Happy Friday! ☀️
I’m back in Berlin for the weekend after our annual ForChiefs retreat where we spent a week in and around an old secluded house in the Black Forest to work on ourselves as individuals, as a group, and as an organization. These days are always so enriching, exhausting, and exciting in the best ways imaginable. What made this year’s edition extra special for me was a gift from my colleagues: each of them created their own version of Friday’s Five and gave it to me as a book. Reading it made me tear up on the train ride and I now have so much new interesting things to discover and I’ll make sure to share them here as well.
What I’m reading 📖
Recently, some friends and colleagues have started to engage with the subject of masculinity, a topic that I have not yet spent much time with even though I wanted to. My colleague Hugo–who’s graciously hosting me in his house this weekend–gave me the book ‘From the Core’ by John Wineland and I started reading it last night. So far, it reads like the right entry point for me into the subject. More about the book.
What I’m listening to 🎧
Walter Isaacson is one of the best biography authors of our time. He has written books about Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Elon Musk, and many more. I’ve read a few of his books and found them highly engaging. In this conversation with Lex Fridman, he shares insights and learnings from the subjects he has covered and he’s someone I could listen to for hours. The conversation is two hours long and in my taste, it could have gone double that.
What I’m watching 📺
Last year I watched ‘Dopesick’, a well-written but depressing series about the opioid crisis. My colleague Matthias recommended another series on the same theme called ‘Painkiller’ which is out on Netflix. It takes another look at the origin story of the drug OxiContin, the company that created it, and the family that benefitted from it. Watch the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
“The major problem I see in men is the disconnect between the desire to be a force of consciousness and love in the world, and the actual ability to do so powerfully. At the heart of this disconnect are three primary obstacles: a real connection to feeling, not just emotion; the lack of skill set needed to affect their environments with conscious awareness and embodied sensitivity; and the lack of training themselves to use mindfulness and meditative practices to go beneath thinking.”
– John Wineland
What else?! 💯
Last week I shared that I would go swim in the river Rhine in Basel. I did and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a long time. It’s so unique and refreshing. I floated down the river in a steady current, passing the old town of Basel, and exiting the water 3km downstream. The ‘Wickelfisch’ I rented from the tourist office kept me clothes dry. A+, will do again.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!
David
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