafness. There were no pain meds. Only cold, and cave bears looking for easy prey. And yet, Shanidar 1 lived to around fifty years old, which in the Ice Age made him ancient.

He could not hunt. He could not carry. He probably could not even chew tough meat. And yet, morning after morning, someone brought him food. Someone dressed his wounds. Someone stayed.

The bones of Shanidar 1 were excavated from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1957, and they tell a story that challenges the idea that prehistoric life was purely brutal. His Neanderthal skeleton bears evidence of severe trauma — a skull fracture, a likely amputation, leg damage — all suffered early in life. Yet he survived for decade. Archaeologist Pat Shipman called it "a testament to Neanderthal compassion."

Shanidar 1 is not alone. In 2024, researchers described a Neanderthal child — nicknamed "Tina" — found in a cave in Spain, whose inner ear showed the unmistakable anatomy of Down syndrome. Tina was completely deaf, prone to severe vertigo, and unable to maintain balance. She lived to at least six years old. Also in the Ice Age. While the group was constantly on the move. Scientists concluded that Tina’s survival required sustained, community-wide care from birth — care given to someone who could never repay it. This is some of the earliest confirmed evidence of true altruism in the human story.

In prehistoric Vietnam, a 4,000-year-old skeleton shows a man with a paralytic condition who was fed, moved, and cared for throughout his adult life — by a community that was experiencing a famine. “That tells us people mattered,” said archaeologist Lorna Tilley. “They were valued.”

Written records of organized charity come much later. Mesopotamian temples redistributed grain around 3,500 BCE. Hammurabi’s Code protected widows and orphans. Ancient concepts of dāna, zakat, and tzedakah provided templates for doing good deeds. But the impulse itself? It predates all of that by hundreds of thousands of years.

Compassion and volunteering are older than civilization, older than writing, older than the wheel. They are, it turns out, just as essential to living interdependently as any tool ever invented. Volunteering is literally in our bones.

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

Get the white paper here

_________________________

Some of the hardest people I've ever known have also been the kindest. Have you ever seen a fierce human go out of their way to be giving or compassionate? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

Three hundred fifteen million years ago, a photon slipped free from the clutches of its parent star and raced 93 million miles across the void. Some 99.9999999 percent of its fellow photons kept on sailing past eternity. A rare few, after billions of miles, bounced off the craters and canyons of some savagely bleak world in the outer solar system. Still others – after a billion billion miles more – mutely scattered off disembodied nebulae, drifting through space. But our photon was headed to the most interesting place in the known universe: the Earth.

So begins "The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything" by science writer Peter Brannen. From the New York Times Review of Books:

"This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology, including all the modern woes associated now with the troublesome greenhouse gas.

By the end, the reader feels convinced: Evolution and human prehistory and wars and the Dutch East Indies Company and the attack on Pearl Harbor and Reagan and Thatcher and and and and and and. … All of it looks like the story of carbon dioxide, after all."

Tech That Finally Solves Your Younger Self's Gmail Address Problem –

When I taught high school courses, I routinely advised students who were writing resumes to open new Gmail accounts with usernames that were more professional than their eighth grade choices.

Now, according to Android Authority, you can change your Google account username without losing your data. The path: Google Account settings → Personal Info → Email → Google Account email → Change Google Account email. Google started testing the feature earlier this year and it's now widely available across the US.

Quotes I’m pondering –

Last weekend, while I was completing my sixth Ironman triathlon in Oceanside, CA, my wife and daughter attended the local version of "No Kings," the largest national protest in American history. They held simple signs with thought-provoking quotes.

You ask me what forces me to speak? A strange thing; my conscience.

– Victor Hugo

It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.

– Abraham Lincoln

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

And, for the nth time, I watched in amazement as history repeated itself.

When I was young, maybe six or seven years old, I started reading the books on my grandmother's bookcase. It was quite the ride, from cookbooks to Erica Jong's Fear of Flying (!). But one book intimidated me.The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer was a large, thick, black tome full of evil that towered over the other books, dominating the space like Darth Vader. With a swastika on the spine. A swastika! In my Holocaust-surviving grandmother's apartment? When I finally got the courage to pull it off the shelf, the words of George Santayana's epigraph immediately and permanently tattooed my brain: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I asked my grandmother why she had a book about Nazi Germany. She told me that to defeat the enemy, you had to understand the enemy, and that the real enemy wasn't Nazism, but the forces that created Nazism and all other forms of fascism and oppression. So imagine my surprise when I realized that the concert I finally bought tickets for featured Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil presenting music that Beethoven composed to accompany a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, inspired by Shakespeare, about...

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[And now a word from The Simulation Is Getting Sloppy Department: My Dad dropped out of UC Berkeley and enrolled at California State University Sacramento. My Mom attended Valley State (later renamed California State University Northridge). For bizarrely different reasons, they both decided to learn German and enrolled in an exchange program that took them to Heidelberg, Germany, where they studied, met, and fell in love... at the Goethe Institute.]

...Egmont.

"Who?" I wondered as I read the program. "And why is Cate Blanchett narrating this performance?"

Oppression breeds heroes. This is true throughout history, for people all over the world, from the beginnings of civilization in Africa and Asia to the Middle East to Europe to right here in North America, right now.

Egmont was news to me because my schooling didn't focus on the details of the Eighty Years' War or the liberation of the Netherlands from Spain. Reading about it now, the origins of the Eighty Years' War make Game of Thrones seem almost realistic. (You may have heard of the Duchy of Burgundy, or the House of Hapsburg, but did you know how their marriages and conquests affected the Seventeen Provinces, which arose from the Burgundian Netherlands and later – the ones that seceded, that is – became known as the Dutch Republic? Yeah. Me neither.)

It turns out that Goethe was moved to write about Egmont because Egmont was an idealistic hero who trusted the goodness of those around him. The real life Egmont was a count whose quiet dignity and beheading in 1568 sparked the national uprising that eventually led to the independence of the Netherlands. In the play, Egmont confronts the authority of a duke with integrity. He calls for a fight for independence. And he is sentenced to death, which he accepts with grace. Goethe depicts Egmont as a martyr who was betrayed and abandoned by the cowards he advocated for.

During the performance at Disney Hall, a spotlight showcased Cate Blanchett speaking as Egmont between movements of the incidental music that Beethoven composed to accompany the play in the early 1800s.

But Blanchett's words were updated from Goethe's original by Jeremy O. Harris to include references to our situation here in the United States at the present moment. At one point Blanchett, as Egmont, says, "That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you." Renee Good's last words.

Goethe was moved to write about Egmont because he was inspired. Beethoven was moved to write music for Goethe's play about Egmont because he, too, was inspired. Dudamel was moved to update Goethe's words and Beethoven's music for this moment in history because he felt compelled to share a dose of that inspiration with us all. So that we don't abandon each other to silence or martyrdom, but continue to support each other and defend a way of life grounded in liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

My grandmother would have been glad he did.

_________________________

Did you know that classical music is arguably more punk than... punk? Do you have a favorite piece of classical music that inspires you? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game

What I’m Watching –

I loved Game of Thrones until I didn't. In fact, in the end that show turned so sour for me that I didn't bother watching House of Dragons, and I only begrudgingly tuned in for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I was rewarded. From The Guardian: "(A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is) a smaller, smarter, funnier and more charming glimpse into George R.R. Martin‘s bigger-is-better realm. It isn’t so much a Game of Thrones series for people who hated Game of Thrones, but it’s a Game of Thrones series for anybody who has ever wondered what, say, a Richard Linklater version of Game of Thrones would be. It’s a loose hangout comedy, with a tightly contained six-episode narrative arc and episodes generally running under 40 minutes. True to its source material, it’s the TV equivalent of a novella instead of an epic tome."

Quote I’m pondering –

Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there's the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old pro copywriter. Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is "new". Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of... calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It's delicate... but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means, "the pain from an old wound". It's a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device (the Kodak slide carousel) isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the Wheel. It's called a Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around, and back home again... to a place where we know we are loved.

- Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

The video evidence is no more or less disputable than the Rodney King footage. A masked man deputized by our federal government shoots an unarmed mother of three while she sits in her car trying to move out of harm's way at slow speed.

There is no sense to be made of this, or of politicians' lack of decency and humanity in response. So how should we respond? In our country, success is often defined by wealth, so maybe we should take a lesson from one of the richest men in America.

Warren Buffett has retired, mostly. After sixty years on the job, at 95 years old, Buffett is still chairman but no longer CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest corporations in the United States and the first non-technology company to be valued at more than a trillion dollars.

When financial journalists and business school professors describe Buffett, they unfailingly point to his down home folksy persona and unassuming lifestyle as models for success. Buffett's loudly understated values have supported his ability to accumulate wealth. Staying with one spouse in one house – in Nebraska, no less – for decades proved to be a great way to save money and build wealth over time.

But that's not how Buffett's tenure at Berkshire Hathaway started.

Buffett took the job away from someone else because he got angry.

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The tiny town of Adams (population 8,166) in Berkshire County, Massachusetts is the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony. The town doesn't have much claim to fame. Or maybe it has deeply held principles. For one reason or another, it built an entire museum in Anthony's honor even though she only lived there until she was six years old.

Around the time Anthony was born, the population of Adams doubled. The War of 1812 stimulated the American textile industry – British textiles were no longer available. Adams became a textile town. The farms along the Hoosic River were replaced with mills.

In 1888, William and Charles Plunkett opened Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company, which merged in 1929 with Valley Falls Company of Rhode Island to form Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. The company survived the Great Depression and did very well after World War II, merging in 1955 with Hathaway Manufacturing Company, which had been founded by Horatio Hathaway in New Bedford, Massachusetts, about 150 miles from Adams, also in 1888. The new entity became known as Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett didn't care about the history.

What Buffett cared about was that Seabury Stanton broke his word.

Warren Buffett got interested in Berkshire Hathaway because it was failing. As mills closed, Buffett figured there would be a tender offer and he could make a profit on the stock. In 1962, Buffett started buying shares of Berkshire Hathaway for his investment fund at $7.50 per share. By 1964, Buffett had accumulated enough Berkshire Hathaway shares to own 7% of the company. He offered to sell his shares back to Berkshire Hathaway at $11.50 per share. Buffett spoke with Berkshire Hathaway Manager Seabury Stanton and the two men made a deal.

But when Buffett received the tender offer in writing from Stanton, the share price offered was $11.375 per share. Buffett still has the letter, and as he read it during an interview 48 years later, he remembered how it made him feel: "He (Stanton) chiseled me for an eighth... This made me mad." Buffett bought even more of the stock – at a higher price – to take control of the company and fire Stanton.

Over the years, Buffett has said many times that this was a poor business decision. In 2010 Buffett told CNBC that his action cost him $200 billion over the long run: "I committed a major amount of money to a terrible business."

So what motivated him? Why did he decide to go after Stanton and take Berkshire Hathaway for himself?

Buffett's easygoing, self-deprecating style and his chuckle at the memory make it easy to forget that one letter led him to fire two generations of a family, change life for hundreds of employees, and launch a company that changed the course of American finance. But his lesson is clear: When someone breaks their word, get angry and take their job.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

_________________________

Have you ever gotten mad enough at a perceived injustice to do something about it, even if it cost you something important? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

Public Enemy Fight the Power. The Isley Brothers Fight the Power, Pts. 1 & 2.

What I’m Reading –

I'm rereading one of my favorite books, Heart of the World by Ian Baker. My own trip to Tibet changed my life forever. Baker's journey to the Tsangpo Gorge is a reminder that the places we explore are out there, but our ability to explore them – or even see what's right in front of us – are the direct result of the work we do in here. From a 2006 review in The Independent: "Ian Baker has lived in Nepal for over 20 years, and dedicated much of that time to Tibetan Buddhism. He understands the teaching - that to gain access to paradise one must seek out the beyuls, or hidden-away lands. The more inaccessible the beyul, the more illuminating the paradise it conceals. And it seems that at the eastern end of the Himalayas, obscured by a vast waterfall in the remote Tsangpo Gorge, lies one of the greatest of all such sanctuaries. After much time spent interviewing lamas and leafing through obscure Tantric texts, the author at last located the bottom of the forbidding gorge - and so discovered, he tells us, the legendary grail of both Western explorers and Tibetan seekers. Thus he completed a journey begun more than a hundred years earlier."

What I’m Watching –

I was glad to see The Pitt come back for a second season on HBO. I like The Pitt because it reminds me of what good TV can do. Apparently I'm not alone, as Sophie Gilbert reports in The Atlantic (gift article): "There’s simply no way to watch The Pitt and feel good about the way society is currently functioning. Which is the point. The show can be funny, the camaraderie among the characters is gratifying, and the doctors are extraordinarily good-looking in the way only TV doctors can be. But in a moment when most series seem intent on keeping us mindlessly half-engaged and monetizing the minutes we watch, there’s something inherently satisfying about a series that actually wants us to think. And, even more crucially, to care."

Quote I’m pondering –

The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.

- Ed Latimore

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

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Pun-Arj introduced me to his colleagues at CMU and our exchange gained momentum. In late October I flew to Chiang Mai. I have never met a friendlier, more welcoming group of academics and professionals.

I was reminded for the nth time that sharing meaning and trust are best served by connecting in person. Eating a meal together is so much more fun than sitting on Zoom. After daring me to eat a spicy dish, and watching in surprise when I happily did, the dean told me that I have an American face and a Thai stomach. In between talking about organizational vision, interpersonal dynamics, the neurology of understanding, and the interdisciplinary impact of Open-Source Learning, we laughed often, and we laughed hard. The math professor told the shortest, most boring story I’ve ever heard. When we all exchanged glances as he finished, the moment became hilarious, and we became friends.

I’m honored to support a group of people who genuinely care about creating value through learning. Unlike the incubators that have sprung up at American universities, the Chiang Mai University model focuses on creating value by amplifying community values and social good. The first student venture is based on technology designed to address problems caused by hearing loss. 

We need more of this in the world. 

_________________________

What happened when you followed an online conversation into real life? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

I have become fascinated with the music of Ichiko Aoba. You can see her perform live here.

What I’m Reading –

This past few weeks I’m writing more than I’m reading. If you’re interested in becoming an early reader of a book on the history, nature, and future of promises, please reply and let me know.

What I’m Watching –

Pluribus on Apple+.  From The Guardian: “It takes some chutzpah to look at the world in 2025 – especially if you are a non-Maga citizen of the US – and say to yourself, ‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be almost more terrible if everybody just … got along?’ But that is essentially what (Vince) Gilligan (X Files, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) has done with this tale of an alien virus that sweeps the globe, turning everyone happy and content, literally uniting minds (everyone’s thoughts, knowledge and memories are available to all – people no longer refer to themselves but as “this individual” when they speak) and causing them only to be kind to each other. So begins an interrogation of what is lost when everyone is in agreement. When there is but one mind, no variation – are we still human? Pluribus has great lines and blackly funny moments but escapist fluff it is not. It’s almost as bleak as real life.”

Quote I’m pondering –

The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.

- Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Friends at lunch in Chiang Mai. Photo: David Preston

But something felt wrong to Academy head coach Brendan King. ‘As soon as I walked out of the locker room, my stomach kind of turned into knots. And I said, I'm going to need to know if we really won this game or not,' King told CBS News.” 

King went home and watched the game. He counted every made basket and every free throw. Sometimes it sucks to be right. King discovered that his team had actually lost. Someone at the scorekeeper’s table had miscounted during confusion about the scoreboard early in the game. A 44-43 victory was actually a 43-42 loss.

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According to league rules, it didn’t matter – once a game is over and the score is recorded, what’s done is done.

Coach King told his team, though, and the whole thing didn’t sit well. Academy players unanimously decided to appeal their own victory. The league awarded the victory to Apache. According to one Academy player, "It was a really good teaching moment for us to just be, like, this is not the whole point.”

I love sports because, to me, they’re always about something more than sports. As Apache Coach Ann Merriweather put it, "It showed us, you know, there are still good people in this world," Merriweather said. "It's something we'll always remember."

_________________________

Have you ever corrected a mistake against your self-interest, just because it was the right thing to do? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

I was sorry to hear that D’Angelo passed away and I’ve been listening to a lot of his recordings. Here is an hour of D’Angelo live from the 2015 North Sea Jazz Festival.

What I’m Reading –

By popular demand (my daughter asked me to), I brought back the LIT AF podcast and picked up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where I left off. This week, the creature started telling his own story. 

What I’m Watching –

Murderbot on Apple+.  I rarely watch a show more than once, but our son is home this week and this comedy of ten half-hour episodes is a perfect fit. From NPR: “It's about a robot played by Alexander Skarsgård rented by a team of planetary scientists to work security on their expedition. Unbeknownst to them, it's more than a robot – it's gained sentience, and wants nothing more than to be left alone so it can watch the thousands of episodes of TV shows it's downloaded.

… Relatable.

It knows that its gaining of free will would be considered a malfunction, and would result in it being scrapped for parts. So it pretends to be the unthinking, dutiful machine they rented, even as it silently, and hilariously, judges the humans it's protecting for being impractical, unsafe, naive and (from its perspective) wildly emotional.”

You heard it here first: Boldness is all.

Quote I’m pondering –

Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs.
- Gloria Clemente (played by Rosie Perez) in the movie White Men Can’t Jump

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Hash marks on the back of a legal pad. Photo: David Preston

Last week, I loved reading everyone’s views on free expression. And I winced slightly but paid close attention to a couple readers’ concerns that I didn’t include enough non-male comedians in

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Laughing Matters (I highly recommend Jordan Jensen’s Netflix special for a trip to the edge – she makes Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin and Wanda Sykes and Chelsea Handler and Amy Schumer and Ali Wong, among my other female favorites, look mainstream. I also want to acknowledge that I got Ms. Jensen’s name completely wrong when I typed it from memory.).

When I write these essays/articles/missives, I usually approach whatever’s on my mind from an unequivocal perspective. It’s not my style to soften things with qualifiers like, “it depends” or “on the other hand…”  And especially when it comes to human rights, I do not believe that there are good people on both sides. 

I don’t expect people to agree with me. In fact, I’m super interested when you don’t. My favorite part is the conversation. The main reason I write this is because I am a philosopher (literally a “lover of wisdom”) at heart, and I believe the surest path to self-improvement and whatever passes for truth these days is exploring ideas, individually and together. 

And if one of us discovers something new? A missing piece of the conceptual puzzle that invites us to rewire our neural architecture and change our minds? That’s the icing on the cake. 

That’s learning. 

Thanks for reading, and thanks even more for responding.

________________________

When was the last time you encountered an idea that was complete crap, and engaged the idea’s owner in a conversation that led one or both of you to a deeper understanding? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, saw its military applications, became worried about his legacy as the “merchant of death,” and bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. I’m always interested in the scientific advances that earn Nobels, and this year is no exception. From Reuters: “American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments.”

What Else I’m Reading –

By popular demand (my daughter asked me to), I’m bringing back the LIT AF podcast and picking up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where I left off, so that I can finish the book by the time the movie comes out in November. Come join the fun!

What I’m Watching –

The full moon set over the desert as I take an early morning walk to clear my head:

Quote I’m pondering –

I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

- Dante Alighieri

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Full moon setting on the morning of October 7, 2025. Photo: David Preston

When I taught at UCLA and in California high schools, my students and I cracked each other up on a regular basis. Laughing didn’t distract us from from doing our jobs – in fact, it made us better at everything we did. 

How has there been exactly zero published research investigating the correlation between farting in class and academic performance? If someone could get the study approved and funded, I bet we’d discover that a well-timed fart in the classroom provides a great deal of insight about learning community culture. I also suspect that it would boost attendance and test scores more than AI and the education-trend-of-the-month (Common Core, Project Based Learning, Professional Learning Communities, take your pick) combined.

My informal, experiential research in the classroom is supported by peer-reviewed research in respectable academic publications, such as the journal of the American Physiological Society: “Humor is documented to build relationships and enhance performance. Specifically, humor

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improves student performance by attracting and sustaining attention, reducing anxiety, enhancing participation, and increasing motivation. Moreover, humor stimulates multiple physiological systems that decrease levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and epinephrine, and increase the activation of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system.”

Laughter is good for us. It creates physical, mental, and social benefits, and it feels fantastic, which is why laughter has been so important to humanity for so long. Laughter is also easy to find – if you’re looking for it. Funny is available 24/7, free of charge.

The Health Benefits of Laughter

Medical research has conclusively proven that laughter lowers cortisol, boosts our immune system, increases endorphins, and exercises at least ten different muscle groups, some of which massage our internal organs. Anyone who has ever laughed knows how good it feels. Laughter reduces stress and anxiety, regulates blood pressure, relieves pain, strengthens relationships, and makes us feel more optimistic and less overwhelmed.

For some health benefits, laughter even outperforms rest, diet, and exercise. Laughter reduces cortisol so effectively that researchers have recommended laughter as therapy. According to endocrinologists who conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of data from MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Clinicaltrials.gov, “Current evidence demonstrates that spontaneous laughter is associated with greater reduction in cortisol levels as compared with usual activities, suggesting laughter as a potential adjunctive medical therapy to improve well-being.”

Medical doctors such as Patch Adams (the title character played by Robin Williams in the 1998 movie) have integrated the use of humor in treatment. Before Dr. Adams encouraged humor as practice, uncommon patients like Norman Cousins explored the benefits of laughter on their own. 

In 1964, Cousins was diagnosed with ankloysing spondylitis, an autoimmune arthritis that fuses the spine and becomes incredibly debilitating and painful. Doctors gave Cousins a 1 in 500 chance of recovering and told him to get his affairs in order. Since the doctors couldn’t help him, Cousins started watching the Marx Brothers and episodes of Candid Camera – and he literally laughed himself well.

After Cousins recovered, he joined the UCLA School of Medicine faculty and 15 years after his diagnosis wrote Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration.  

I met Cousins in 1988 after a talk he gave with Monty Python’s John Cleese on “New Dimensions in Healing” at UCLA (in Schoenberg Hall, on the same stage where I’d give a TEDx talk 24 years later). I sat by myself that night and I treated the event as a master class – I took pages and pages of notes. I came away thinking differently about why I love to laugh and how laughter can accelerate all sorts of good effects in people and social systems.

The bottom line: If something involves humor, it is healthier. The inverse is also true: if something doesn’t involve humor, it is unhealthier. That goes for a person, a relationship, a learning community, an organization, a culture, and a country.

The need for deeper understanding of this dynamic is massive, and Cousins left quite a legacy to meet it. He brought together leading experts in psychology, neurology, and immunology, formed a task force, and today the Norman Cousins Center for PsychoNeuroImmunology (PNI) at UCLA continues to expand what we know about this field, including mindfulness via the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center.

Laughter Has Been Around, You Know?

We’ve known that laughter is good medicine for centuries. Physicians in Ancient Greece sent their patients to comedy shows. Native Americans used clowns in shamanic rituals. 

Even the Bible endorses laughter as a form of healing and well-being. Consider this quote from Proverbs: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” And this one from Ecclesiastes: “A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, drink and be merry.”

Not as amusingly, for as long as there has been humor, there have been people who say things like, “Wipe that smile off your face.” 

Even the Bible isn't immune from sanctimonious types who want to tell the rest of us what we're doing wrong. For example, according to the Billy Graham Evangelical Association: “The word ‘merry’ is from an old Anglo-Saxon word which sometimes meant ‘famous,’ ‘illustrious,’ ‘great,’ or ‘mighty.’ Originally, to be merry did not imply to be merely mirthful, but strong and gallant.”

Wuh? What Anglo-Saxon word was that? Who in their right mind wishes anyone “A strong and gallant Christmas”?

I fact-checked this on the Online Etymology Dictionary at etymonline (a website that provides a terrific free service and has the root for etymology – the study of the origin and evolution of words – right there in the URL). 

Here is their entry for merry:

Nothing about strong or gallant. It’s easy to point out factual errors. But humor is subjective and standards of what’s acceptable are not the same in every community. So what happens when we’re talking about something that has the potential to hurt feelings, or is simply more subjective and personal, like what’s funny?

Breaking the Rules Is Funny

Humor plays on the margins. Often something strikes us as funny precisely because something is unexpected, out of context, or unacceptable in everyday life. Jokes depend on twists of focus, double meanings, grammatical errors, profanity, and taboo topics. Whether it’s innocent, like the guy that pops up out of the mailbox in Candid Camera, or risqué, (Jordan Jensen’s new Netflix special will make you cringe at least once every four minutes), the out-of-the-ordinary and the irregular make us laugh.

When people with political or physical power of enforcement tell us that we are not allowed to laugh at something particular, everything is ruined. Apart from the fact that bullies have notoriously thin skin, some of the best comedy we’ve ever heard – and even the identity of comedy itself – depends on speaking the edgy truth to power in public. Comedians routinely share frank acknowledgements and explicit descriptions of intimate or institutional topics that at one time or another were considered off-limits. Social satire couldn’t exist without criticism – Swift, Twain, Shaw, Mencken and others serve a rich tradition that dates back to antiquity. Court jesters (also known as fooles) not only provided entertainment in empires around the world, they also served as political advisors. Maybe that’s why George Carlin titled one of his albums Occupation: Foole.  Some of the best standups make their living on topics that are first-date taboo: sex, religion, and politics.

During that talk with Norman Cousins, John Cleese made a couple observations about what makes jokes funny. First, Cleese noted that some of the most effective humor probes topics that we avoid in polite conversation. “In England,” Cleese said, “Everyone is very stiff. You almost don’t want to ask what’s new, for fear that someone will tell you how their house burned down and their children died.” And yet, comedians have stood up on stage and shared intimate remembrances of misfortune and even harm to children – and gotten huge laughs. Richard Pryor is widely regarded as one of the most talented and influential standup comedians of all time. Pryor told audiences about his mother, who was a prostitute, and his father, who was a pimp; he recounted the sexual and physical abuse he experienced as a child; how he got kicked out school and spent time in prison for attacking fellow soldiers in the U.S. Army; and how he set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. Pryor was authentic, and he made all of that traumatic subject matter unbelievably funny because audience members could relate to private feelings about sexuality, race, and drugs that they were unaccustomed to hearing out loud and in public.

Cleese also pointed out that many of the best jokes include personal and human characters, even if the specific representations may insult a person or a group of people: “A joke simply doesn’t work if you say, ‘One stupid person says to another stupid person…’” Cleese noted that jokes play on our prior knowledge and anticipation, and that every culture has an “other” that becomes the stereotypical butt of a joke. (Please Note: I understand that Cleese’s point is a sensitive one in today’s world and I’m not endorsing hurting anyone.) In Maui, it’s the people who lived upcountry on Haleakala, near Kula. At times in Europe and America it was the Polish. Or blondes. The list goes on: The Jewish Wise Men of Chelm, the English Wise Men of Gotham, the German Schildbürger, and so on. Without an audience or context, it doesn’t really matter who it is, and it doesn’t even matter whether they are real or invented for the purpose. The point is that saying, “A priest, a rabbi, and a cowboy walk into a bar…” is a more illustrative, engaging way to start a story than saying, “A person, another person, and a third person walk into a bar…”

These days, one of the safest and most effective ways for comedians to talk about the edgiest topics is to make themselves the center of the story. Recent specials on Netflix feature Mike Birbiglia, Lauren Larson, Neal Brennan, and many other standup comics talking about their own health issues, neuroses and therapy, bodily functions, and family members in ways that simply wouldn’t play the same – or maybe at all – if they were talking about anyone else. 

Society Needs Laughter

Laughter is freedom. Laughter is restorative resilience, a shared reminder that many of life’s daily concerns are absurd and that we’re not getting out of life alive anyway. For these reasons, humor is one of the most effective weapons against authoritarian rule. Laughing at a bully takes away their power. Laughing at their most awful threats takes away their psychological leverage: "Sure, you can fire me or sue me or even imprison and torture me... but you're still a dick, and everyone knows it."

Satirists have championed free speech and challenged the status quo in ways that benefit all of us –whatever our identity, socioeconomic status, or position on a particular issue. The value of satirical commentary is its ability to address societal needs for improvement while engaging the audience. At its best, it’s also bitingly funny. Satire also serves as a Rorschach test. You can tell who’s on what side of the issue by how they respond. Think about the political leaders in our country and the people in your social circles. Who among them would laugh about and/or support a policy paper like Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”?

It's telling that we don't currently have anything like "A Modest Proposal." Imagine a satirical topic updated for the issues and sensitivities of our day – The Onion tiptoes to the edge with a call for mass censorship that is intended to be absurd, but many commentators are avoiding policies, events, and behavior that richly deserve to be satirized because today's America is not a very safe place and they understandably fear for their safety.

When fundamentalists and authoritarian leaders feel most threatened, they rage at humor.  

In 2015, two gunmen murdered 12 people and injured 11 others at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Here in America, Lenny Bruce was persecuted for his “caustic social commentary.” George Carlin (who I think outranks both Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker as the most important American linguist of the 20th century) was arrested by an off-duty police officer at a carnival in Milwaukee because  the officer took offense to Carlin’s act. The judge laughed through the entire proceeding and threw the matter out of court. 

But the FCC took the matter further when Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say On Television” was broadcast on a New York City radio station. FCC v. Pacifica went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the FCC could not ban indecent speech, but could establish a “safe harbor” that limited the hours when it could be broadcast.

While I was working on my Ph.D. at UCLA, I taught sections of Communication Studies 101: Freedom of Communication. In weekly readings, lectures, and (my specialty) seminars, we analyzed speech that is not covered by the First Amendment, such as speech that causes immediate/irreparable harm to the nation or its people, hate speech and words that have the effect of force, incitement, and obscenity/indecency. 

For speech to be considered legally obscene or indecent, and therefore to be considered beyond the protection of the First Amendment, it has to do more than simply upset someone. The Supreme Court has described how difficult it is to establish an objective standard of what is obscene. In a 1964 ruling that prevented the state of Ohio from banning a movie about adultery, Associate Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

I’m glad that Stewart set a personally relevant high bar to ban speech. But Stewart passed away in 1981. Who on the Supreme Court (or anywhere else) “knows it when they see it” now?

The court later established the three-pronged Miller Test test for obscenity (named after the defendant in Miller v. California). To be considered obscene, material must appeal to prurient interest, contain patently offensive sexual material, and lack serious artistic, literary, political, or scientific value. Again, there is room for subjective interpretation here, but at least there are guidelines that can form the basis for argumentation. When you understand how the courts weigh cases and evidence, you start to understand why your English teacher told you to write a clear thesis and back it up with quotes from the text you were supposed to read for homework.

We need some common guardrails around punishing speech, because the real problem with punishing speech – apart from denying the free expression that English religious fanatics craved so badly that they sailed across the Atlantic and killed the Native Americans for it – is that punishing anyone for speaking out has a “chilling effect” on the rest of us.

When people don’t know what’s OK to say or what’s going to get them in trouble, they go quiet. You might think that’s a good thing. Finally a little peace, right? Maybe your neighbor should get arrested for playing that crap music so loud. But that’s missing the whole point of the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not favor pearl-clutching, complaining, or outrage. The 1995 movie American President put it this way: 

"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the ‘land of the free.’” 

Society Needs Authenticity

Neither George Carlin nor Richard Pryor became successful until they stopped trying to be what they thought audiences wanted them to be, and they started being themselves – even if that meant pissing people off.

How do we learn to be authentic? What makes people comfortable showing us who they really are? The perceived right to express themselves. The freer people are to express themselves, the more likely they are to show us who they are. That’s my favorite thing about the First Amendment – I would rather someone reveal their racist, fundamentalist, nationalist, incel, jackboot insanity that walk around among us masquerading as a sensible citizen. (Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the press, and freedom to assemble or petition the government for a redress of grievances is a solid second-place.)

That last statement may be more important than you think. Authenticity saves lives.

When I taught, it would have been impossible for students and I not to notice if one of us was building so much internal tension that they might actually consider self-harm or violence. We talked too much in person and we posted too much online for that to happen. We saw each other and we listened to each other. We got to know each other. When someone went quiet or said/posted something that clanked, we cared enough to ask questions. The members of our community felt like they could communicate authentically without being shamed for their honesty. Exchanges were often serious and vulnerable, but when something was truly funny – even if it was also awful – we laughed with our whole selves until we had to wipe away the tears. We built memories and relationships around those moments.

When Art Imitates Life

John Cleese isn’t the only law graduate to become a comedic entertainer. After getting involved in theatre during law school, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky became publicly known when he appeared on an improvisational comedy show called “Club of the Funny and Inventive People.” Zelensky became the star of a show called Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who becomes an internet sensation after a student posts a video of him ranting against governmental corruption. Then he really did, in real life. I imagine Zelensky has relied on humor to keep his sanity on more than a few occasions during a horribly tragic time in his life and his country's history.

More people from all walks of life would be better off if they could enjoy safe spaces for laughter. I think my old friend Ed Greenberg is a national treasure for the work he and his team do at Laughter for a Change.

When Life Threatens Art

Two late night television hosts, both known for their humorous monologues and long careers in parody, satire, emceeing, and joke-telling (i.e., not serious policy makers or political leaders), were fired in recent months because they said things that didn’t favor the current presidential administration, which is known for threatening and suing companies into submission.

You may not like what they said. I may not like what they said. I didn't even hear what they said, and I don't care what they said, because content is beside the point. Ask three people whether or not what they said was funny and you’ll get five different answers.

What matters more than the speech itself is ensuring that free expression has a place in our country. America has always been seen as a unique "experiment" – a country founded on ideals. In the very first Presidential inaugural speech, George Washington put it this way: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

The success of the American Experiment as a representative democracy depends directly on the idea that people should be able to freely express themselves in speech and writing, even when – especially when – that means criticizing the government.

Preserving that tradition is the key to a more satisfying, enjoyable life, i.e., a life set to the soundtrack of laughter.

In the library of St. John’s College, Oxford, there is a manuscript of revels and dramatic pieces that were performed by students in the Christmas season of 1607, 182 years before Washington gave that inaugural speech, 381 years before I met Norman Cousins, and 418 years before I sat down to write this article. Several of the works show the influence of Shakespeare’s new play King Lear, which some of the students would have seen just a few months earlier when it was presented at Oxford. 

Whether it was Shakespeare’s portrayal of a king’s madness, hypocrisy, and seemingly endless need for flattery, or whether one of the Oxford students came to this insightful one-liner on their own, they gave us timeless gift: 

Laugh on laugh on my friend

Hee laugheth best that laugheth to the end

Translated: He who laughs last, laughs best.

_________________________

Was it a fart at a funeral? A joke about divorce? What made you laugh at an unexpected or inappropriate moment? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

I don't know who's responsible for this (the oil/gas lobby? Engineering crybabies at Porsche and Ferrari?), but maybe it's the beginning of automotive journalism that will help me understand why pickups have gotten so insanely big, or why the Tesla truck thing exists at all. From Wired Magazine, EVs Have Gotten Too Powerful: "When an entry-level Volvo can get to 60 mph quicker than a Porsche 911, and in the same time as a Ferrari, electric car makers need a reset."

What I’m Watching –

Arthur Brooks is a professor of happiness at Harvard University. In this five-minute video he makes a great case for a simple strategy that will make you happier: You Need to Be Bored.

Quote I’m pondering –

I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

- Dante Alighieri 

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: "Keying Up" - The Court Jester. William Merritt Chase, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Don't worry, I’ll keep this short. 

We can’t not talk about talking with each other, whether or not we agree.

We can’t not talk about gun violence and policy.

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We can’t not talk about controversial topics, or even settled topics that have been politicized or made controversial by people who don’t have our best interests at heart.

We can’t not talk about why one dead shooting victim gets more attention than other dead shooting victims.

We can’t not talk about learning lessons in grief and revenge from the Middle East.

We can’t not talk about learning lessons in accountability from Brazil. 

We can’t not talk about what other people are trying to prevent us from talking about.

We can’t not do better.

_________________________

What topic/s of conversation have become so risky that they make you reluctant to engage? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading (that most people are not) –

From 404 Media: “The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence ‘continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism’ in the United States.” According to the National Institute of Justice review of data, which you can still read for the moment here on the Wayback Machine, “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.1 In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.2 A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of

Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue

to serve as a justification for violent actions.”

From the (gift article) NY Times: “The Department of Health and Human Services has pulled back a government report warning of a link between cancer and drinking even small amounts of alcohol, according to the authors of the research.” According to the federal analysis, even just one drink a day significantly increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer and injuries of various kinds for both men and women. You can read the original study here – and if it’s gone by the time you click through, let me know and I’ll send you the copy I downloaded.

“Wait a second,” you might say, “If DHHS deleted that study, what are people going to use to shape the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines on alcohol consumption?” A competing report compiled by authors with financial ties to alcohol companies that essentially says, “Drink up, Johnny.”

What Else I’m Reading –

During the pandemic I moved to a working class neighborhood in the Southern California desert. One afternoon, I heard the tinkling of “It’s a Small World” coming down the street. Everyone who spent their childhood on Keswick Street in Van Nuys in the 1970s knows what that sound means. I grabbed some cash and told the kids to put on their masks. Together we went out to meet the ice cream truck. 

In a world where everything seems so unnecessarily complicated, the ice cream truck is a nostalgic reminder of a simpler time.

Or so I thought.

According to Olivia Potts, author of 99 Problems: The Ice Cream Truck’s Surprising History, the ice cream truck is “A dynasty that has lasted over two centuries. It’s an industry that remains strong, with an uncanny ability to adapt to changing times. I am fascinated by its survival. After all, along with the long hours, the world of the ice cream van has been beset with accusations of adulteration, ulterior motives, and damage to children. 

And even of murder.”

What I’m Watching –

Admittedly, it’s a little challenging to watch a show about domestic surveillance now that (NY Times gift article link) The N.Y.P.D. Is Teaching America How to Track Everyone Everyday Forever. And it’s a little weird to be watching a show that is based on a book that was made into a movie starring fellow Van Nuys native son Robert Redford, who died in real life while I was watching the show. But what I’m more interested in is how we’ve managed to cut time out of story. In 1974, James Grady wrote Six Days of the Condor. In 1975, Sydney Pollack directed Redford in Three Days of the Condor. The movie’s run time was 118 minutes. The version I’m watching is no days – just Condor – and the four hourlong episodes I’ve watched haven’t even gotten me halfway through Season One. 

Quote I’m pondering –

The atmosphere in which we are living is suffocating; wherever you go there is whispering, plotting; everywhere there is blood lust, everywhere the stench of the informer, everywhere hatred, everywhere mutterings, everywhere groans....

• Vladimir Meshchersky (quoted by Vladimir Lenin)

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Curious AF logo. David Preston

But an agreement is only as strong as each party’s willingness and ability to keep their promises. 

In the First Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, the United States promised the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations that the great plains “as far as the river flows and the eagle flies” was Native American territory. In return for an annuity of $50,000 per year, the Native Americans promised to guarantee safe passage on the Oregon Trail, to allow roads to be built, and to stop fighting with United States soldiers and each other. The stated goal of the treaty was peace.

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The treaty was broken almost immediately. Immigrant miners and settlers built towns, diverted water, slaughtered bison by the hundreds of thousands, and took over lands that had been protected by the treaty. Killing resumed as people fought over hunting grounds and resources they needed for survival. Many Native Americans were forced off their lands entirely. 

The conditions after the treaty were worse than before. Not only were people stealing and killing each other again, but now they had perfectly valid reasons to distrust and sabotage each other. The broken promises appeared to confirm their worst suspicions about each other.

Promises are the building blocks of the relationships, symbolic stories, and social networks that put homo sapiens at the top of the food chain. These oral, nonbinding agreements create bonds of trust and social norms. Promises are important – which is why broken promises are traditionally major historical causes of resentment and revenge in every society around the world. 

For as long as I can remember, my Mom hammered home the importance of keeping promises. To this day I won’t make a promise unless I am 100% certain I can and will keep it. When I commit to something, my family, friends, students, and clients know I’ll deliver. 

Making and keeping agreements is fundamental to every type of relationship. The importance of an agreement becomes clearer when someone breaks it. Breaking agreements creates fractures. If we work to heal those fractures, sometimes we can grow stronger bonds, but if we leave them unattended they can get infected and at some point we may have to amputate before everything gets ruined. You only get so many chances to break someone’s trust.

So: What do you do when someone says one thing and does another? Do you stay quiet? Go along to get along? Give them another chance? Speak up? What advice would you give the spouse of a cheater, or a federal government employee in the current administration? 

Over the past couple weeks I reflected on this question because I met a prospective client who repeatedly broke promises. “Keep the date open, I’ll confirm on Monday!” (Crickets.) “Drive an hour each way in LA traffic to meet with me on Friday!” (Took the day off.)

As long as I’ve been in the “help people learn together and improve” business, it’s always ticklish to call out a need for improvement. I still get a little nervous when I think speaking up will run the risk of hurt feelings or rejection.

Providing critical feedback without complaining or getting upset is a skill worth learning and practicing. The challenge of developing that skill is one reason why honesty and “how to have difficult conversations” are such popular topics for advice columns, self-help books, and motivational speakers. 

When the news is good we don’t need help. (Test this for yourself. Imagine that you’re just about to leave the house for the evening. Your partner walks in and says, “How do I look in this outfit?” If they look like a rhinoceros stuffed in a go bag, the honesty stakes go up – choose your words with care. But if your partner looks fantastic, honesty is easy!) Since we don’t need additional support, courage, or strategy to provide positive reinforcement or heartfelt compliments, there is no research problem or need for expert insight. AI agrees. According to ChatGPT, “There isn't a widely recognized keynote speech specifically titled "How to Give Good News."

So let’s focus on being critical with a purpose. Intent matters. Critique can feel uncomfortable to offer or receive, but it’s actually a service when it’s intended to improve a project, situation, or relationship. In that context, critique is a healthy, helpful kindness. I devoted a whole chapter to this in ACADEMY OF ONE. There is such a thing as a better breakfast burrito, and being able to evaluate what makes a breakfast burrito better will make your breakfast and your life better. Judging helps us survive (how else will you know what will nourish you and what will poison you?) and supercharges our interdependence (how can you make a friend or hire a colleague without judging character?).  

I see my clients and audiences nod in agreement when I talk about this stuff in workshops and keynotes. So why do so many people sweep things under the rug instead of naming it when someone breaks a promise? Maybe we’re already too stressed out and traumatized for what we fear will be another cortisol-inducing conflict. Maybe we don’t want to risk being identified with a problem or seen as a complainer. Maybe we fear rejection or the end of a relationship.

Unfortunately, staying quiet won’t fix any of those things. Avoiding conflict may feel like a relief in the moment, but over time false acquiescence only makes things worse. You’re not a saint or a more graceful, dignified professional because you silently endure a broken promise. You’re just a person who has been hurt – we have the fMRI data to show that a broken promise inflicts injury on the brain. So now you’re the one being dishonest, and you may even be enabling abusive behavior that will continue and possibly hurt others. 

Operating without integrity is more expensive than airing a grievance. Dishonesty and broken promises create distraction, negative emotions, and poor performance. I’ve been a consultant in one form or another for nearly 30 years. In all that time I cannot think of a single instance when getting away with being unaccountable served a person, an organization, or a collaboration over the long term. On the other hand, I can think of more than a few times when one person’s momentary irresponsibility or emotional convenience was responsible for the breakdown of an entire initiative or strategic plan. I remember a partner who nearly sank a prominent accounting firm that way.

So, a few days ago I sighed – just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’s fun – and I emailed my prospective client: “If we’re going to collaborate, I need to be honest with you…” 

And that was the end of it. I got a seven-word reply that would’ve felt more human coming from AI. No acknowledgement, accountability, or apology. On one hand, I felt a loss. I really like the consultant who introduced me to this person and I had hoped to hit a home run. On the other hand, I was also relieved. If this person couldn’t keep their word on little things like showing up for a meeting they scheduled, what would’ve happened when the stakes got higher?

Here is something the advice columnists and “thought leaders” don’t mention often enough. It’s OK – important, even – to risk ending a dysfunctional relationship over a broken promise rather than turning ourselves into pretzels and overcompensating for someone else’s fiction. (This is especially true when the other party outranks you. How much will we all admire any elected GOP leader who stands up to the president?) Putting our cards on the table sooner rather than later is one way to determine whether the relationship is strong enough to sustain change or constructive conflict down the road.

Investing in honesty now can seem risky, but it’s worth the future upside. At minimum, you’ll learn something about another person and you’ll learn something about yourself. So speak to the broken promise. Honest reflection and communication is the best way to ensure that someone else’s broken promises don’t become your problem.

I promise.

_________________________

Where is your boundary for living with someone’s broken promises? Does it depend on the relationship? The history? Job security? The principle of the thing? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I'm Reading –

I’m making slow work of it, but I’m still plowing through Robert Sapolsky’s Determined, which comes to mind today because neurological studies have also accurately shown via fMRI whether people will keep or break a promise – well before they admit their intention or even become aware of it.

What I’m Listening To Because of What I Was Eating –

Since the 1990s (when it was a.k.a. “Little Addis”) the block of Fairfax between Olympic and Whitworth in Los Angeles has also been known as Little Ethiopia. Ethiopian restaurants and shops line both sides of the street. A couple weeks ago I had lunch at Rahel Woldmedhin’s new place (she used to own the restaurant next door). I was debating whether to ask for more injera when I tuned into the music playing over the speakers. The song was familiar – Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” – but the version was new to me and I loved it. Shazam told me it was a collaboration with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Geoffrey Oryema, and Alex Brown on Manu Dibango’s album Wakafrika. I’ve been listening to Dibango and after a couple albums I concluded you can’t go wrong. Here’s Dibango and friends performing “Biko”: https://youtu.be/r7X9zeK0zyQ?si=RmtlrlyzdnPAgrB_

Quote I’m pondering –

Researching a mural on a building in downtown Los Angeles led me to this piece by Morley at the 2017 SorryNotSorry festival in Ghent:

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: "The Promise" by Rene Magritte 1966 – Fair Use License via https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-promise-1966

As a thinker/educator/consultant who helps individuals and organizations understand how they can learn and engage in new ways to achieve the outcomes they want, I’m constantly exploring these types of questions with clients and audiences.

What persuades people to change their minds? What galvanizes us to change? How can we most productively explore these ideas in a time in our culture when calling someone’s previously held beliefs into question can feel high-risk or result in hard feelings?

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

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Here we can take a lesson from Dr. Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, the “gazelle/unicorn cross” that had a head at each end of its body. Sure, Dolittle talked to lots of animals and ended up in an insane asylum, but stay with me. The pushmi-pullyu is a useful metaphor for the conflict that exists within all of us: we are motivated to escape pain, and we are motivated to pursue pleasure.

Last week I wrote:

We are swimming in digital and cultural waters that we do not see, much less understand. Judging by your social media feed and your cervical posture, you are about as prepared for the tsunami of data washing over us as you are for that double-decker bus.

That approach is a “push” – the idea is to prevent oncoming pain by taking action. Learning is a great way to achieve all our personal and professional goals, so it makes sense to point out what’s missing and/or going wrong when we settle for crap information. If we know there’s a problem, we’ll be more likely to seek out and use better information to get the results we want.

But push motivation only goes so far. First of all, it’s, well… pushy. Even though my extended metaphor involved saving a fellow pedestrian from becoming a hood ornament, no one likes to get pushed around. More importantly, push motivation is defensive. Once we’ve done the thing we need to do to avoid pain, we’re not in pain anymore. And once we’re not in pain, we’re not motivated to do much else.

(NOTE: You also have to be convinced that the pain caused by inaction is real. If this were easier, everyone would floss.)

So: “push me” can get the ball rolling, but we need more to sustain our efforts.

That’s why I ended last week’s note with a preview of coming attractions:

Cheer up. There is a glimmer of hope. It turns out you’re sitting on a treasure map.

What we need to learn most isn’t somewhere out there.

The raw materials we need to learn are already present within us. Of course, having awesome knives and fresh produce doesn’t make someone a chef; we need to get acquainted with our capacities and how they work so that we can make the most of them and put them to the best use.

Welcome to the “pull you.” At some point, you wanted to be able to do something. Cook. Fly. Break a world record. Write a book. Dance. Or… (?)  

If you’re struggling to think of what that something might be, let your brain off the leash for a minute and use your imagination – which is also a skill most of us can improve. (Pro tip: The most appealing things to explore are often not the subject of academic coursework. This is a broader conversation for another day, but schooling and education are fundamental misunderstandings that have long outlived their original intent. Here we’re talking about learning.) 

How is this related to the motivation of learning? We get inspired when we see people who love something so much that they dedicate themselves to the task and do it really well. Magicians, artists, hat makers, carpenters, bakers, athletes – what these people do challenges the limits of the possible, yes, but even more importantly they inspire us just by showing up. We see potential versions of ourselves in their choices and creations, and somewhere in the back of our mind, a small voice asks: “What would you really love to be able to do, even if just for an hour?”

In less than one hour you can create a learning love story that will make you more effective at EVERYTHING you do and will inspire everyone around you. 

I will prove it to you. Be one of the first three people to click [reply] to this email. Copy and pasting the next sentence in bold – In less than an hour I can win learning – and we’ll put that meeting on the calendar. I guarantee that you will learn, and I guarantee you that you will succeed.

This is your call to adventure, which means you are on the hero’s journey, which means, if you answer the call, you will be closer to being a hero. Do you feel that? That desire to solve the problem, do the thing, overcome the obstacle, accomplish the goal, and succeed in the eyes of your people? 

That’s the pull. 

_________________________

Why did you choose to do something that other people thought you couldn’t do? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What Dan Read –

Last month, retired social worker Dan Pelzer died at the age of 92. People leave behind all sorts of legacies, but Dan’s was literally epic. From CBC: “Dan Pelzer's nose was always in a book. The U.S. Marine Corps veteran and retired social worker made it his personal goal to read at least 100 pages every day, and he kept a list of every book he'd ever read since 1962, spanning almost any genre you can think of, totalling 3,599.” 

You can see Dan’s own reading journal on https://what-dan-read.com/ (the family originally planned to hand it out at the funeral, but it’s over 100 pages!). Thanks to the Columbus Metropolitan Library, where Dan was a longtime customer, you can also see Dan’s list as a PDF and a searchable database.

What I’m Listening To –

Tom Morello’s “F*ck ICE” playlist on Spotify. Yeah, I know, Spotify, but that’s how far I’ll follow Mr. Morello for being a thinker, a values-driven, outspoken advocate for ideas that resonate with me, and a badass guitarist. “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin and “Icky Thump” by White Stripes were thumpingly predictable, Everlast’s “What It’s Like” and Devo’s “Freedom of Choice” somehow kicked even harder in this context, and “Killing in the Name Of” would’ve disappointed if it wasn’t on the list, but there were also some surprises and new friends. My favorite: “Never Fight a Man With a Perm” by the Idles.

Quotes I’m pondering –

The system under which we live is owned and operated by people who do not deserve to run the world.

I am not the least bit surprised that injustice persists. I'm also not surprised that resistance to injustice persists.

– Tom Morello

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: By Hugh Lofting - https://archive.org/details/storyofdoctordol00loft, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24205044.

Here is the link: https://participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sxsw26/community-voting-sxsw/page/community-voting/session/1753577030721001b42K

Understanding our minds, bodies, relationships, meaning, and tools are basic human skills. So why does generation after generation get hijacked by school rules and technology we don’t understand? We have conducted insightful research in all of these fields. Why can’t we get a basic user’s manual?

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

Get the white paper here

These are the questions at the core of my new book project. I’m making a case for us to redefine how we learn and integrate what we discover into our personal and professional lives. Working title: SEARCH TERMS.

I’m going to start sharing here in installments. Here’s an excerpt of the first draft introduction. Please feel free to comment via reply email. I’d love to know what you think.

_______________________

You are on a mission. You want to solve your problems, achieve your goals, and live your best life. You want to thrive, succeed, and be admired by your people. You know that learning is the best way to empower yourself. So, you head to the library across the street.

But what we discover depends on where we look. And you’re looking the wrong way.

You are confident because you are unaware, like an American on a streetcorner in London. You lift your foot to step off the curb because you think the coast is clear. Your experience and habit told you to look left, which served you well when traffic drove on the right side of the road. But now, memory is your enemy. You don’t see the double-decker bus barreling down on you from your right, driving on the left side of the street, exactly where it’s supposed to be.

I’m the guy who grabs your collar and yanks you to safety before you get crushed.

There is no time for a conversation. We won’t get to know each other, exchange niceties, or engage in ritual greetings that express our identities or establish affinity. We won’t wave to show that our hands are empty of weapons. I don’t care who you are, or whether you like me or trust me. I don’t notice what brands you wear. I don’t ask who cut your hair or whether you voted in the last election. I definitely don’t look you up online. There is no ulterior motive or subtext; no dog whistle, bro code, or acknowledgement of unceded territory. I do not empathize with your feelings or show interest in your world view. I do not even ask for your consent to grab you.

It’s too late. In less than a second the bus will hit you. 

Facts: The average double-decker bus is more than 61 feet long, 8 feet wide, 16 feet high, and weighs over 13 tons. This one is bearing down on you at speed. You’re about to be street meat. A stain. And you don’t see it coming.

This is the moment in which we live. Our politics, our economy, our environment – our children – all depend on us thinking more clearly and taking action. Walking in your shoes or bringing you into my field are beautiful metaphors for empathetic connection. And right now they matter far less than saving your life.

We need each other to learn. And sometimes to stay alive. Interdependence is essential to our survival.

The problem is that we no longer know where to look for what we need. We are inundated with information but we are not better informed. 

Your computer and your phone know far more about you than you know about them. Your TV’s ACR system sends screenshots to the internet every couple seconds. Your thermostat is talking about you to your washing machine. Oh, you combed through every menu and toggled every privacy control, did you? That's great. But your family and friends didn’t, and your phone’s proximity tracks, so you're identified by their searches and the restaurants you visit together. 

Somewhere in Estonia a data broker clicks on your IP address and sells your entire digital life story for pennies. Our preferences, behaviors, and habits have become a commodity. 

Remember the joke about the wise old fish who swims by the two young fish? “Good morning boys,” says the wise old fish. “How’s the water today?” As the wise old fish swims away, one of the young fish turns to the other young fish and says: “What the hell is water?”

We are swimming in digital and cultural waters that we do not see, much less understand. Judging by your feed and your cervical posture, you are about as prepared for the tsunami of data washing over us as you are for that double-decker bus.

(Next week: Cheer up. There is a glimmer of hope. It turns out you’re sitting on a treasure map.)

_________________________

Why did the reader cross the road? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

Books Unbanned –

In many parts of the country kids can't read. Not because they're not able, but because they're not allowed. The Long Beach Public Library Foundation is aiming to help. From their website: "Inspired by the groundbreaking work of the Brooklyn Public Library and others, Books Unbanned empowers teens and young adults(ages 13-24) residing anywhere in the country—outside of Los Angeles County—by providing free, unrestricted digital access to thousands of books. 

Through this initiative, young people can explore stories that resonate with their experiences, expand their understanding of the world, and engage with ideas that others have tried to suppress. 

If you’re between the ages of 13 and 24, and live outside of Los Angeles County, you can sign up for a free digital library card and start exploring thousands of banned and challenged books today."

Visit their website to donate and get young people connected.

What I’m Reading –

Once more, for the AI fans in the back: I’m not against digitally enhanced efficiency or possibility. What I’m worried about is the blind adoption of tools that most of us don’t understand very well. This past week I talked with a colleague who enthusiastically mentioned Chat GPT’s “agent mode.” An inexpensive, effective administrative assistant that saves you time and doesn’t tell you boring stories about their weekends? Sounds great. Right up until it takes over your software and ruins everything you ever loved.

From Gary Marcus on Substack: “Cognitive gaps in chatbots like that (to some degree addressable by guardrails) are bad enough, but there’s something new—and more dire—on the horizon, made possible by the recent arrival of “agents” that work on a user’s behalf, placing transactions, booking travel, writing and even fixing code and so on. More power entails more danger.

We are particularly worried about agents that software developers are starting to use, because they are often granted considerable authority and access to far-ranging tools, opening up immense security vulnerabilities. The Nvidia talk by Becca Lynch and Rich Harang at Black Hat was a terrifying teaser of what is coming, and a master class in how attackers could use new variations on prompt injection to compromise systems such as coding agents.”

What I’m Listening To –

Over the last few weeks I helped my parents clean out their house and I’ve been listening to their albums. Harry Belafonte’s first album. Martin Denny. Mel Torme. Jose Madeira and His Orchestra’s “Havana…2 A.M.” – released in 1957, two years before Castro…

Then I came across Elvis Presley’s first album. I had never seen the cover and it blew my mind. “London Calling” by The Clash is one of my favorite records. The cover art was a poster in my dorm room at UCLA for two years. I had no idea I was looking at a remix. Sitting in my living room, contemplating a record that shook people up in 1956, I reflected – no matter how punk we think we are, sometimes it seems we are all finding original ways to become our parents.

What I’m Designing –

One of the albums was Van Cliburn playing Rachmaninoff. Van Cliburn was a piano prodigy who achieved the single most amazing (and nonviolent) victory of the Cold War. In 1958, Van Cliburn went to Moscow and won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition. This concert will be the fourth in my Classical Concert Tees series. In the early 1970s my Dad met Van Cliburn at a mall and asked him to autograph this album to my parents and me.

Quote I’m pondering –

I’m always suspicious of celebrities who write about their lives. 

– Harry Belafonte

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Elvis Presley LPM-1254 for identification only per Wikipedia fair use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elvis_Presley_LPM-1254_Album_Cover.jpg and The Clash London Calling album cover for identification only per Wikipedia fair use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheClashLondonCallingalbumcover.jpg.

Connecting people, ideas, and experiences is essential to our individual growth and our growth as a society. Together we can accomplish things that we can’t by ourselves. (Like making functional stuff we use every day around the house, or the stuff we use to build the house, or replacing leaders who want to break away from international agreements and punish each other with leaders who want to cooperate for the benefit of us all.) 

The inverse is also true. Every effective marketer knows you have to remind your audience what will happen if they don’t follow your advice, so consider the old Flemish proverb that is usually (and inaccurately) attributed to Ben Franklin: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

Get the white paper here

The first time I visited Boston to give a talk about Open-Source Learning, I was a total tourist. I went to Paul Revere’s House. I bent an elbow with my nth generation Boston buddy and champion teacher Rocco at the Warren Tavern. I followed the historical red brick trail all around the city and I read every plaque. 

What struck me most was all of the public firsts: the first public library, the first public school, the first public commons, the first public transportation system. 

Building this country’s infrastructure started at the Boston Harbor. The colonists rebelled against taxation without representation and their tax money started funding and building things that none of them could’ve paid for or administered on their own. When I got back home from that first visit, I was struck by the ignorant irony of Ron Paul’s Tea Party advocating for less taxes and government spending.

Today, America's economic policy doesn't support collaboration. We’ve come a long way down a road that we can no longer afford to fix because many of us voted for a guy who ignores the rules, lowers taxes on the rich, raises prices through tariffs, profits on his office, fuels culture wars, and spends $200M on a White House ballroom that you’re never going to visit. The government spends $75B for ICE to harass, kidnap, and deport your neighbors and the people who work in the fields and restaurants that no longer feed you. Meanwhile, our roads and bridges are falling apart. Many of our libraries have been reduced to little more than free internet cafes or air conditioned shelters from heat domes. 

I pay my taxes and I love my country, but I am not represented by my government. This isn't a party thing. This is an American thing. Read your Niemöller – you may think this doesn't apply to you, but it will soon enough.

I'm writing about this because the cruelly selfish billionaires and non-billionaire morons who support Donald Trump at their own peril are now endorsing his practice of shaking down universities to pay ransoms for previously committed research grant money.

The Trump administration has frozen nearly $600 million in medical and science research grants to UCLA, my alma mater, and is attempting to extort $1 BILLION to restore it. Apart from the predatory math, their argument is based on worse than nothing.

"Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic anti Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution," U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. "This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system."

Bondi and the administration are full of crap. Not only is the charge untrue, but it puts Judaism back in the headlines right next to conflict. I’m a three-time graduate of UCLA. I taught there for more than a decade. I’m also a Jew. UCLA is one of the safest, most diverse, most inclusive places to attend school for anyone who identifies as human, however they identify with any other identifier, which is why it is also the most recognizable brand in higher education around the world.

And as for the value of the research conducted at UCLA?

I couldn't send this message and you couldn’t read it (or anything else on a screen) without the federal grant-funded research done at UCLA.

There is a very ordinary-looking computer lab that you can visit on UCLA’s campus at 3420 Boelter Hall. 

In 3420 Boelter Hall, on October 29, 1969, Professor Leonard Kleinrock and his students sent the first message over the Arpanet – the precursor to the internet – to a lab at Stanford. They meant to send “LOGIN” but the connection cut out after the first two letters, so the first message was “LO” as in, “Lo and behold.” Accidentally kind of cool. 

Their work was funded by the United States Department of Defense. A federal grant.

That’s right. Every tech bro, every influencer, every app, every digital convenience and entertainment you’ve ever loved, and everything else in today’s culture that owes its existence and its identity to the internet... has a government grant and a public university to thank.

Somehow, we must find a way back to protecting the financial support for mentorship, cooperation, and collaboration. That means fighting fascism and extortion. Because there is no more neutral and no one is ever going to do anything like this by themselves. And if we don’t hang together…

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What public utilities, facilities, or services are you willing to support with your tax dollars? And what are you doing today to preserve the America that got you this far? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________ 

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Arting –

The concept of art is an ongoing fascination to me. Not just the conversations about what qualifies as art, or what is aesthetically pleasing or shocking or technical or primitive, or even what collides at the intersection of art and commerce. What makes art eternally interesting is how it engages us. A creator and viewer – or an observer who notices something in the world and writes a description or takes a photograph – to make an object or a moment or a perspective meaningful. Art can’t exist without people, and people can make the most seemingly incidental, random things appear artful. We create casual art all day. When you tell a friend about a conversation after the fact, the words become dialogue between characters in your story. Art connects people with ideas and things in the world to create interactions, relationships, concepts, and even identities. 

Every once in a while, art does something new and unexpected or presents a familiar idea in a novel way. Here are examples of both from last week.

I had a few hours in Downtown Los Angeles so I wandered over to the galleries in the Arts District. 

Just inside the front door at Hauser & Wirth there was an exhibit featuring students’ projects with images and messages that featured their experience of mentorship:

But it wasn’t until I made my way into the larger gallery at the back of the courtyard that I understood the theme. Painter Henry Taylor honored his mentor James Jarvaise with an exhibition that features 70 years of painting and sculptures by both masters: Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked.

Taylor's work is well-known, but I didn't realize that his mentor was a master in his own right. And that's the whole point. If Jarvaise hadn't guided Taylor, neither would've become the artist or the mentor whose work and insight inspired thousands. And I wouldn't have wandered into an unexpected artistic meditation on mentorship or written this newsletter.

Art – and mentorship, and federally funded research – is also about expanding the boundaries of what we know. Which is why I was excited to read about an artist using technology in an unexpected way to create meaning. From the New York Times: “As I stared, I realized that the dots and blobs were fading and shifting in almost imperceptible ways. My vision had to adjust before it could begin to register what I was seeing. And then, once it did, I let out an audible ‘whoa.’

“At its best, Kurant’s art inspires this type of reaction. The Polish-born conceptual artist, who lives in New York, creates works that feel like propositions. For example, “Semiotic Life” (2022/2025), another piece in this exhibition, features a living bonsai tree intertwined with a bright blue, 3-D-printed resin rendering of what the news release calls “its algorithmically predicted, optimized future form.” Kurant is asking how the technology we’re all increasingly subject to quite literally shapes us.

“In the case of ‘Conversions 5,’ the painting is made from liquid crystals that shift in response to heat signals generated by an algorithm, which tracks the emotions in social media posts by participants in global protest movements.”

What I’m Listening To –

Just outside the gallery with the Henry Taylor exhibition is the Hauser & Wirth bookstore, where I always like to linger because they have fun, well-designed books and they play great music. This time, it was Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash. Together. I stopped reading, asked the clerk to turn it up, closed my eyes, and listened to their version of “Redemption Song.” Bob Marley’s original is one of my favorites and I’d heard this version before but never really listened – better late than never. 

What I Saw But Didn't Quite Believe –

Looking out over Hermosa Beach, I realized that people can mess around on their phones while doing just about anything, including TRAINING A FALCON TO PLAY BEACH VOLLEYBALL. (I'm actually not sure about the beach volleyball part. But next to the bird responding to a whistle and swooping down toward its food once in a while, the most amazing thing about this from a distance was that it seemed like no one on the beach even noticed. The crows and gulls did, though – you should've heard the crows freak out when they tried to land in their usual palm tree and discovered they had predatory company.)

Quote I’m pondering –

When we sent that first message, there weren't any reporters, cameras, tape recorders or scribes to document that major event. We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was.

What I missed was that my 97-year old mother would be using the Internet today, and she is. 

– Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Display of student artwork at Hauser & Wirth front gallery on August 7, 2025. Photo: David Preston.

This week, I’m sharing an example from my own life. My daughter has always been a reader, but when she was nine years old she took our tradition of the bedtime story to the next level. It wasn’t exactly her first “big book” rodeo – we’d read Baum’s entire Wizard of Oz series and Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – but what she did next broke the mold.

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.

Get the white paper here

Over the course of half a decade – a third of her life – my daughter lived into one story so deeply that not only did it help reinforce her love for reading and help her connect dots to think critically and creatively about the world around us, but the experience itself changed her ideas about who she is and what she can accomplish. 

In 2019 I took my family to the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for a performance of Les Misérables.

I’m not a huge musical theater fan, but the play – one of the world’s most popular musicals – has long been a favorite of mine. I first saw it in 1991, when my friend Greg Blanchard landed the role of Enjolras in the national touring production at the Shubert Theatre. At the end of Act I Enjolras leads the students at the barricade in one of the most recognizable protest songs – “Do You Hear the People Sing?” – and Greg had a monster set of pipes. It was so cool to look out at the stage, feel all that energy from the song, and then suddenly remember: “I KNOW that dude!”

Since then, I’ve seen the play three or four times. There is something undeniably special about this work. I even sat through the movie once (but that’ll never happen again – I can't take Russell Crowe singing). 

In December, 2015 I was in England to give a talk at the University of Chichester and I took my then-girlfriend to see Les Mis at the Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End. It was the first time I saw the play as a father, and Jean Valjean’s character moved me in ways I didn’t expect. Also, there is something about the alchemy of live theater – who’s in the play, who’s in the audience, what they ate or whether they slept or how what’s happening in the world affects their mood, the weather – that makes each performance unique. That night was electric. The cast was on fire and the audience was totally engaged. Not a phone in sight. When the play ended, everyone was paralyzed. No one moved for a full two seconds after the performance. I heard sniffling and I realized it was me. Then I noticed I wasn’t alone – half the audience was fighting back tears. When hundreds of us finally sleepwalked out into the rain, we all just stood by the lobby doors under the marquis lights. No one wanted to leave for fear we might break the spell. It was magical. On the way home from that trip I bought my girlfriend a ring and asked her to marry me.

Back to the future. The 2019 performance was yet again a completely different experience because my wife (she said yes! :) and I brought our three kids. Les Mis isn’t written for children, what with the whoring and stealing and killing and all, but our youngest dug it more than anyone else. She found a copy of the book that I’d never read all the way through – the unabridged version is 1247 pp. – and cracked it immediately. I was so surprised that I paused to take this picture:

She looked up. “Daddy,” she said, “will you read this with me?”

“Uh, sure thing, sweetheart.”

“Can we start tonight at bedtime?”

Okeedokee…

And so we did. For the last 5+ years, nothing – not joint custody schedules, not the pandemic, NOTHING – stopped us. Whenever we picked it up it was like we had just left off the day before. 

Until last night. 

Last night, my daughter and I turned the final page on Victor Hugo’s 1247 pp. masterpiece. After all the exposition, the relationships, the injustices and redemptions, the ups and downs, the histories of battles and Parisian sewer systems, the treatises on good and evil and government and society, the meditations on love and human nature and God, all that was left on that last page was a heartrendingly simple description of a single stone in an overgrown, forgotten corner of a graveyard. 

My daughter and I closed the book and I wondered how she felt. Would there be a letdown? Would she reflect on the themes of the book, or the many ways it brought us together and enriched our understanding of life and society as it existed then and continues today?

We looked at each other and she smiled at me. 

“What do you want to read next?”

_________________________

What have you found in a play or a book (or in the experience of watching the play or reading the book) that changed your mind or brought you closer to someone you care about? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: AI has nothing on the emergent complexity and wonder of the natural world. Today my evidence is musical. I know some people who have spent good money and better time learning to play the drums and the vibes, and I hope they’re not too depressed when they compare their skills with popcorn and mushrooms. Enjoy!

What I'm Eating –

The City of Gardena in Southern California is known for its Japanese community – Toyota, Nissan, and Honda have all been headquartered in the area – and last week my family and I spent quality time at the Tokyo Central Specialty Market. Our daughter is learning to cook and she brought a list. The following day, she spent EIGHT HOURS STRAIGHT in the kitchen to create a five-course vegan/GF Japanese dinner: miso soup from scratch, mushroom sashimi (her recipe, pictured), noodle salad, okinomiyaki, and a yuzu sorbet for dessert. Unreal.

Quote I’m pondering –

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.

– Victor Hugo, Preface to Les Misérables

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Head of Medusa by Godfried Maes (1680) via Wikipedia and Art Institute of Chicago. ELO cover via Wikipedia. Wakefield fig credit: Mike Rowley.

I was looking into how fig trees mineralize CO2 (more on that below) when I found myself humming an ELO song from my youth, so I opened a browser and typed: Turn to stone.

Even though much of the World Wide Web has been polluted by self-interest and automated content, it is still the ultimate treasure trove of people and information — if you know where and how to look.

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Is there anything more important in life than knowing where and how to look?

We spend our lives searching. The results are a function of how we negotiate the agreements that frame our journeys: What are the rules of engagement? How do we make decisions? Will we take that risk? Start a business? Get creative? Raise our hand to speak? Use AI? Pitch investors? Tell the truth? Break the law? Lean in for a kiss? Take our time? Listen?

Most of us operate under the illusion that we have chosen our own paths, when in fact we have either followed the orders of childhood authorities or defined ourselves by rebelling against them. When I taught in schools and developed Open-Source Learning, and again when I started using Open-Source Learning principles in my consulting and speaking, I reflected on the idea that all of our learning must begin in the beginning.

The next time you type words into a browser, consider that you're doing much more than that. You are making philosophical agreements about the ways you communicate. Whatever shows up in the results menu is a function of the words you typed, yes, but also the browser you chose, the IP address of the device you're using, and dozens of other variables. And apart from everything that occurs outside your head, you will have reinforced neuronal connections and habits of mind that make some future paths more likely for you than others.

However many years you lived before finding your way to this paragraph, you have my empathy. Redirecting our efforts is a challenge. Everything from Newton's laws of motion to the psychology of adult learning tells us that rebooting and changing course isn't easy. Still, sometimes you have to intentionally break patterns in order to see them clearly and give yourself a choice.

HERE IS WHERE I BURIED THE LEDE

I practice what I preach. Recently I stripped my new book project down to the studs, reframed it, and now I'm building/writing again. You’re hearing about it here first. Here’s the new title:

SEARCH TERMS

Starting next week I’ll share some ideas from the manuscript and reflections on the writing process.  

_________________________

What search terms (online or IRL) have given you unexpected and/or thought-provoking results? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading (New) –

I knew that trees have the ability to remove carbon from the air and convert it to oxygen in the process of photosynthesis. Basic. But I didn’t know that some trees can also sequester carbon through an inorganic process called the oxalate carbonate pathway, in which the trees use CO2 to create calcium oxalate crystals, which fungi and microbes turn into calcium carbonate when the trees decay. Calcium carbonate is the primary ingredient of limestone and chalk. Termites sometimes help by carrying fallen leaves to their mounds, where microbes convert the carbon to calcium carbonate and store it underground. Last week at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague, researchers presented data that suggested Kenyan fig trees are able to help sequester more carbon for longer periods than we thought. 

From Discover: “Some fig trees can stash atmospheric CO2 as ‘rocks’ in surrounding soil, they show potential to become an unexpected icon for climate change strategies. ‘As the calcium carbonate is formed, the soil around the tree becomes more alkaline,’ said Mike Rowley, a biogeochemist at the University of Zurich who presented the research. ‘The calcium carbonate is formed both on the surface of the tree and within the wood structures, likely as microorganisms decompose crystals on the surface and also penetrate deeper into the tree. It shows that inorganic carbon is being sequestered more deeply within the wood than we previously realized.’”

(Related: More than a few articles I found on this topic characterized the fig tree finding as a “new weapon” for “combat” in “the war on climate change.” Huh. Trees aren’t new (unless you ask the ocean). Standing around and waving in the breeze doesn’t seem particularly weapon-y. Going to war against the climate doesn’t seem like something Sun Tzu would do. I believe that language does more than describe reality. Especially in today’s digital/political climate, language creates a sense of reality. Our species might want to take a look in the “mirror” and choose our words more thoughtfully.)

What I’m Listening To –

One of the first albums I ever bought was “Out of the Blue” by The Electric Light Orchestra. Everything about that record was fun. The cover art was fun. The liner notes were fun. The fact that I played it on a Fisher all-in-one stereo with a turntable on the top was fun. Most of all, the music was fun. Listening to ELO fuses the energy of Earth, Wind & Fire with the precision geekcraft of Rush. So, the online search results for Kenyan fig tree carbon sequestration put a huge smile on my face. I paused, put on my headphones, and listened to “Turn to Stone.”

What I’m Reading (Ancient) –

While listening to ELO and thinking about things turning to stone, I read a little about the Medusa myth. I already knew this Amazon commercial had it all backward, not to mention an irreverence for human life and contemporary societal norms (killing someone for a flirtatious look and saying they were “asking for it”???). Now I realize that I never really knew the whole story at all.

Most of us get the quick version: “Medusa was so ugly that she had snakes for hair, and if she looked at a person they’d turn to stone.” 

It turns out there’s a lot more to the myth. In various versions, Medusa was a beautiful priestess. In the first version I read, she was cursed by Athena for “an ill-fated love affair with Poseidon.” It sort of sounded like Romeo & Juliet. As I started reading different sources on both Greek (Poseidon) and Roman (Neptune) versions, it became clear that Medusa didn’t have a choice. The sea god raped Medusa in Athena’s temple, and Athena punished the only party she could. Then Perseus (whose mom got pregnant with him when Zeus hunted her in the middle of the night) killed and decapitated her to make a turn-enemy-to-stone weapon for Athena’s shield.

So the commercial-friendly, weapons grade-ugly monster of my childhood memory was, in all probability, twisted from a story of a beautiful woman who was raped, cursed, killed, and beheaded. Her story, from the earliest Greek versions to the Roman version by Ovid, includes elements of betrayal, transformation, and portrayals of the basest motivators in human nature. 

Zeus is a predator. Poseidon/Neptune is a predator. Athena is all sorts of savagely mean and vindictive. Hermes is a punk. Perseus is a dupe. The most destructive characters prevail. In case it needs saying, no one should ever be raped, killed, or turned to stone, even if they don't have cool sunglasses. Makes you wonder about our collective political karma. Have we made any progress since Ancient Greece? Are our leaders remaking themselves in the image of douche bag gods? If we want a more peaceful, amicable society, maybe we should start telling a different kind of story, instead of making everything into figgy weapons of war. 

Quote I’m pondering –

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

– R. Buckminster Fuller

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Head of Medusa by Godfried Maes (1680) via Wikipedia and Art Institute of Chicago. ELO cover via Wikipedia. Wakefield fig credit: Mike Rowley.

There was a time when leadership was thought to be the result of innate personal traits. In 1840, Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle gave a series of lectures on heroism in which he proposed that human history is defined by “great men” with qualities that empowered them to transcend society and lead others. 

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Apart from being a sexist artifact of its day, Carlyle’s Great Man theory doesn’t account for obvious contradictions in the traits of historically effective leaders. Consider: If leaders are tall like Lyndon B. Johnson, what about famously short Napoleon? If leaders are loud like George Patton, what about Franklin “Walk softly and carry a big stick” Roosevelt, or Boutros “The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence” Boutros-Ghali?

Carlyle’s theory doesn’t really matter here because it’s not going to help you be a better leader.* (*Unless you have somehow learned to become taller or shorter, in which case you have my attention.)

Rather than evaluating who leaders are in terms of innate qualities, which has led to all sorts of racist/sexist/eugenics/bell curve/external locus of control misattributions and bad social relationships and policies, it is far more enlightening and productive to ask: What do effective leaders do? We can learn and practice behaviors, strategies, and tactics.

Pro Tip: Beware the “characteristics” hedge; too many authors equivocate and split imaginary differences between traits and behaviors. 

As you swim the sea of leadership studies and listicles of leadership characteristics from HBR, Forbes, and many, many others, it’s also worth looking at leadership in the context of a culture where everyone imagines they’re a leader. Last time I checked, a leader was defined by (a) followers, and (b) going someplace new and bringing followers along. 

It turns out that leaders do lots of interesting things. Some leaders listen, some take risks, some have morning routines, some eat meat, some don’t, etc.

There is only one thing I can find that every leader has in common and that leaders fail to do at their own peril.

Leaders reflect on their own learning. Here’s how you can too:

1. Decide that you want to learn. You’ll spot opportunities for learning more easily if you’re looking for them.

2. Decide what you want to learn. Do you want to solve a problem? Master a concept? Perfect a skill? Understand an aspect of our changing economy, technology, government, or natural environment?

3. Practice mise en place. Get organized. You may not have a lot of equipment, but your tools are important, including your attention. Set a timer, clear your browsing tabs, turn off your notifications, and settle in for a properly focused work bout.

4. Curate your experience. You don’t need to blog or do anything performative that is visible to other people, but actively recording your actions and impressions will help you make more sense of things. Journal. It worked for Marcus Aurelius and it will work for you too.

5. Specifically, record what you learn. Answer the question: What did I learn today? Make sure to account for how you are different today than you were yesterday as a direct result of your learning. If you haven’t changed, you still learned – at least one way that you didn’t make progress – so take the opportunity to imagine how you will do things differently tomorrow.

_________________________

What did you learn today? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

The other night I listened to my teenage daughter describe how she sees the practice of religion as a social construct (her words). I realized the time was right to introduce her to the greatest linguist of the 20th century. No, not Chomsky, and get outta here with that Pinker stuff. I mean George Carlin. We started with Carlin on the Ten Commandments, quickly segued into Carlin on religion, and then time traveled to one of the first albums I ever owned: A Place for My Stuff.

What I’m Reading (Short) –

When I was a kid, tattoos were for Navy vets and prisoners. Then Madonna and Dennis Rodman changed everything. From time to time, I’ve thought about getting inked – my favorite designs are Mister Cartoon’s fine line blacks and grays – but I make decisions based on how I think I’ll reflect on them in the future, and I always imagined looking at my 80-year-old crepe paper skin and thinking, “That tattoo looks like crap.”

It turns out I was seeing the future for a lot of people. From GQ: Why Is Everyone Getting Their Tattoos Removed? “In 1991, two hikers accidentally discovered a 5,300-year-old mummy named Ötzi the Iceman in the Tyrolean Alps. His wrists and torso were covered with 61 tattoos, making him the earliest known tattooed human. In the millennia since, the lifecycle of a tattoo has become comically brief. Maybe the TikTok brain and attention-span problems of Gen Z have filtered all the way into their attitudes about tattoos. Gen X’s tattoos were so hard-won and transgressive that they tend to last forever. (To say nothing of the rare tattooed boomers.) Laser technicians theorized to me that people aged 35 to 50 tend to live with their tattoos for a decade before regretting them, whereas the younger generation—who never grappled with much stigma in the first place—regret their tattoos more quickly, within two to three years. Easy come, easy go.” 

What I’m Reading (Long) –

I’m still working my way through Determined by Robert Sapolsky. I like the way Sapolsky approaches chaos theory and emergent complexity to differentiate the likelihood of probable outcomes from the existence of deterministic systems. I’ve also become fascinated with cellular automata and specifically Rule 22. I’m sharing that now because I have no real idea what I’m talking about yet, and I suspect some of you might – if you do, please feel free to drop me a line. Once I get my head around Rule 22 I’ll write more about it. I will say this much for now: Graph paper never looked so good.

Quote I’m pondering –

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: A few shelves of the library I finally downsized. Via David Preston.

That idea was popularized by Harry S. Truman, who may have gotten it from a general or a judge. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect a president, general, or judge to say. It’s a challenge. A dare to rise to the occasion. Toughen up. To many people, that’s what it means to be an American. A man. An adult.

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It’s easy to see why the saying has endured. It’s a brief, powerful metaphor that effectively conveys assumptions about shared values and expected behaviors.

BUT:

What if the kitchen sucks?

And what if there is no alternative? Our entire planet is getting hotter. Deadly heat waves will be 3-10 times more likely by 2100. Exactly what are you going to do about it? Pack up your spaceship?

Global Warming in Education

Just when you thought that the institution charged with helping people think their way through an increasingly complex, uncertain future couldn’t be challenged any more, we elected a president who wants to break everything.

From Forbes Teacher Funding Cut As National Shortage Reaches Breaking Point: “America’s education system is facing a crisis that threatens to undermine the future of millions of students: a severe and growing teacher shortage. This issue, simmering for years, has reached a boiling point as schools nationwide struggle to fill classrooms with qualified educators. Compounding the problem is a recent decision by the Trump administration to eliminate federal funding for teacher preparation programs, which has sparked lawsuits and intensified the debate over how to address the shortage. The stakes are high, and the consequences of inaction could reshape the educational landscape for decades.”

Teachers are not looking for Lebron money, or even enough money to buy houses near the schools where they teach. 

How about just not freezing or suffering from heat exhaustion in the classroom?

During a recent strike, one teacher put it this way: “(Students) should be able to come to a safe place where there’s not rats and roaches and hot conditions… As an adult, if you go to work and it’s freezing or 98 degrees or you forgot your lunch, you’re not going to be a productive employee. And school is the same way. We can’t have kids continuing to come to buildings and not have these basic needs, and we can’t expect teachers to come work in these conditions, either.”

I Sweat From Experience

In 2006 I taught a summer school class at James Monroe High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The class was held in one of those portables that never moved. The temperatures outside hovered around 105. Inside was hotter. The air was stifling. The sweat trickled down your back. Even the flies died of heat exhaustion. I watched one stop buzzing, walk a couple steps on my desk, and keel over.

The room had an air conditioner, but the thermostat was covered by a plastic housing that was locked and could only be opened with a key. I called maintenance to ask for help. No one answered. I called the front office. They told me air conditioning costs money.

I picked the lock with a paper clip, opened the plastic cover, and turned down the air conditioning.

The next day, I arrived to find the thermostat cover closed and locked, this time with a padlock. I shattered the cover with my elbow and turned the thermostat down as far as it would go.

Learning to Survive

At that time, Monroe was one of the biggest schools in the country. 5000+ students attended on a three-track, year-round calendar. When I returned for the next track, my classroom had been moved to one of the old buildings.

Instead of a local HVAC unit with a mechanical thermostat, now I had a wall unit with an electronic thermostat that was wired into the building’s ventilation system.

I read the manufacturing labels and opened a browser tab on the internet.

The schematics were hard to understand. I don’t know much about heating and cooling systems, and less about electronic security. But I know how to read a phone number. I called the company’s headquarters in South Los Angeles. I spoke with a representative named Celia who taught me how to defeat the electronic thermostat lock code, reset the DIP switch, and turn my classroom into the freezer aisle at the supermarket.

Outside it was sweltering. Mind-melting. But in that room, we could now relax. Talk. Think.

In Conclusion

If you can’t stand the heat, remodel the kitchen.

Once we manage our heating and cooling and training for the next school year, maybe we can start stewarding our off-campus environment so the Class of 2100 has somewhere to live.

_________________________

What do you do to keep your cool and improve your skills? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

_________________________

Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

_________________________

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Listening To –

“Clampdown” by The Clash.

What I’m Reading –

Do you know the history of barbed wire telegraphs in rural America? I am absolutely loving Lori Emerson’s Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook. There was life before the internet, there will be life after the internet, and people will find a way to connect and share information far beyond the corporate lobbies and firewalls and membership subscription services that currently shape what we see and how we think. 

Quote I’m pondering (especially the last sentence)—

“This book (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences) first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.” 

– Michel Foucault

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

Know someone who is also Curious AF? Please share this edition with them!

David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Our kids living the Golden Age of Childhood watching Hollywood Bowl fireworks. Via David Preston.