Tell us about your design practice. What is the work you’re most proud of?

I’m one of the co-founders of Order. My partner Jesse Reed and I started it in 2017 after working together for Michael Bierut at Pentagram for a number of years.

We set out to do the type of work Michael was doing, because that’s what we knew how to do. We were sort of apprentices of his, so, branding and identity-focused graphic design. Graphic Design with a capital G and D. Which is actually a little old-school now with so much focus on digital devices.

Order started in New York, and more recently I moved to Miami and opened an office here. So we now have two offices, Brooklyn and Miami, that Jesse and I run independently under the Order umbrella. I’ve been working on a handful of projects down here that I will be releasing soon. Miami is obviously a super distinct design environment from New York, which has been fun to get into but also challenging because of how different it is.

The last project I worked on with Michael and his partner Luke Hayman was the global rebrand of Mastercard. We did the identity part: the logo and the high-level assets. Apparently it’s one of the most reproduced logos in the world, which, if you think about it, probably makes sense. It’s on every storefront and in everyone’s wallet. If I’d negotiated a penny every time it appeared, I wouldn’t be talking to you!

Order grew out of that kind of work, but we’ve always had other interests. Jesse and I also co-founded Standards Manual, which started with republishing the New York City Subway and NASA Graphics Standards Manuals. In 2020 we launched Standards, which is basically taking that idea into the future: a digital platform for brand guidelines instead of a giant PDF nobody knows what to do with.

The project I’m probably most proud of in my Pentagram era is WalkNYC, the pedestrian wayfinding system for New York City. I was responsible for the map and the graphic layout of the signs. It was a huge job. And quite daunting because you’re making this thing that’s going to be all over New York.

We decided to connect it visually to the Subway graphics, even though DOT was making these signs and MTA runs the subway. To a person walking around New York, who cares? It should feel like one city, one system.

One Order project I’m particularly proud of is Every, the publishing platform founded by Dan Shipper and Nathan Baschez. We built the identity around this idea of business writing (literally) and developed a custom handwritten typeface inspired by the Palmer Method. It’s a good example of the kind of work I love: there’s a simple idea at the center, but it can expand into a whole system.

You’re designing a thing, obviously, but really you’re figuring out the logic behind how everything fits together.

Who are the designers that had the most influence on you?

The biggest influence, easily, is Michael Bierut.

I studied at RMIT in Melbourne and won a scholarship that brought me to New York for two weeks. I’d never left Australia. I landed on Michael’s team at Pentagram and ended up staying for seven years. And now I’ve somehow been in America for nearly twenty.

Working for Michael was basically seven years of learning through osmosis. Obviously he’s an incredible designer, but he’s also an amazing speaker, extremely funny, and very good at explaining why an idea works to both clients and his team. Watching how he thought through a problem and then how he talked about it was probably as influential as the actual design work.

There are lots of other designers whose work I love, but in terms of someone who really shaped the way I work, it’s Michael.

What is your favorite medium to work in?

I don’t know if this is technically a medium, but I really love the refinement stage working with a logo or wordmark.

You’ve got an idea. Everyone likes it. Maybe it’s even been approved. And then you sit down and start really looking at it. You print it out, blow it up massive on screen, look at every letterform and every bit of spacing, and make all these tiny changes that absolutely nobody is ever going to notice.

But if you do it right, you make twenty or thirty or fifty of those tiny changes, and then you put the original next to the final version and the original suddenly looks terrible. The final one just feels inevitable. Like, of course it looks like that.

I love that process. You sort of lose yourself in the details. It feels less like “having an idea” and more like being a technician or specialist. People call it craft, which is a word I don’t particularly like, but I suppose that’s what it is.

So maybe my favorite medium is just doing finished logo artwork? Which is terribly dull-sounding to normal people, but I think designers will relate!

I also love traditional materials, photography, anything where you can get your hands dirty. If you’re a graphic designer of my age, you’re legally required to be into film photography.

How did the WITI logo idea come about? Rumor has it there was a Hillstone coaster involved.

There was! Maximum designer cliche achieved. One of my favorite restaurants and places to sit is the bar at Hillstone in Coral Gables. I go with a design problem, take a notebook, have dinner and a couple of drinks, and just sort of sit with it.

Except I’d forgotten my notebook. I do that a lot. Eventually they just started giving me paper and pens when I arrived.

So, I was sitting there writing “Why Is This Interesting?”, “Why Is This Interesting?”, and so on, over and over again. Underlining different words, changing emphasis, capitalization. I was trying to find an angle on it. I must have written it twenty times. At one point I turned to the people next to me who’d noticed and said, “You probably think I’m insane.”

Anyway, the basic idea came out of that. Technically, it was a bartender’s notecard.

What did you arrive at? And when did things click?

“Why Is This Interesting?” is a very long name! There aren’t many longer ones you’d want to turn into a logo. People are familiar with the shorter name WITI, so we knew we had that graphic version to work with. But the thing that really clicked was the idea of emphasis using italics with the wordmark.

It’s fair to say WITI covers so many different things, and to me, the thing tying it all together is curiosity. I realized you could influence the meaning of the name just by emphasizing a different word:

Why is this interesting?

Why is this interesting?

Why is this interesting?

Why is this interesting?

It’s the same question, framed differently. The way a curious person looks at the world.

Once that idea was there, the rest started to fall into place. This is without a doubt my favorite feeling with my work. When it clicks, I say it’s done. The hard part is over. And all that now needs to happen is to get it on paper.

That is of course another story, but if you’re at a bar and reach this moment, you are allowed to put your pencils down. Just make sure you write it down first.

The logo?

The shorter WITI version was always going to be the more graphic mark. We took the italic capitals and stacked them, following the strokes of the letterforms until it became this almost abstract little thing.

To me it looks a bit like a watchmaker’s mark from 1780 or something. Which I like, and I know Colin likes. It has a little bit of mystery to it, and that felt right for WITI.

The word mark?

The full name is stacked over four lines, and that’s really where the emphasis idea gets to play out.

We’re using Signifier by Klim Type Foundry. It has this sort of scholarly, bookish feeling to me, but it also has an amazing italic, which obviously became very important once the idea was based around changing the emphasis of the phrase.

So the wordmark can be pretty restrained, but then one italicized word shifts the whole thing.

How did you think about this as an expandable system?

Once we had the emphasis idea, that was the system.

I like finding what I call a trick. Something simple enough that it can keep going without feeling forced. So the italics don’t just live in the logo. You can emphasize a word in a headline, an invitation, a piece of copy, whatever. Suddenly it all feels connected without needing to slap a logo on everything.

That’s usually the kind of identity system I’m interested in. You set up a few rules, and then ideally they can keep generating things.

Any tiny details you obsessed over? How did you land on the end result?

Loads! There was a lot of finessing in the main wordmark—spacing letters, getting letters to line up, cradle one another, feel harmonious, and generally making many microscopic adjustments that look like nothing on their own, but together make the whole thing feel like it was just meant to be that way.

And then the WITI mark had its own little set of problems. Following the strokes, getting the italic forms to work together, making it feel like one thing rather than four letters stacked on top of each other. Making it somewhat readable, but abstract enough to feel like a “brand mark.” That’s the stuff I really like.

There are so many things out in the world that are really well designed and nobody has any idea. And I don’t just mean graphic design. Have you ever opened an exquisite doorknob? A really good doorknob. They don’t just appear out of thin air! Somebody sweated over that doorknob for an absurd amount of time, and if they did their job properly, you never think about why it’s so interesting.

Get off at the fifth stop. Board a train, bus, or ferry with nowhere to be. Get off at the fifth stop and spend the day. This challenge is ‘The Wrong Train.’ It's four moments, one day, and a story you could not have planned.
link → https://bucketlisterchallenge.com/witi-1

Jeralyn Gerba (JG) is a writer, editor, integrative thanatology student, and friend of WITI. She co-founded the travel website Fathom, and writes the weekly Way to Go newsletter on Substack.

Jeralyn here. In 1916, a Unitarian minister and American essayist named Samuel McChord Crothers coined a word for something humans had been doing for centuries: bibliotherapy, or treating what ails us with books. His essay in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic,” was a clever, semi-fictional account of a man who treats people’s troubles by prescribing poetry and prose.

The First World War turned out to be a real-world laboratory for the idea. When the American Library Association established its Library War Service, librarians wheeled carts of books into military hospitals and worked directly with wounded and convalescing soldiers. Reading offered distraction, companionship, and a temporary escape from the horrors of war. Books were considered part of the recovery process, not merely a way to pass the time.

In Britain, literary scholar H. F. Brett-Smith reportedly devised a “fever chart” of therapeutic reading, recommending different books for different psychological states. Among his prescriptions for soldiers suffering from shell shock: Jane Austen. Just imagine returning from the trenches and being handed Pride and Prejudice. Not a self-help book explaining trauma, but a story about the ordinary complications of being human. (Side note: Rudyard Kipling later wrote “The Janeites,” about a secret fraternity of WWI soldiers bonded by their enthusiasm for Austen. We can only speculate whether he was influenced by Brett-Smith’s fever chart.)

All of this thinking stemmed from the idea that literature can offer something beyond information or instruction: distance from suffering, a temporary home in another person’s consciousness, or language for emotions that were otherwise difficult to express.

Why is this interesting?

We live in an era when we diagnose ourselves and each other constantly, and we’ve developed an enormous infrastructure for explaining our problems. We listen to podcasts about attachment styles, read books explaining grief and anxiety, and turn to message boards to compare symptoms. We’ve become very good at prescribing information, but information doesn’t always provide consolation. Knowing more about grief, for example, isn’t necessarily the same as feeling less alone in it.

Literature offers another way in. Rather than telling us how to solve a problem, fiction and poetry help us experience it differently. Contemporary practitioners are exploring how literary forms themselves might be useful: short stories may offer a journey into someone else’s consciousness; crime fiction can provide absorbing distraction; elegies give language to the complicated emotions of grief and loss.

And people are still putting this idea into practice. Britain’s The Reader brings shared reading into hospitals, mental-health settings, and community spaces, where people gather to read stories and poetry aloud. Participants may listen without pressure to speak. The goal isn’t to master a text or learn a lesson. It’s to see what the literature brings up, and what happens when people experience it together.

We instinctively know there’s something comforting about literature. We practice our own form of bibliotherapy when we give a copy of Mary Oliver’s American Primitive to a grieving friend, or return to The Secret Garden when life feels bleak.

We don’t expect these books to fix anything. But they might offer company, perspective, beauty, or a few hours of relief. A century after Brett-Smith drew up his fever chart, perhaps we’re due for a new prescription: fewer hours searching for answers online, more hours in the company of a good writer. (JG)

Colin here. Patrick Collison recently posted one of his long riffs on X. This one was about what could happen to the economy once personal AI agents handle a lot of our buying. The whole thing is worth reading, but one paragraph deserves an edition all of its own:

In corporate strategy, people have long debated the relative importance of distribution and product quality. Perhaps you’ve made something better, but does anyone know about it? Won’t people just continue to buy the ACME Corp Mousetraps? Personal agents will, I think, act as a kind of structural subsidy for product quality. How would markets look different if individuals always spent at least 10 hours researching their purchases? On the margin, focusing on making a product better is, I think, going to become a more effective strategy for companies. This is good!

The mousetrap is a nod to the old line, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” But anyone who has worked in strategy or marketing knows the world mostly doesn’t bother. The cold reality is it still walks to whatever sits at eye level at Home Depot, ranks first on Amazon, or has the biggest media budget behind it. For most of modern commercial history, distribution has won that argument much more often than quality.

Why is this interesting?

For most consumers, brand has functioned as a research shortcut. Nobody generally has ten hours to hone in on the greatest mousetrap, mattress or dishwasher, so we outsource the decision to familiarity: the name we’ve heard, the logo we trust, the thing our parents bought. “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” is perfect shorthand. A meaningful share of marketing spend is effectively rent paid on that shortcut.

Patrick also flags a related, but different category: business models that quietly depend on inattention. This is the subscription nobody remembers to cancel, the coupon only some people bother to clip from a long receipt, or the loyalty points that expire unused, which the loyalty world calls “breakage.”

An agent that never forgets about that thing is bad news for all of them.

We recently saw this in the market, with some stocks exposed to the Cambrian explosion of personal AI agents like Instinct. These agents read the reviews, the return data, the teardown videos and the kind of deep cut Reddit thread where someone tested twelve mousetraps in their barn. And this research doesn’t take AI agents ten hours, but instead a matter of seconds.

If he’s right, this idea of the rent on familiarity falls, and the return on actually making the better thing rises.

There are many categories where buyers currently put in the ten hours voluntarily: Handmade leather goods, Japanese denim, hi-fi systems, rare varieties of sake, independent watchmakers. A two-person amplifier company can build a serious following (likely including many of us WITI types) with almost no advertising.

These categories have forums, obsessive reviewers and collectors acting as a distributed quality control. But now, agents could extend that setup to categories nobody has ever been enthusiastic about. We’re talking insurance, dental floss and HVAC contractors.

Travel is one place I expect it to show up quickly. Hotel choice today leans heavily on distribution: loyalty programs, OTA placement, whoever paid for the top of the search page. An agent working only for the traveler, with a memory of what that person actually values, will weigh points only as far as the math justifies them. The independent property with the excellent breakfast and the genuinely well furnished rooms gets a lift it has never had.

There are two caveats, and the first is the corollary Patrick draws in another of his bullets. If agents reward quality, information about quality becomes the scarce input, and wherever value concentrates, people try to manufacture it. SEO and online reviews both went this way, and a cottage industry around “generative engine optimization,” which is mostly marketing to machines, is already forming.

Signals that are expensive to fake—return rates, warranty claims, repeat purchase and longevity data—should matter more. The five-star review should matter less.

The second is that the word “personal” in “personal agent” carries a lot of weight here. The subsidy only flows toward quality if the agent works for you. An agent built by a retailer or a booking platform has its own built-in incentives, and that sponsored slot I alluded to earlier would simply relocate inside it. In that world, distribution moves from paying to be on the most visible shelves in the store to paying to be the AI assistant’s default recommendation.

For brand people, the takeaway is uncomfortable, and mostly healthy. The power of brands that served mainly as shortcuts for tired consumers is threatened. But the meaningful things still matter: Taste, a brand’s point of view, the intangibles that make someone want one thing over its functional equivalent.

An agent can tell you which mousetrap works best. But it has much less to say about why you want a particular watch, and that will probably stay the human’s job. (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a woman on an eternal quest for pleasure.

My life is governed primarily by the philosophy bestowed upon us by Kim Cattrall: I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.

I document my pursuit of pleasure in my newsletter, the name of which comes from the ancient Greek city of Sybaris – a place famed for the hedonism of its citizens. My writing seeks to answer VERY IMPORTANT questions like where to find a good martini, ways to feel more sexy, and how to navigate the dating scene in London. I also write some juicy party reports, so if you are reading this and planning something spectacular, consider this my official RSVP.

During the day, I work at Condé Nast as an advisor across brands like Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair. I’m a big lover of magazines and media, so I am of course very excited to be here. Thanks for having me!

Describe your media diet.

I read a lot for work: articles, trend forecasts, market reports, etc. It’s great actually, because I get to consume a lot of content under the guise of “research”; my excessive scrolling is what keeps me “tapped into the zeitgeist”.

Substack is a big player in my media diet too. I am constantly amazed by the level of talent and creativity on the platform. It’s become one of my favourite corners of the internet – even more so now the algorithm has finally stopped showing me those “how to grow your audience” articles that feel suspiciously like pyramid selling.

There’s also a great social scene on Substack. It’s probably overtaken Instagram for me when it comes to online community, though I do still love to keep up to date with local news via London-centric meme pages (shoutout Socks House Meeting and DalstonSuperStoned).

What’s the last great book you read?

I tend to get along well with fiction that is character-driven, slow-moving and usually a bit bleak. Some contemporary books I’ve enjoyed as of late are I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning by Keiran Doddard and Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna.

On the classic front, I finally read The Stranger by Albert Camus not too long ago. I loved it (I’m sorry).

What are you reading now?

I’ve just finished Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali and am now reading The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf. It’s great so far.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I’m very lucky in that I get to work across some of my favourite publications, so for me the strategy comes well before the material has gone to print.

Vogue is my number one. When it comes to reading a physical copy of the magazine, I suppose I let curiosity take the wheel – there isn’t a strategy as such, though I do like to look out for familiar advertisers and editorial initiatives I’ve worked on. It’s always fun to see those things come to life.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Deborah Levy! I’d like to live inside her brain for a day. She makes even the weirdest thoughts sound so wonderful.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Step is good. It lets you create your own city guides by mapping out things like bars, shops, museums, cultural sites, etc. I use mine mostly as a visual list of places I want to visit (near and far), and you can also add friends and follow other users to see what they recommend.

Plane or train?

I love the train.

Actually, I recently had a great two hour train journey where I was befriended by the elderly lady sitting next to me. She asked a lot of questions, standard stuff like WHERE ARE YOU HEADED TODAY and WHAT DO YOU DO FOR WORK and ARE YOU ON “THE APPS” and ARE BOTH SETS OF YOUR GRANDPARENTS STILL ALIVE?

I answered dutifully – I felt fine sharing all of these things with her because she was being so open with me. I found out her reason for travelling was to see her daughter, who was going through a divorce and struggling with the terrible business of selling her house.

On that subject, she asked if I own the flat I live in. I shook my head and told her that I rent.

She smiled sweetly at me then, offering some words of comfort: AH, WELL THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH HAVING BOTH SETS OF GRANDPARENTS STILL ALIVE! WHEN THEY POP IT, YOU’LL BE SORTED!

Anyway. Yes, I think train over plane.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Oxford Street in London on a weekend in December.

I can’t think of anywhere more overstimulating and overpopulated. It’s hell on earth, but I believe everyone should experience it at least once in their life, because down the line when you are having a terrible day, you can take a step back and think: ok, yes I feel Really Really Bad right now, but hey things could be worse! At least I’m not having cold sweats in a crowd outside of Oxford Circus tube station!

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I was in Rhode Island a few weeks ago, where I visited the Newport Mansions. This sent me down a deep rabbit hole of reading about the Vanderbilt family and the Gilded Age more broadly. I love history – it’s actually what I studied at uni, so I’m always fascinated by these kinds of sites.

It’s WITI, on the weekend.

Why are these interesting?

The Men With Blue Jeans – Navy SEALs in Vietnam Wore Levi’s (Heddels)

Heddels at its best.

I Spent $44,000 Launching My Book. Three of Those Dollars Worked. (Amy Chan)

What actually sells books in 2026, what doesn’t, and the expensive lessons I learned so you don’t have to.

GTA VI Radio Stations to Be Hosted by Lana Del Rey, Bad Bunny, Robyn (Pitchfork)

Also: Lana’s husband.

A Low Resting Heart Rate is the New Fitness Flex (GQ)

People are broadcasting their resting heart rates everywhere, from dating apps to Instagram Stories. But is a low number really proof that you’re healthy?

Read more

Fill your life with new challenges and obstacles. BucketListerChallenge is where those live. Name a challenge that pushes back, sketch the Moments, and log what actually happens. A full life is built out of the hard things you chose.
link → bucketlisterchallenge.com/witi-2

Colin here. A while back here, I wrote about fabric. Specifically, how my first real education in hospitality happened on a dancefloor in Farringdon, long before I ever wrote about hotels.

Those thoughts came rushing back recently, as I read an excellent Substack post written by the DJ Yu Su as she sat on a train leaving Wuppertal, Germany. She had just played Open Ground, a club six meters underground in a converted Second World War bunker, a few minutes from the city’s main station. In the post, she called that night “possibly the best club experience i’ve had in 2026.”

What I loved about her piece was how little of it concerns the music (though the music was predictably great). She catalogues the toilets, the sitting areas, the smoking area, and the little ledges around the dancefloor for your drink. She then tries to explain why the whole place felt so comfortable, drawing on some anthropology training.

Along the way, she names the two best-sounding dancefloors she’s encountered in a decade. One is the aforementioned Open Ground, and the other is Klymax—the club DJ Harvey designed with Potato Head in Bali, which I wrote about for Monocle.

Why is this interesting?

Her central observation is that nothing at Open Ground makes you compete. There’s no queue at the door, so the night doesn’t open with a standoff with a bouncer. There’s always room to dance, so nobody defends a patch of floor. Seating is built into the building, so you never have to improvise a perch on the stairs. The lighting is minimal, so nobody is on overt display. Ledges run along the walls and stand at the edges of the floor, so you can set a slippery vodka soda down within arm’s reach anywhere. She reads all of this as proof that someone thought hard about what humans and their bodies need at 2am.

(Now think about how many clubs, hotels and restaurants run on manufactured scarcity, or quieter tricks of design. Fast food chains have long been accused of making their seating deliberately uncomfortable so that you eat and leave. Fancy restaurants are often so loud you can’t focus on your conversation because of the cacophony.)

Yu Su reaches for environmental psychology to explain the rest of her time at Open Ground, and it’s sharp: A full room only feels crowded when you lose perceived control, and the sense that you can move or leave whenever you like. Open Ground’s drifting hallways and hidden nooks hit two things people respond well to in a space: mystery (a hint of something around the corner) and legibility (confidence you’ll find your way back.) Jay Appleton’s idea of prospect and refuge covers every alcove she rested in—a view of the room, with somewhere to tuck away.

The acoustic treatment does social work too. In an echoey room, the Lombard effect kicks in: People speak louder, which makes the room louder, which makes everyone louder still. Open Ground’s main room rarely went above 100dB, quieter than almost any club she’s played, yet still full of textural detail. Her summary is the best line in the piece: “Nothing in that room asks you to brace.”

Harvey arrived at the same place after forty years in the booth. While has also played on some of the worst sound systems imaginable and still had the time of his life, when I spoke to him for Monocle, he described Klymax, the club at Potato Head in Bali, as a machine where you “feed art in one end, and happy people come out the other.”

Asked what makes a good club, he started with some good surprises: working bathrooms, friendly security and a well-run door. He also said that once people pay and come in, he feels personally responsible for their welfare.

The look of the room is a byproduct of its acoustics: 2,680,135 holes perforated into wood panelling to diffuse sound across the floor. The floor itself is sprung like an old ballroom, so joints survive five or six hours of stomping. He pegged 500 people as the sweet spot, big enough for a crowd to feel brave enough to enter a state of thrall together, small enough to avoid just playing the easy hits. Behind the booth sits a toilet, a shower and a relaxation area. Put on a long track, go rinse off during a marathon set.

fabric got there through operations. Co-founder Cameron Leslie studied hospitality while helping to build the club, and the lesson I took from those nights still holds: You can only lose yourself in a room once someone has made sure you feel safe and looked after.

What stitches all three together is that a club sells a feeling it can never serve directly. The state everyone is chasing only arrives when a hundred small decisions about bodies, sound, sightlines, queues and toilets have been considered. Hotels call this invisible service. Clubs learn it faster, because a bad decision shows up faster. By Yu Su’s count, Open Ground spent seven years tuning its rooms. Harvey joked that you could probably buy most of Klymax’s components on Amazon Prime, and that the value lies in the collective experience of the people who assemble them.

Still, a room can only nudge a party in the right direction, he told me. “But if you don’t have an intention…” He never finished the sentence. Yu Su’s notes from the train help finish it for him. (CJN)

Paul is the author of more than 70 books like the Mosquito Coast and Dark Star Safari and just released his 12^th travelogue: True North, which takes him back to Canada, to his own roots.

Maria spoke to him at his home in Cape Cod from her temporary perch in Mexico City, on a Zoom call whose themes ranged from places lost in time to the nuts and bolts of writing longhand. Thanks for paying attention. -CJN

From Paul’s desk: “Rwanda 1966 on the way to Kilgali with VS Naipaul who took the photo”

So, Canada. How did this book come about? Had you been thinking about your own ancestry for some time?

I’d been traveling around the country for about six years, with the idea of writing something. My ancestral home is a small town in Quebec — my family emigrated in 1693, from Gascony — so I’d visited a number of times, just to see relatives. Then over time, I went further afield. I was collecting material, but I wasn’t entirely sure for what. Canada’s such a difficult place to write about. It’s very big; the population is very small, about the same as California’s; and nothing happens there.

And, beyond landscape, the provinces all have hugely different cultural identities. British Columbia and Quebec make a convincing case for being two separate counties.

In the book, I say Canada is like an archipelago. There’s Montreal, then you go to the next big place, Toronto; then you keep heading west and the next one is Thunder Bay, maybe? Then Winnipeg, which is like another 400 miles… it’s like traveling in the Pacific from island to island.

So the book had been gestating, but I was waiting for something to happen in my mind that would lend a notion, or a theme, to it. Then it did: the trucker protests. Protest is the most un-Canadian thing. There were some angry people. And then Trump came back into the picture, saying he wanted to make it the 51^st state, and Canadians were electrified. They were traumatized, but also unified. The country changed quite quickly, in character and temperament and attitude. And there was my theme.

I’d done most of the initial travel, then I went to Newfoundland; and then drove cross country from Ontario, back and forth — on one trip I did about 7,000 miles. And I was there for the election. That was last spring, 2025.

Did you see Carney coming?

No. Furthermore, I asked Canadians, and a lot of them, neither did they. When Trudeau resigned, everyone assumed the conservative [Pierre Poilievre] would win. In fact they assumed he’d win in a landslide; but he lost.

And all of that, the timing — the election, Trump and how he affected the outcome of it, that sense of galvanizing — is what made the book cohere. I mean, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. He’s like my publicist (laughs).

Don’t say that too loud; he’ll come for his cut. It feels like there are certain tenets of travel you adhere to: slowness, anonymity, inconvenience. Friction. That’s the exact opposite direction to where a lot of the modern travel world is going. Do you think your way affords you more authority? Does it lead you to a different, truer version of a place?

There’s a story about the Abbasid caliph Harun Al Rashid. He wanted to know what his people were thinking. He didn’t send out a retinue to canvas them; he disguised himself as a commoner, went out among them, and talked to them: what do you think of the price of rice? What do you think of our rulers? It’s an apocryphal story, maybe, but I feel like I am, I aspire to be, an embodiment of that. Look at Michael Palin; he has done various travel programmes, with huge success. He’s there on the ground, he’s talking to people, and it’s reporting, of a sort. But he’s, you know, a massive celebrity.

Years ago, he shot an episode of ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ in my mom and dad’s town in California. He was lovely and friendly with everyone, but it was the very opposite of inconspicuous; there were production assistants on the street to manage the gawkers.

Yeah. He’s famous; I’m just a guy — [laughs] I’m a bespectacled foreigner — talking to people. In parts of Africa I stand out, obviously, because I’m white, I’m a mzungu. In England, if I tell someone my name, they don’t say ‘Oh, I love your book’; they say, ‘Oh, are you related to Louis?’ And when I tell them I am, they say ‘Oh, I just love his shows! What do you do?’ Well, I say, I’ve written a few things. ‘Ah, really? Under your own name?’ Yeah, funnily enough.

But in Canada I was totally anonymous. That is a privileged position. The only way I think you can really write about something, or somewhere, is to talk to strangers about it. When people are speaking to me, it’s as an equal. I’m there at the diner or whatever, having breakfast, you’re next to me having yours, we strike up a conversation. The omelette; the weather; the upcoming election.

Also: I’m not writing anything down. A reporter is there with a pen, asking for clarifications, correct name spellings and such. I’m just talking with them. I have all these techniques for interrupting, asking for directions, ingratiating myself, buttonholing someone. And it sounds easy but it’s not; it can be really hard to talk to strangers, depending on a lot of things. Culture, weather. In Cape Cod, where I am now, if I try to just strike up a chat, they think I’m drunk. Or crazy.

But there are solutions. And it’s the only way I can write a book because what I’m exclusively interested in is the human factor. I want the human architecture of the thing. Not the church or the palace or the museum. You know, we no longer live in an age where tourism matters to travel writing. The only thing that matters is: Who are the people? What’s their historical memory?

Maybe they just arrived, and don’t even know where the hell they are. I met some Somali immigrants in Sault Ste Marie; I spoke to them in Swahili, which they understood from having been in a refugee camp in Kenya for eleven years. I want a house, they said; I want a job. Well, what can they do? They can herd sheep. They’re lost. They’re lost, in a cold foreign country, but living in a motel, which is infinitely better than a refugee camp. And their beds were being made and their toilets cleaned by another refugee, from Colombia, called Alejandra.

When you were reporting Dark Star Safari, you traveled through places which are now categorically off limits — Sudan, parts of the Horn — not just to travelers but in some cases to journalists, aid groups. I once went twice, in the same year I think, to northern Mozambique, to Ilha da Moçambique and Cabo Delgado province. I went all around, to Ibo and Pemba and through the whole Quirimbas archipelago, and it’s still one of the most haunting and magical places I’ve ever been. This was like 14 years ago, and the Rovuma Basin was a recent discovery, and all the speculation was really kicking off; Statoil [now Equinor] and Rosneft and Halliburton, so it was kind of Wild West vibes —

It’s dangerous as hell now.

The ISM [Islamic State Mozambique] is everywhere. And that place that I saw is gone, possibly forever. What does that phenomenon provoke for you, if anything? Nostalgia? Sadness?

When I was in high school I got a passport that read “Not valid for travel to Cuba and Albania.” It actually said that. I’ve never been to Cuba, though now either of us could go there easily; but I did make it to Albania. I travelled along the coast, with a guy I found — he was driving a stolen BMW, I swear; I wrote about this trip in The Pillars of Hercules — and I paid him to drive me from Tirana to Butrint, because I thought, from there I can get a ferry or a fishing boat over to Greece. And it was one of the most spectacular coastlines I’d ever seen. All these pristine Adriatic beaches; and empty, unknown, because it had been a total no-go zone. Now you have Jared and Ivanka circling.

I was in Afghanistan in 1973, I was there again in 1984. Some things from my first impressions haven’t changed: the men and teenage boys all still carry guns, and the women are still in full burka. I wouldn’t go there now if you paid me, even a large amount. But it’s likely that won’t be the case forever; it might not even be the case for very much longer. When I was in South Vietnam in 1973 the idea of going to Hanoi was so totally out of the question. And Hue — Hue was being bombed. Now it’s like one of the premier resort places in Asia.

So the answer to your question is yes, it’s a bit sad. But countries close, and countries open. And countries you don’t expect to ever open to us again, do. I know now that it’s a constant impermanence and evolving, in ways that are very hard to predict, and can be very strange.

But people forget what places were like once. So to make a record of one, at a particular time in history, is important; that’s what a travel book does. It’s an account of a place in a moment in time.

We have a lot of creative and media people in WITI-land, who would love to hear about the mechanics of your craft. What does the day-to-day business of Paul Theroux writing a book look like?

Well, with the travel books it’s very labor-intensive. I don’t travel with any electronics; I’ve been robbed numerous times, so I don’t do that anymore. Just my phone. This [waggles a general-issue yellow note pad at the camera] is how I write. In longhand. I travel with two notebooks, a small one and a big one. The small one is in my pocket all the time, with a Lamy pen, which is German and costs like $15; I have a lot of them. But I never use them when I’m actually talking to people. Writing is somehow intimidating, and will change the way they interact with you.

I wake up and I set off, hoping to meet someone. It might be an actual appointment, or me looking for an impromptu situation. In between I make notes about things that capture my attention; a dog, a restaurant, a snowfall.

As soon as each person’s out of sight and earshot, I immediately write everything down: what the person said, the way they said it, what they look like. I spend all day doing those things: Driving, walking, writing, talking. Around five pm, I’ll start looking for a hotel. It’s very, very seldom that I have actually booked anything. The first thing I do once I’m checked in is to write up everything that happened that day in the big notebook, and date the entry. It’s usually five or six pages, maybe a bit more — it comes out to between 1,200-1500 words. I might do 2,000 on a good day. In other words, I write the day while it’s still very much with me. And when I get to a real town or city, I photocopy the pages I have, and I mail them to my wife.

So analog!

I’ll end a trip with quite a few big notebooks, around half a dozen.

And at what point is Paul being layered in? Your impressions, your reactions?

I try not to put too much of that in, because I’m the observer. I might add a descriptive detail later, here and there.

When it comes time to actually write the book, I’m basically transcribing, with some additions and cuts and amplifications. I work every weekday, and often on the weekend. A book for me is a matter of months, not years. It would be rare if it took more than six months, because I’ve been working already the whole time. When I hear someone say it took them two years to write their travel book, I think, But what were you doing? Because the travel itself can be a lot of work, the reporting and recording throughout every day is a lot of work. But the actual sitting down and writing the book on your computer: it’s right there on the pages, where you wrote it all down. What are you waiting for, a MacArthur Genius Grant?

If you’re a professional writer, you have to be efficient. You have to do it now, or as soon after the fact as you can; you can’t sit around twiddling your thumbs.

And what about magazine or newspaper assignments? What kinds will you accept? Is it only if you find it terrifically intriguing as a place?

Listen, I do not turn down any reasonable offer. I’m going to Prague to do a corporate assignment. A hotel company that has a property there wants me to do something fairly involved and extensive. And as you know, corporate assignments are very well paid. And I don’t have another job, and I have no desire at all to teach creative writing. So I think it will be fun. I’ve never been to Prague. My mindset has always been, I want to earn my living as a writer, and I don’t want to do anything else, so make the writing pay.

I don’t even turn down some unreasonable offers! [Laughs] Like, “Write 500 words on your favourite piece of luggage.” Ages ago I wrote a book called The Kingdom by the Sea, about Britain, and last May the New York Times asked me to write a piece —

I saw it. The new King Charles III walking trails. It was totally charming.

Well, thank you. But I’m trying to write a short story and a novel. I gotta do this thing in Prague… Did I want to do a story like that? Well, yes. I have children and grandchildren in London. I actually like walking, and I like doing it alone, just hiking and meeting people, saying Gee, I’ll have fish and chips. And, you know, there will come a time when I won’t be able to walk, so.

Was it kind of a dream assignment? Yes; but I have things to do! Look at all the stuff I have to do [gestures to the alarmingly cluttered desk behind him].

Also, I like returning to places.

Excellent, because this was something I wanted to get to: what are those one or two places on the map that have intrigued you sufficiently throughout your life that you have a book about them forming somewhere?

Malawi is lately at the forefront of my mind. My first job in Africa was as a teacher in the bush there, when it was still Nyasaland. That was the 1960s; I’ve been back since, you may remember I wrote about it in Dark Star Safari, I went back to that school, Soche Hills Secondary School. I haven’t visited in some time, maybe 20 years. Because of economic conditions, dictatorship, and pervasive poverty, that country has not succeeded. It’s overpopulated; it was a nation of three million, now it’s like 23 million. It’s unsustainable. It’s landlocked. There are hundreds of thousands of orphans because of how bad AIDS was.

But I would love to go back. I’d love that. To go back for a month or so, and actually teach again, and write about that. It was 60 years ago. I don’t know when, but I’m planning it in my head.

HTSI recently sent the FT’s Patti Waldmeir back to Ghana for the first time since she had her very first job as a foreign correspondent there, 50 years ago. She was gobsmacked by the changes.

Oh, it’s changed enormously. They’ve got medical schools, big universities —

Fancy safari lodges in the north.

I was in Accra in 1966. Ghanaian people are amazing. But I can only imagine how different it is.

I’d also love to go back to Mexico, where you are now. I mean, just to be in Mexico [LAUGHS].

Are you a podcast person?

The only podcasts I listen to are my son Louis’s, and another one that’s called Soundings, which is done by Jamie Brisick, for a magazine called The Surfer’s Journal.

Ah, can we give it up for The Surfer’s Journal? It’s so beautifully art-directed, and so intelligent. I feel like it’s one of the few really masterful print publications left.

It’s really great. And the podcast is too. He gets old surfers on to just tell incredible stories.

Basically I’m a reader, and I read old, paper books. Every summer I choose an author and I read everything they’ve written. Rebecca West; I read all her novels, I read her journalism, her biography. She wrote one of the greatest travel books ever written, it’s called Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, about Yugoslavia. Her novels are not good, but her journalism is beyond brilliant.

This year, it’s Patricia Highsmith. Some of her books are really bad. Like borderline unreadable. Or they start great, and then really go down. I was on a bad one, called A Dog’s Ransom. A lot was wrong with it, but for a writer even that’s interesting. I analyse the badness of it. A bad book is more revealing of a writer’s personality than a good book is. Now I’m on Strangers on a Train. That’s a fantastically good book, fantastically good. The Ripley books are next; I’ll do them in order.

How and where do you get your news?

I read the New York Times. I read the FT now and then. Then online stuff, Huffington, Drudge. I look at headlines; I’m not a news junkie. I try to keep up. The New York Times will sometimes have a story about Canada, and then there are like 100 comments or letters in response to it, people writing from Toronto, Vancouver. So I’ll really read those to see what their take is. Canadians are incredibly current on American politics.

It’s alarming to me that Americans are some of the least literate on American politics among the people I encounter in the world. When I lived in Singapore, I’d have really involved conversations with taxi drivers about the Democratic primaries.

Singaporeans were the best students I ever had. They were so conscientious. I lived there for three years in the late 60s. If Joseph Conrad had gone there then he would have recognized it. There was so much atmosphere! I lived in Bukit Timah, on College Green. We had no air conditioning. Three years, two children, one very discontented wife, no air conditioning. In my novel Saint Jack, I wanted to write about Singapore the way it looked then. Crime, prostitution, beat-up old godowns and noodles —

Now it’s 42-story skyscrapers with hydroponic gardens growing up their sides.

It’s crazy now. When I was there, there was only one of those really tall buildings. Saint Jack was made into a film; Peter Bogdanovich directed and Ben Gazzara was in it. I don’t think it was a great film, but Bogdanovich and Gazzara both loved it, and apparently it’s one of Wes Anderson’s and Tarantino’s favorites. But man, was it hard to get it made. They gave us hell; it was such an authoritarian government. The vice-chancellor of the university I was teaching at — Toh Chin Chye, he was actually deputy prime minister at one point — he told me I should get a haircut. He said I looked like a hippie. I went to the head of my department, an English guy, and told him and he said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt to think about it.’ Get a fucking haircut?? Come on, man.

But I have old colleagues who hated Singapore when we were teaching, who’ve gone on to retire there, which is amusing. It’s like a giant gated community for them. It’s a strange place, you know. There is one thing I really miss.

Chicken Rice?

Close. Laksa. You really can’t get a laksa as good as the ones in Singapore anywhere. Anyway, go watch the movie, because it’s like a documentary of how it was. You saw Singapore evolved; this was something else altogether.

I will.

But read the book first. [Laughs]

True North is in bookstores now.

Tell us about yourself.

I run the travel company PRIOR, and I write. I’m Australian, now living between Milan and New York, and for much of the year I’m on the road looking for the people and places that can breathe life into the kind of trips I actually want to build and share.

I started out as a cook. I studied at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, the school founded by Slow Food and Carlo Petrini, and its philosophy of protecting and celebrating biological and cultural diversity is still the thing I measure most ideas against. After that I worked for Alice Waters, which was an education in a different order of ambition. Writing for magazines began as a way to pay for more travel and turned into a career of its own: the NYT, Vogue, the FT and finally Condé Nast Traveler, where I was probably too young for my title but the scope I was given to do big destination stories in the magazine from beginning to end really gave me the idea to start PRIOR. How to make that cover worthy moment come to life, how to give an editors kind of access and create the environment where a magic can happen.

The company mixes all of my interests and experience, hospitality and editorial but in the end it is all about storytelling. Travel really is so much about that.

Describe your media diet.

My daily go-tos are the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian and the New York Times. Even if I try to avoid the Murdoch press I regularly fail and end up on their respective competitors too.

I lament the demise of the newspaper food section but I think the monthly COOK, from Corriere della Sera, is the last great one in print. Although a bright spot is Nigella Lawson returning to write again for the Financial Times!

On weekends I read La Repubblica and its excellent D magazine, edited by Emanuele Farneti, and FT’s HTSI.

I listen daily to The Daily from the NYT. The Rest Is Politics, the original, and particularly the Leading series. RN Breakfast on ABC Radio National to find out what is happening in Australia. Hidden Forces if you really want to get into geopolitics. William Dalrymple’s Empire is always fascinating (he is one of my favourite authors, see below).

I am new to podcasting, so I have been curious about shows that go into people’s lives from a particular angle. There is a brilliant one called Second Captains Saturday, which asks iconic, mostly Irish non-sportspeople, people about their “sporting careers”. It is often as moving as it is hilarious. In the same genre, the original and still the best of the conceit is Desert Island Discs. I find that if you get people into their sense memories, the stories and the real insight flow so I really admire shows that get to that very true place.

I am a fan of New York Magazine and I am keen to see what Jody Quon, who was Creative Director there, does at T now that she is Editor in Chief. Mark Guiducci is taking Vanity Fair in a great direction, which is to say back to its Tina Brown legacy (I also always read her gloriously unleashed Substack, Fresh Hell). Puck is in that same juicy vein, so I stay across those voicey editors.

With Cabana, Martina Mondadori created an entire aesthetic category beyond a magazine which when you really think about it is insane. She’s my friend and collaborator. I am so proud of her.

For the travel industry, Skift when there is real news. Monica Mendal’s So There’s This Place does service pieces with real energy and rigour. Alex Postman and Yolanda Edwards have built a great community with YOLO Journal. When Nadine at The Stanza leans into her independence and has a biting take on something it makes me laugh in appreciation. I was the new kid on the block colleague of Maria Shollenbarger and Sophy Roberts at CNT. They are wildly different in their topics and tastes (mine sits somewhere in the middle), but those two rarely miss and I never miss either’s stories.

What’s the last great book you read?

Nine Lives by William Dalrymple, on a reread. Nine people in India, each holding on to a form of devotion that the modern country is tugging at: a Jain nun, a temple dancer, a Sufi, a monk who took up arms. I am writing a book with Artisan at the moment and one of the chapters is on India and the idea of faith. I am headed there in a couple of weeks after several years away. PRIOR began with a trip to India, I find it an inspiring place.

What are you reading now?

I am about to start Profiles in Cowardice by Jacob Weisberg, a macabre twist on JFK’s Profiles in Courage that gives a mini biography to each of the figures who capitulated to the second Trump administration. If I need something explained clearly, cleverly and without condescension, he is who I’d ask. He also has a sense of mischief, and I cannot wait to see how the book lands, especially with the people he has profiled.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favourite publication?

I don’t read print the way I used to. The morning with a coffee and the paper was a sacred moment. Now it is just a Saturday ritual, wherever I am: London, New York, Milan or Sydney. I like the familiarity of knowing the rubrics of each publication. I usually go for the lifestyle section first and work back from there.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Sarah Wilson’s Substack, This Is Precious. Sarah is a true force of nature, a communication savant and totally fearless. As dark as it sounds, her topic is roughly: we’re fucked, the planet and society are collapsing, but there is perhaps a simpler, more connected and purposeful life to be found closer to nature, community and meaningful action. Urgent reading for all.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Osterie d’Italia. If you want to find a local and traditional place to eat anywhere in Italy, this is excellent and means you will never waste a meal. I wish there was one for everywhere I go.

Plane or train?

I hate flying. It is the worst part of my job and moreover I think it is both boring or boorish to talk about upgrades, delays, lounges etc etc.

BUT I love trains, and my favourite building in the world may be Milano Centrale. It is a hulking rationalist pile, but it was the first place I arrived when I left Australia twenty years ago to start the life that I have now, and it still feels like the beginning of a journey or perhaps homecoming now that I live part time in Milan. I stand a little straighter walking into that hall. I am not a nostalgic person, and I would like to be a little less relentless about wanting more, but it is the one place I reliably stop and ask how any of this happened. For this reason trains and their stations are romantic to me and I always find myself a little contemplative about the momentum of life.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Varanasi. On the burning ghat you can see a snapshot of the entire human experience.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

In my alone time I live in a rabbit hole. I have a book called Symbols. It is essentially a single volume of alphabetically organised totems. For me it works like a book of spells. I open it at random and a page becomes a little portal into whatever niche subject is sitting there: some tiny fact, a talisman’s meaning, an artwork, a language. I have had my best ideas for trips, experiences and articles through it. Diana Vreeland said something to the effect that you can see everything in clothes, even the coming revolution. Ultimately I’m an editor at my core, and I believe the same of travel.

It’s WITI, on the weekend.

Why are these interesting?

Who’s Your Uber Driver on the Phone To? (The Guardian)

Welcome to the long, long diaspora phone call.

The Museum of Time-Based Art (MOTBA)

“My idea for this site is to build an exhaustive, authoritative compendium of every art project that uses time as part of the work.” Amazing.

America.gov Gets Really Weird When You Ask It About Minecraft (TechCrunch)

It’s not a glitch. And speaking of Minecraft, bet you can’t guess what legendary NFL coach Mike Tomlin is up to now.

Read more

For six years, the Parallel Parking Championship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has (for some of us) been motorsport’s crown jewel, a thrilling contest pitting man and machine against time and a 20 foot parking space. The event was first organized by a young couple named Dan and Jenna, just to settle a long-standing family debate about who was the best parallel parker. It has since grown into a raucous street party, a participatory art form, a gift to motorists, and a communal act of joy.

Here is the excellent Instagram account, which captures the spirit of the event. Here is the rules and results sheet. These two simple web pages appear to be all of the public communications that Dan and Jenna need to keep it going.

The rules and scoring are so simple that they can be contained in their entirety across the two images below. Each driver begins from their preferred position and the timer starts when the referee sees the reverse lights of the car. The driver parks, then shouts “Done” out the window, stopping the clock. Hitting the curb or either adjacent car results in disqualification. Your final score is your time, multiplied by your distance to the curb. Ignore the units for now, and think about the implications. If one can get twice as close by taking twice as much time, that’s a decent tradeoff. There’s a small bonus for bigger vehicles, but it seemed insufficient; most good scores came from smaller cars. Our 16’ rental car was, comparatively, a boat.

It’s hard to describe just how well run the Parallel Parking Championship is.. No pre-registration is needed. Results are immediately available. The entire process, from rolling up to the venue through to completing the run and getting a commemorative card with your score, takes about ten minutes. Why is this free event better run than any airline check-in counter, DMV, or preschool drop-off in the world? I spoke with Dan and Jenna a little after the event, and they told me they’ve tweaked the process a bit over the years. The current system works marvelously.

The streets remain open to the (very light) local traffic, and are well-patrolled by marshals. Volunteers are everywhere, and are extremely friendly: The rhythm of the event gives drivers a minute or two to chat with the volunteers at the preliminary check-in, car-measuring, and rules-explaining stations before they compete. The location is well-chosen for its gritty urban authenticity, with brick warehouses and freight trains rumbling overhead competing for attention with the event’s DJs.

And it’s free. No money changes hands. Competitive parallel parking is unsullied by big money and crude commercial interests. It’s all about the parking.

The participants were a spirited bunch of parking enthusiasts. Most exhibited nerves due to the one-and-done nature of the contest, but also held justifiable pride in their parking prowess. The level of skill on display was remarkable. Men and women participated in almost equal numbers. Hundreds of people tried their luck and tested their skills.

We saw a guy park with his 4-year-old in the car seat behind him. We saw a guy accompanied by his dog riding shotgun. We saw a woman deftly slide a manual transmission Mazda 3 to a top-ten finish while her husband looked on admiringly from the passenger seat. We saw a glorious maroon Volvo 240 from the 1980s. Some drivers seemed to go for speed, boldly reversing and stopping in less than ten seconds. Some slowly hunted for the perfect line and flirted with disqualification while seeking the closest possible finish.

Here is a time lapse of some of the action. Remember that these drivers are under considerable pressure and are trying to do this quickly, for a score, in front of a crowd.

I acquitted myself credibly but with no special distinction, executing a perfectly fine but slow parking job in our long, cumbersome rental car. You can watch my effort here. When I finished, I stood in 17th place out of 41 drivers at that time. By the end of the day my result was mid-pack. How I wish I’d been behind the wheel of my tiny 2001 Volkswagen Golf.

One might be tempted to ask: Is this a joke? And the answer is: Of course. Kind of. But why does that matter? Isn’t everything a joke? Can’t we exercise our sacred power to decide what to take seriously and what to ignore? I love that despite the silliness of it all, Dan and Jenna work hard to make the event run smoothly, and to conduct a fair contest with solid rules and legitimate results.

The Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship is a delight. (MS)

Todd here. Vinyl records are not naturally black. They are made from PVC, which begins life clear, or at least, translucent. We just think records are black because almost every record we have ever seen is black. The tint comes from carbon black, a fine carbon powder mixed into the PVC that colors the record, and which also makes the compound tougher, more stable, and somewhat conductive. Without it, PVC is a very good insulator, and a record that holds a static charge is a record that attracts dust. Dust which will turn a perfectly good copy of an album into a tiny crackling campfire in your headphones as the diamond stylus moves through the groove.

Black records, therefore, have acquired a reputation as the serious version: The “real” record you bought, before labels decided your collector’s copy needed to look like a lava lamp. This reputation was also not completely unfair, because for a long time, colored vinyl could, like translucent vinyl, be a little riskier too. Different pigments and additives require different handling. Some colors are more demanding than others. Black, as the default color that vinyl stampers would have been trained on, was familiar and forgiving. A black record was not automatically better, but it was usually the safe bet.

Colored vinyl today is much better than it used to be. A good modern pressing on red, blue, white, or clear can sound as good as black. The mastering and the plant matter much more than pigment. But color changes at a pressing plant can also produce records that are far more interesting than the colors anyone ordered.

Suppose a plant has been pressing black copies of an album all day. Then it switches to red. The press does not instantly become red, because the black material is still in the extruder, the feed system, and all the various places where hot plastic has been moving around all day. The plant puts in the red PVC pellets, and for a short period, the records coming out may be neither black nor red. They may be red with black streaks. Or black with red smoke. Or brown. Or dark red at first, then progressively cleaner and brighter as the old material finally works its way out. Eventually, the press makes the red record the label actually ordered. But before that, it makes transition records, also known as setup copies, purge copies, rejects, waste, etc. Some are thrown away. Some go home with people who work at the plant. Some get handed to the label. Occasionally, somebody recognizes that the ugly accidental copy is actually the interesting one and sells it.

Collectors call them variants, because collectors need a word for everything. But they are more than variants. They are likely among the earliest records pressed in that color run, because a red record with obvious remnants of the previous black run is evidence of where it came from in the process. The grooves tell you what was on the master tape, but the color can tell you what was in the machine just before it.

Why is this interesting?

Because this is also how Dum-Dums work.

The ‘Mystery Flavor’ Dum-Dum is (or at least often has been) the candy sucker equivalent of a transitional vinyl record. The factory is making one flavor, then changes to another. It does not want to stop the line, flush out every last trace, and spend time ensuring that root beer ends at one precise point and cherry begins at another. Instead, the last of one flavor meets the first of the next, and the hybrid gets the ubiquitous question-mark wrapper.

Dum-Dums describes its Mystery Flavor only as something that “continuously changes” and is not limited to its current listed flavors. Accounts of the production process describe it as the overlap between flavor batches: not a secret recipe, but the brief moment when the machine has not entirely made up its mind about what it is producing.

This is a much smarter idea than inventing another artificial flavor. The company takes the unavoidable residue of production that’s normally discarded or cleaned away, and sells it as a mystery.

A transitional record is the same thing, except it gets listed on Discogs, with somebody claiming that “the black streaks make it sound warmer...”. We tend to think of these manufactured objects as careful decisions, but both simply reveal the normally hidden boundary between two production runs.

A factory is supposed to make black records and then make red records. It is supposed to make grape candy and then make watermelon candy. The machinery is supposed to disappear behind the finished product. But sometimes it fails to disappear, and it can become one of the most uniquely interesting things they make. (TO)

Tell us about yourself.

I am a physician and biotechnologist by training, currently serving as Junior Editor at Arena magazine. I live in the great state of California. Arena is a quarterly print publication championing technology, capitalism and civilization. I like dressing up.

Describe your media diet.

I watch YouTube a lot. For some reason I love watching food videos. Food tourism videos, how restaurants work, learning about different diets across the world. I have no interest in becoming a chef or opening something of my own, it just fascinates me. YouTube also has an excellent selection of movies you can watch for free. I also follow a few beauty influencers and home organization channels, it helps me calm down. I am subscribed to a few topics like neurosurgery and reproductive technologies on PubMed, I get a digest of those topics sent to my email - this is the best way to stay informed on research and development that takes time to bear fruit. For the near horizon, I embarrassingly have a very algorithmic media diet: I get my news and my thoughts informed from X. X also helps a lot with my work at Arena, it’s where I find cool companies, people, ideas to work with. I also follow a lot of meme pages on Instagram, there is just no better way to get a sense of what and where culture is right now, and where it is headed.

What’s the last great book you read?

I recently re-read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I found a withered copy with a few pages nearly torn off and would read it first thing in the morning. The way the sisters in the story talk to each other is very uplifting: they are poor and without protection, there is a war and much uncertainty, yet the sisters are full of hope. They face their troubles with pride and dignity, and do not compromise on their standards or their manners. I love 19th century prose, it isn’t modern and it isn’t dated: long sentences, formal dialogue, an exploration of intense inner lives. If you read in order of Austen, Shelley, Brontë, and then Alcott, you get to talk to women across the transition from the late Georgian and Romantic eras into the Victorian age, from 1811 to 1886.

What are you reading now?

I am reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, and For God, Country & Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergast.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

My favorite print publication is Arena magazine. I read it beginning to end each quarter when I finally get my hands on what our small team has worked very hard on for the past three months. My reading strategy has always been to have a pen or pencil in hand, follow what you are reading, underline and scribble as you feel fit - reading then ceases to become a passive activity. As an editor, there is always this “we could have used another word here”, or “this could be two sentences instead of one”, but mostly I am just happy to have a physical object that showcases where the last few months have been spent. Print is forever.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Carl Jung. I recommend his writings, or writings informed by him, to everyone I get close to. Once you read Jung, you start seeing him everywhere: in the stories we tell, in the buildings we erect, in the symbols we regulate.

Jung was a disciple of the better known Sigmund Freud, and Freud considered Jung to be the person who would elevate the field of psychoanalysis to a science with authority. Jung ultimately broke away from Freud to found his own school of analytical psychology, one with an emphasis on the collective human unconscious; the fact that most cultures around the world share basic values, stories, and even Gods - e.g. concepts of love, heroism, power are universal. Jung was the first to seriously try to answer “what can we learn from this?”

So, everyone should read Jung to self-actualize and get to know themselves, and others, better.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Beli. I love food and trying new types of foods and restaurants and then love reviewing and ranking them. It is also a closed knit social media I consider safe.

Plane or train?

Definitely train. I love looking out the window from a not-so-fast carriage, this is probably my preferred way of appreciating nature as well.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Ancestral graveyards. Get a sense of who you are and where you come from. I haven’t traveled much in my life. I felt very happy and light in the Pacific Northwest, the soil felt very familiar to me. Not sure if it would have the same effect on everyone else. It feels very calm and eternal up there.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I’ve recently fallen into rabbit holes about tectonic plates. Dolly Parton’s passing made me very curious about Appalachia. It is a popular meme that the Appalachian mountains are older than Saturn’s rings (whatever that means), but did you know that the same land mass - Gondwana - that created the Appalachian mountain range millions of years ago also created the Himalayan mountain range. One was Gondwana hitting North America, the other was a Gondwanan splinter hitting modern day Tibet - these two incidents were almost 250 million years apart. The tectonic plate collision in Asia is still ongoing, causing Mount Everest to grow a few millimeters each year.

It is both humbling and wondrous to realize that our Earth is an organism constantly evolving and that we only get to be here and love and fight for a very miniscule portion of Her history.

It’s WITI, on the weekend.

Why are these interesting?

Inside the Interstitium (NYT)

For those who missed this major announcement in Anita’s stunning Thursday WITI.

During Away Stretches, Fenway Park is Now a Driving Range (Upper Deck)

Hit it out of into the park.

The Commenters (Slate)

“I thought Slate’s hostile commenters were out to get me. I decided to ask them why. They could not have surprised me more.”

In the Private Jet Age, the Quiet Allure of Private Rail (NYT)

The paper of record follows up Matt Locke’s WITI.

Read more

Anita here. After a recent injury, I’ve been spending a lot of time with doctors. To help me understand how my body works, MRIs and X-Rays have unveiled systems and networks of bones, muscles, nerves. Orthopedists, spine doctors, and physical therapists all read these like a map to see where the jams are, and then use letters and numbers - C5, C6, TFCC - to signify the locations where things have gone awry.

One sprain is in a cluster of bones, tendons and ligaments so fine and tangled it’s like a complex of LA freeways snaking together, and the impact of a little jam ripples out into unexpected areas. Massage therapists dig into my muscles, stretch my fascia, and infrared therapy stimulates blood cells and healing. It’s given me new insight into the human body and how all of its networks weave together.

You may be familiar with many of these systems from basic anatomy, and you’d think by now that we’re technologically capable of mapping everything. Scientists have mapped the genome, cloned creatures big and small, and isolated the chemicals that make our bodies feel hungry, sad, stressed or loved. But there’s still a system running through our bodies that no one has been able to point to, until recently.

Why is this interesting?

Acupuncture has been one of the most effective ways for me to manage my pain. Acupuncturists put needles in my wrist, neck, and shoulder, where the pain is most prominent, but also into unexpected places like my knee, my foot, my ear, my skull. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is said to stimulate energy in a system defined by invisible meridians, or channels that run through the body.

Even though these meridians haven’t been visible to the scientific eye, Western medicine made peace with them a long time ago, because this system of poking needles into unrelated body parts seemed to just… work.

The practice of acupuncture made it into the pantheon of accepted medical methodologies in the West through trade, politics, immigration and fascination. But it took thousands of years for scientists to understand the exact physical system that makes it effective.

In China, acupuncture predates the common era. Its most foundational text, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, was written around 1st or 2nd century BCE, mapping energy meridians and points along the body the same way that circulatory or skeletal systems are mapped. (In any acupuncture office, you’ll see a poster that builds from this ancient text.)

As European missionaries and traders ventured to China, the West flirted with Traditional Chinese Medicine several times. It caught hold in France, where a unique form of acupuncture developed in the 19th century: The French school of acupuncture created new methodologies like ear acupuncture, and using electric currents with needles.

In the 1800s, Chinese immigrants came to the US as workers to build railroads and other labor jobs. With them came the practice of traditional Chinese medicine, which included herbs and acupuncture. But as the medical system in the US organized and anti-Chinese sentiment grew, Chinese doctors were cast as frauds, and the practice stayed underground and unrecognized outside of Chinese communities.

That was until the 1970s, where a confluence of events brought it into the American mainstream, involving President Nixon and the Black Panthers.

In one of the 20th century’s seminal political meetings, President Nixon visited China in 1972. James Reston, a New York Times journalist, was in China preparing for the visit, and required an emergency appendectomy. A doctor gave him acupuncture for post-surgical pain, and Reston was shocked to learn that a few thin needles alleviated his aches, and wrote about his experience for the paper. That’s when acupuncture began to truly make its way through the US, eventually wooing senators and doctors who granted it legitimacy in the American medical system. Chinese doctors, already practicing underground in the United States, used the moment to finally advocate for a licensing system.

Around this time, a heroin epidemic was decimating the Bronx. Activist groups including the Black Panthers and the Young Lords created a community health clinic to address the crisis of addiction. Distrustful of white doctors then touting the benefits of methadone, one of the movements pre-eminent doctors (and Tupac Shakur’s step-father) Dr Mutulu Shakur advocated for acupuncture. He’d learned about it from a Quebecois school that had stemmed from the French lineage of acupuncture, as well as from community activists in Chinatown. Under him, the clinic developed an ear acupuncture protocol for addiction that’s still used today.

Since the 1970s, acupuncture has gained legitimacy in the US and around the world as an evidence-based, effective medical practice. But Western science still didn’t have a real explanation for how it worked. Until recently.

In 2021, scientists discovered a new system inside of our bodies. They’ve labeled it the interstitium, as it’s a finely woven layer that sits just between the skin and the fascia, carrying fluids like tattoo ink and skincare favorite hyalauronic acid beyond its skin entry point. They also say that it plays a role in how acupuncture actually works; stimulus in one part of the body is carried via the interstitium to a wholly other part.

This means that after millennia of acupuncture working, this mysterious network of energy channels may finally have a physical basis, as solid as a skeleton. And a healing practice that has endured through time, and in the face of skepticism, may once and for all be validated. (ASVV)

Bonus Links:

• The NYT has a fascinating, interactive article about the Interstitium

• James Reston’s original New York Times article, also a capsule of China’s politics and economy at the time

• Dope is Death, a documentary about the Black Panthers’ adoption of acupuncture.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Jonny here. It’s evening in downtown Abu Dhabi. At Saikindo, a Japanese izakaya crossed with a record bar, vinyls turn.

The main room is dark, cool, and carefully composed. The staff come from Thailand, Serbia, Italy, Indonesia, and several countries in Africa. The customers are almost as international: Emiratis, other Arabs, Europeans, Asians, and a lone American. It’s a modern Gulf city, compressed into one room.

I’m reading Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard while I sip an Old Fashioned. The novel takes place in another city, Detroit, and in another time. It is populated by former revolutionaries, a bomb-squad cop, an alcoholic millionaire, an ambitious chauffeur, and several people convinced they are smarter than everyone else.

Yashar Ali describes Leonard’s world this way: “Low-level operators who think they’re smarter than they are. Dry wit, awkward situations, and subtle power games. Realistic dialogue, often with absurd or ironic twists. A world where no one’s a mastermind, but everyone’s hustling.”

That pretty much describes every day of my career at the CIA. It’s not entirely unrecognizable in the Gulf either. This region is sometimes called a chessboard. It’s an attractive metaphor, because it makes geopolitics here look orderly, as if every piece has a defined role. The players see the same board, everyone follows the same rules, and victory means roughly the same thing to every side.

Why is this interesting?

Because the Gulf doesn’t look much like chess today. It looks a little more like an Elmore Leonard novel.

Think of it this way: everyone is in the same room, but each has arrived with a different objective. One man thinks he is negotiating, while another is preparing revenge. Someone believes he is still engaged in diplomacy, while the person across the table has decided they are now in a crime story. And everyone thinks he understands the plot.

In Leonard’s novels, the characters are like this too. The capable ones watch and listen. The dangerous ones nurse grievances. The fools talk too much, try too hard, and assume that everyone else sees the world as they do. The character who keeps his head usually sees the opening first. The one who becomes angry, frightened or overconfident starts forcing the action. Then he makes a mistake.

In Leonard’s world, as in the Gulf, keeping your cool is not a pose. It’s an advantage. It may even be the real contest that’s underway. Not who has the most missiles, money or influence, but who can keep their temperature down while everyone else gets edgy.

Every government here is playing, but they are not playing the same game. The Islamic Republic of Iran is playing for regime survival, vengeance, and the eventual exhaustion of its enemies. It does not need to defeat the United States or Israel conventionally. It needs to endure, impose costs and preserve enough coercive power to ensure that no regional order can be built without taking Tehran into account.

It defines time differently from its adversaries. American administrations come and go. Israeli governments rise and fall. Markets react by the hour. The regime, however, waits, and is prepared to accept economic suffering and human loss on a scale that would be intolerable to many other governments as it does so. (The men with the guns tell everyone else to sacrifice. They generally make sure they still eat.)

Israel is playing prevention. Its leaders view certain Iranian capabilities not as bargaining chips, but as threats that must be destroyed before they fully mature. That produces a different tolerance for risk — and for continuing violence.

Washington says it is playing deterrence: punishing aggression, protecting its forces and allies, and restoring boundaries without being pulled into another generational war. But the United States is also playing for credibility and dominance — in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, and before its own domestic audience. Especially before its own domestic audience.

The danger, when you’re playing for credibility, is that it can become detached from the interests you were supposed to protect. Governments start taking risks not because the prize is worth the cost, but because leaders fear that further restraint might start to communicate weakness.

The Gulf states have their own games. I’ve lived and worked all across the Gulf, but the country I’ve spent the most time in is the UAE, where I’m writing this from now. This country is playing for survival, security and optionality. Some in Washington see its dealings with China and Russia and conclude that Abu Dhabi is coldly hedging between East and West — or has already chosen Beijing and is merely stringing America along. Some of these critics genuinely find the mystery that surrounds royal courts to be confounding.

That misses something fundamental about the UAE. Here, relationships are a form of currency. It’s the opposite of being coldly transactional. The UAE favors the American technology stack. And many senior Emiratis lean toward the United States not merely because of hardware or policy, but because of relationships built over decades with American officials, military officers, intelligence professionals and business leaders.

But a relationship does not have to mean subordination. The UAE is not trying to dominate the region. It is trying to survive in it. That requires maintaining strong American ties, doing business with China, managing the Iranian threat across the water, and preserving enough freedom of action to avoid becoming completely dependent on anyone.

It must also protect Abu Dhabi’s economic vision, and the country’s emergence as a center for capital, logistics, technology and artificial intelligence. And it has to maintain confidence among the hundreds of nationalities that live and work here. None of that permits an easy calibration.

What occasionally looks like disloyalty in Washington may look like basic risk management in Abu Dhabi. The UAE is not a proxy waiting for instructions. It is a small, ambitious state in a dangerous neighborhood, buying insurance with strategic foresight rather than impulsivity or blind devotion to any people other than its own.

Saudi Arabia, then, has been playing a different game. The biggest guy on the Arab side of the Gulf, the Kingdom wants survival too. But it appears to be seeking regional primacy: greater control over the Arab political order, protection from encirclement, and recognition as an indispensable power in the Gulf.

Its infrastructure, however, has been struck. Its missile defenses are under pressure. Houthi advances in Yemen have exposed serious vulnerabilities and strengthened Iran’s potential leverage over another strategic waterway. Saudi Arabia has tried talking to nearly everyone, reaching accommodations with former adversaries, maneuvering against regional competitors, and announcing a new defense arrangement in Mecca. None of that prevented the latest Houthi assault. The Kingdom is likely reeling.

This is where something called game theory becomes useful. Game theory is not solely about games. It is about decisions made in the presence of other decision-makers. Every actor chooses, while anticipating how others may respond. Each move changes the incentives surrounding the next move. To have a good chance at predicting outcomes, you need to understand what games the other participants think they’re playing.

The trouble begins when the players value different things, interpret signals differently, or do not even agree about which game they are playing. Washington believes it is practicing deterrence and coercion. Israel believes it is practicing prevention. Iran believes it is pursuing survival, resistance, and revenge. Saudi Arabia wants security and on some level, primacy. Oman wants to preserve its independence and special culture. The UAE wants security without economic suffocation, or dependence on anyone else. Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait are also running angles. Russia and China want influence and advantage without assuming ownership of the chaos. One side sends a signal. Another can see preparations for war.

A limited strike intended to restore a boundary becomes evidence that no boundary exists. Restraint meant to create room for diplomacy is interpreted as weakness. An attack designed to hurt an opponent’s economy instead frightens investors and workers in countries that did not choose the war. Each player may be acting rationally, but they’re doing so within a reality the others do not recognize.

Rather than the idealized Nash equilibrium, what we really have here is a strategic trap.

And this is where Leonard becomes more useful than the idea of the chessboard. In Freaky Deaky, the trouble comes from the collision of separate stories. One person wants to recover the meaning of an earlier struggle. Another has reduced the whole thing to money. Someone wants recognition. Someone else wants control. A man who believes he is using another person does not realize he is also being used. Every plan makes sense internally, until it meets everyone else’s plan.

In Leonard’s world, the coolest character is not necessarily the strongest, the loudest or even the most virtuous. He or she is the one who sees the room clearly. They do not mistake anger for strength or movement for progress. They know what they want, but they also understand that everyone else wants something too.

This approach may determine who prevails in the Gulf.

Be cool. Don’t force it. Pay attention. Let’s see what comes next. (JG)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m the owner and co-founder of Standard & Strange, a clothing store in Berkeley CA, Santa Fe NM, and Manhattan (and online). I’m based in Kōbe, Japan, managing our relationships with our Japanese brands, and developing our in-house products.

Describe your media diet.

Completely and totally unstructured, in counterpoint to where I was 20ish years ago. I had a very rigid structure, that was in parts strategic, aspirational, and honestly a little performative. Google Reader had all the de rigeur menswear and style feeds, magazines were along the lines of Monocle, Smith (RIP), 032C, and other things in that genre. Books were a mix of business books (replacing an MBA by just reading all the material), non-fiction, and literary fiction (terrible name for a category).

All of that fell away when I started to understand how that media diet was constraining my thinking and perspectives. Nothing I was attempting to create was coming from the heart; it felt mostly like I was trying to build something to fit the shape of the world I was observing through that lens. Trying to build for now, and not for the future, and doing that oriented around external aesthetics and ideals kept me frustrated for an unnecessarily long time.

Right now, I try to stay wide open and curious. The selection process for everything is entirely happenstance and serendipity. Of course I have lists of books to read, albums to check out, things to watch, magazines to peek at, but oftentimes, whatever I’m consuming will have been found in the moment.

I barely even look at the news anymore, as I’ll find out about today’s fresh horrors via texts and dm’s from friends. I consume Instagram, partially because I’m a visual person, and partly because about 30% of my friends only communicate with me via DMs on that platform. I like the idea of substacks, and I subscribe to a few, but the friction of opening my email tends to keep from diving into them. Podcasts fell off, for some reason I lost patience with them, or else I’m just not getting good recommendations.

What’s the last great book you read?

“Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir. I am a huge science fiction fan, and his commitment to the “science” part makes for a good read. I watched the movie first, because my son couldn’t wait; and it didn’t ruin the book one bit. That alone is testament to the quality of his writing. The mechanics and details alone make you forget that you know the basic story arc.

What are you reading now?

I’ve got a few books going. Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi, which was heavily recommended by a lot of my friends. So far, it’s fantastic, with no slow spots. Complex, but not over the top. Surprise, Kill, Vanish by Annie Jacobsen, which continues on topics I picked up from reading Stephen Kinzer (see a couple questions down).

I’m also struggling through the manga for Spy Family and Chainsmoker Cat (which is now on Netflix), very very slowly.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

It sounds like this is a magazine question. Usually I’ll flip through and see if I’m interested in investing my time in it. If it’s in English, I just go cover to cover, front to back, and assume the editor sorted out the journey for me. If it’s in Japanese, I’ll mark a couple pages that are mostly captions on visuals, and grind through those slowly, and then mark a couple articles for future reading when I level up.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

That’s an impossible question but I’d say Stephen Kinzer if you want a baseline to understand the current events in the world. I started with “All the Shah’s Men”, and then tore through his entire catalog. His work will reframe how you understand the actions of the United States, and its position across modern history. It’s definitely quite grim, but I consider it essential reading now.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

I feel like I’ve had to answer this one in my prior career for interviews a few times, and I bricked it every time. I have the usual set of apps, and then a few language learning tools. I do love this weather app I replaced the default apple weather with. It’s called Weathergraph, and it’s pretty high-fidelity weather information with a gorgeous display.

Plane or train?

If at all possible, allowing for time and geography, I’ll take a train. I hate framing anything in terms of productivity, but if I need to catch up on work, I’m going to be able to get more done on the train than on a flight. I never really have nothing to do, there’s always more research, more studying, more reading, but the train also offers the option to put on some music, stare out the window, and let my mind wander in a way that isn’t possible at 30,000 feet.

What is one place everyone should visit?

China, which I know is pretty non-specific. I worked in Guangdong for a couple years and it radically changed my perspective on China and the version of it we get in the media. These days a lot more day-to-day content is available on Instagram et al, but at the time, there really wasn’t much out there

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I think this has been said more than once on MMD. My life’s work is one gigantic rabbit hole. In conversation, I frame it as peeking over the next fence, and peering around the next corner. I have an insatiable need to know how things are made, and why. Previously, while going deep into denim (and I’m far from done there) I wound up collecting and learning how to operate every machine involved in making a pair of jeans. Turns out I hate making jeans, but gaining the understanding to make a pair of jeans legible across the different measures of excellence was priceless.

My current rabbit hole is the history of footwear here in Kōbe and this prefecture (Hyōgo). It started with a vintage tin sign advertising tabi shoes made in Nagata Ward. That led to chasing that brand into the past, and discovering the scale of the rubber industry that had existed here pre-war. That industry evolved from the match-making industry around the end of Meiji and into Taishō; in turn many of those rubber companies have consolidated with bigger players, or simply ended operations with time and retirement. The motivation for this exploration is to get a sense of the visual identity of footwear and footwear components at the time, as I work on the branding for the boots I will be releasing 2027.

It’s WITI, on the weekend.

Why are these interesting?

Fall Asleep to Carl Sagan’s Speeches (Spotify)

Thank you, Steve Bryant.

How Headlights Got Brighter, Whiter, and More Blinding after Dark (Ars Technica)

Automotive lights are better than they’ve ever been, but there’s a trade-off.

Inside Matthew McConaughey’s Airstream Home in Malibu (Architectural Digest)

From November 2008 (when he still could have chosen a far larger place to live.)

Read more

Nick here. If you thought this summer’s FIFA World Cup was your only chance to see visitors to the USA displaying athletic prowess under a banner of global friendliness, well, you’d be wrong. The World Fly Fishing Championship is happening here this week.

118 of the world’s most accomplished fly fishermen from 21 nations are gathered around Idaho Falls, ID for the 45th annual contest, organized by FIPS Mouche, fly angling’s main competitive international governing body (Fédération Internationale de Peche Sportive Mouche, if you must).

This week the anglers have been rotating across sections of lakes and rivers in the greater Yellowstone area, in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, including the famed Henry’s Fork of the Snake River and Hebgen Lake on the Madison. Points are scored based on number and length of fish caught. (All are released immediately, and special barbless hooks are used to cause them less harm.) The event features all of the pomp and circumstance you might expect: an opening parade of participants in uniform, medals, trophies, and likely a raucous closing banquet. (But not too raucous; anti-doping rules are in effect.)

I know what you’re thinking: Is nothing sacred? Not even fly fishing—that precious gift of countercultural stillness, that chance to slide briefly under the skin of the universe, that opportunity to dream of a connection with pure potentiality—not even that can escape the cold grasp of mammon and shine of ego.

Honestly, as a fly angler, I’m not stressed. You won’t be seeing competitive fly fishing on The Ocho any time soon. It’s missing one crucial thing: The perfect eat.

Why is this interesting?

While most consider fly fishing to be a solo, contemplative affair, where most of the achievements are fibs anyway—“he was THIS big”—competitive fly fishing has had significant influence on the pursuit over the last several decades.

The ultra-effective tactics honed by national teams on the global stage have moved the industry, and influenced a vast number of anglers now practicing techniques known collectively as “Euro nymphing,” an incredibly efficient style of fishing. Indeed, after two sessions, the five anglers on Team USA lead the standings with 206 fish caught, and Tomas Langer of the Czech Republic tops the individual leaderboard with 66 fish caught.

By presenting nymphs, which imitate insects still in their subsurface phase, rather than traditional dry flies that have hatched onto the surface, fly anglers are able to catch fish more consistently, even if the fish aren’t actively feeding on the surface. Trout, after all, are more apt to put their mouths on anything vaguely interesting at their holding level, safe underwater, instead of risking the trip to the surface for anything they can’t fully deem the genuine article.

The industry and individual anglers have paid attention, embracing products with more technical pizzazz than the tried-and-tested floating dry fly technique, which has only slightly evolved over the past century. Today, nymphs outsell dry flies “fifty to one,” according to Mark Raisler, a fly shop owner in Craig, Montana. Several years ago Raisler took a stand in the name of education and craft, committing to “DFO”—dry fly only—on all of his guide trips.

Critics say the competitive technique is mechanical and soulless. It’s an approach that has quantity as a goal, an industrialization of a pastime that is deliberately anachronistic. To me, it’s much simpler: I love to see the fish eat the fly.

When you’re nymphing ‘em up, everything happens underwater. You feel the fly pause, maybe a twitch, maybe see a distant flash, you set the hook, and there’s the fish. With a dry fly, though, you see the fish rise, and time stands still. It could be a maniac charge from the depths to a fast-moving fly, or, even more painful, a slow, leisurely sip from a hog finning inches off the bank. The fish choosing to move to the water-air interface, and pierce it with its mouth, to put its water-dwelling self into our world, is something magical.

I’ve waited on the steep rocky banks of Hebgen Lake with my dad for the “gulpers“, as they’re known locally, massive, cruising rainbows, sliding shadows that surface through dawn’s glare to vacuum up bugs from the glassy lake. After abseiling down a steep shoreline of broken boulders on a tattered, knotted rope, we raced against the rising sun, trying to huck steep enough backcasts to clear the rocky pile behind us, while casting out far enough. Timed properly, we’d tempt the fish prowling the shoreline with dry flies so small that three could fit on a dime without touching.

And I’ve sat along the Henry’s Fork, the Shrine of the Green Drake, perplexed, flummoxed, and exasperated as the choosiest of fish passed on our flies while still dining uninterrupted on a steady stream of naturals, wondering whether it was skill or karma or just bad luck as the river resonated with eats all around.

That shared audiovisual joy is something nymphing, and competitive fly fishing by extension, lacks. Your fishing buddy doing their best DJ Khaled impression, bellowing “ANOTHER ONE,” is unlikely to stir the soul.

Don’t get me wrong—all the anglers that make their nations’ teams are really, really talented. If they want to represent their country and catch as many fish as they can, that’s totally cool. And nymphing under an indicator remains the style best suited to get a complete beginner without much casting experience onto a fish for the first time.

But for me, the perfect eat will always be on the top. (NP)

Colin here. A detail in a recent CNN report caught my eye. Around 15 Ukrainian drone specialists are working with rebels in northern Mali, helping them to fight Russian troops. They train local combatants, support missions, and sit down afterwards to work through what went right and wrong.

The environs are a long way from the battered front in Kyiv. The methods also sound a lot like the OSS.

Why is this interesting?

The Office of Strategic Services was America’s wartime predecessor to the CIA. During the Second World War, it worked with British and French counterparts to send small teams into occupied Europe. Known as the Jedburghs, they helped resistance fighters to get supplies, organize sabotage and work with the advancing Allied armies. Every team had a radio operator. Keeping local fighters connected to the wider effort was part of the job.

Their value was in what they helped other people do. These teams supported a much bigger conventional war, making the Allied armies’ job easier by putting pressure on the enemy behind its lines.

I’m not suggesting that Ukrainian officers are sitting around reading OSS manuals, though I imagine some certainly have. I’m saying that there is a clear resemblance in the approach: small teams, local partners, practical ingenuity, and a willingness to make trouble far beyond the front line.

In Libya, a Ukrainian naval-drone operator told CNN his unit was attacking Russian shipping targets while training local forces. Their logic is clear: Moscow should not be able to wage war in Ukraine while treating its interests elsewhere as out of bounds.

In Russia, Ukrainian drones struck the warehouses of Wildberries, the “Russian Amazon,” hurting businesses and disrupting commerce far from the front. (Kyiv says the company sells equipment used by Russia’s military; Wildberries denies that, predictably.) Chris P wrote a great WITI about it recently.

People have been killed in these attacks. This is serious business, and there are human consequences. Still, the connection is worth examining. Research published by the Australian Army describes changes in Ukraine’s drone warfare methods happening over weeks, compared with the many years Western militaries often take to develop and buy new equipment. Pilots, engineers and specialized repair crews are all part of that process. It is a tight feedback loop, and being able to change it quickly can matter more than getting it perfect in the first place.

What interests me is how these activities contribute to the wider war effort. Small teams help local forces become more capable. Experience feeds back into better equipment. Intelligence creates opportunities that brute force might not. Creativity under constraint becomes a daily practice that is hardened by battle, and dire consequences.

The battlefield is bigger than the line on a map, and that is where the OSS comparison becomes useful: Ukraine is looking beyond the opposing army to the networks and infrastructure that help sustain Russian power. It is largely the same playbook, updated for a hyper-tech era. (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I joined Berry Bros. & Rudd, the UK’s oldest wine and spirits merchant, over 25 years ago and have been lucky enough to build a career that has taken me from London to Asia and the United States. Still family-owned and run today, BB&R has a rich heritage dating back to 1698, but what has always excited me is its willingness to look forward. In my current role, I spend my time exploring new opportunities for growth, whether that’s through new partnerships, products, or business models. It’s a bit like working for a 328-year-old start-up.

Describe your media diet.

I love print magazines, particularly about architecture and interior decoration, but those are mainly saved for the weekend. During the week I listen to endless podcasts on a variety of subjects. Although a lot seem to be on American politics; American Friction, Americast, and Pod Save America are all particularly good. I also listen to a few business history podcasts. Acquired is a fantastic deep dive into well-known businesses - fascinating stuff!

What’s the last great book you read?

I have just returned from a wonderful family holiday to Yosemite Valley. In preparation I read The Last Season, by Eric Blehm, which tells the true story of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson, and his mysterious disappearance in the Sierra Nevada. It is an extraordinary story of wilderness, solitude, and self-discovery.

What are you reading now?

I tend to have a few books on the go at the same time. I have just started Jon Ronson’s new book, The Castle, which explores the modern crisis of masculinity. I am enjoying The Artist, by Lucy Steeds, which feels like a holiday in postwar Provence, and I am almost finished restaurateur Jeremy King’s autobiography, Without Reservation, which is full of the best sort of name-dropping.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I prefer to read print publications rather than the digital versions, which struggle to maintain my attention. A coffee is obligatory, and I quite like a bustling café for ambiance.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Papers with views that they don’t necessarily agree with. It’s important to avoid the echo chamber.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Karl Weather, which visualises hyper-local weather and microclimate changes in San Francisco. I lived there a few ago and it was invaluable. I still check in from time to time to see what is happening.

Plane or train?

I spent half of my childhood on trains. Nothing beats a good train journey!

What is one place everyone should visit?

For some reason I had always avoided Venice, thinking is would be too hot, busy, and smelly (in fairness, all can be true). I went there for the first time in 2025 after a wonderful trip hiking in the Dolomites and have been back twice since.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

There have been many! My girlfriend and I recently started beekeeping, and we now have two hives at home in the countryside. So, I have read an awful lot of books about bees recently.