RadReads N°147
This Week: What is “financial security,” time affluence vs. scarcity, David Swensen, every day trauma
A belated Happy Thanksgiving to all our Rad followers. I’ve got nothing but immense gratitude for the support over the years. If you’re in NYC, grab your Holiday Party (12/6) tickets before they sell out! And because of the holidays, this week’s issue is on the lite side.
We’ve got so much gratitude for our new Patrons: Maha, Sarah, and Tim. Our 141 monthly patrons are so 💯! Support our community for as little as a Venti Pike per month .
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🎙Trauma with a “little T” (iTunes | Google Play, 58 mins): Most of us have experienced some trauma (divorce, bullying, body image) and the cumulative effects of this “little t trauma” can be more impactful than one large incident. In this episode, psychotherapist and music therapist Maya Benattar and I explore the difference between life coaching and therapy, how to hold two opposing emotions, and what “going there” really means to Type A folks.
⏲ To promote happiness, choose time over money (Behavioral Scientist, 8 mins): As affluence increases, so does “time anxiety.” (Personal opinion: it’s hard to unlearn scarcity-based thinking)
📊 Why the normal distribution is vanishing (Alex Danco, 9 mins): In a world where access is “democratized,” does consumer demand go from being normally distributed to bi-furcated? (Note: Still thinking through this argument and where it may be applicable.)
💼 The protestant work ethic is real (PS Mag, 8 mins): This paper claims that the connection between work and happiness is much more intense in Protestant countries (even for non-Protestants, such as myself).
✅ The most important productivity app is the one that stitches them all together(Quartz At Work, 6 mins): This is about more than Zapier/IFTT, but how navigating APIs (for non-coders) is an important skill in our digital economy. This piece pairs well with last week’s tutorial on using Stripe for your side projects.
📺 A conversation with David Swensen (90 mins): Yale Endowment CIO discusses AI, avoiding investors who are “wealth maximizers, the looming public pension crisis (“Gina Raimondo is my hero”), and changing Yale’s return target from 8.25% to 5%.
LAST WEEK’S MOST READ
💬 Skimming the surface of life (Rad Awakenings, 78 mins): How philosophy can rule out pleasure, status, and money as the ingredients of a good life.
