Happy Friday! ☀️
This was a week of wandering and I enjoyed the time off to walk through the city and listen to one podcast after the other. I reached the point I always want to reach during my time off in January–a state of calm and presence with an openness to embrace the new year and I am ready to head back to see my family who I’ve missed dearly.
What I’m reading 📖
Towards the end of this conversation with Rick Rubin, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen mentions the Techno-Optimist Manifesto which is trying to make the case for an optimistic view on technology. Reading it evoked many thoughts and emotions that sat with me all week. It makes some bold statements, many of which required me to resist a reaction and think about them with an open mind. I am not in a place to either agree or disagree with it in its entirety and rather found it a highly interesting piece of writing with an attempt to try and clarify my own thinking on it. Read more.
What I’m listening to 🎧
Space was a theme for me this week (see below) and I wasn’t aware to what extent Jeff Bezos is knowledgeable about space technology. He is the founder of Blue Origin and listening to him speak about the challenge of making space travel viable is fascinating.
What I’m watching 📺
For All Mankind is a 4-season series on Apple about space. I had seen it on the service but never checked it out and I am glad I did. I found it highly entertaining for its revisionist history view on space travel starting in the 60es and the question: what if the race for space had never ended? The first episode sets the tone for it and the four seasons of the show offer a perspective on space travel and science fiction that is different to the usual sci-fi space shows out there. Watch the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
"You realize that people often say, 'I hope to go to heaven when I die. ' In reality, if you think about it, you go to heaven when you're born." - Jim Lovell, Astronaut on Apollo 8.
What else?! 💯
This week I discovered the Founders podcast. In it, host David Senra summarizes and quotes from a biography of a founder. Every week, he reads an entire biography, takes notes, makes highlights, and the shares the key insights in the episode. Over 300 episodes in, it’s a treasure trove for people interested in entrepreneurship. A good entry point is this interview with the host David.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!
David
Instagram | Website | 2021 Playlist | Company
This is a good place to start about the “techno-optimist manifesto” https://open.substack.com/pub/davekarpf/p/why-cant-our-tech-billionaires-learn?r=bf2