Things I Read // See // Listen To

Content Sources

• Google News - All the news in one place. You can even personalize to get the exact mixture you’d like. Stop using CNN and start using this.
• Vox - My preferred news source. Their tagline is “explainer journalism”, and given the historical nature of the times we live in, I can use all the explainers I can get. New York Times and Washington Post are also doing excellent work.
• Longform - Best source of reading material. I use Pocket to save and collect all my readings. Extraordinarily easy to use and an essential tool in my arsenal.h
• Hacker News - Created by the startup incubator Y Combinator, an aggregator for tech and business news. Refreshes every few minutes, so a nice place to return to throughout the day for a minute or two at a time.
• New Yorker - Bougie and proud.
• World Star Hip Hop - Gotta keep an ear to the streets. Portal to “urban” culture (expect music videos, fights, and sports/entertainment news). Not for everyone. Probably not for most.

Culture

• Pitchfork - Temple of indie music. Pretentious at times, be warned. Mark Richardson is my favorite reviewer.
• Spotify Discover Weekly - Incredibly handy for finding new music. Their algorithm is finely tuned and often surprises me with its accuracy. Relatedly, if you listen to more than 15 minutes of music a day, you should pay for Spotify premium and be able to skip ads.
• LetterBoxd - Source of film recommendations. User generated lists and reviews to help uncover new movies.
• Reddit - Reddit is the internet to me in some ways. If you haven’t used it, it’s a collection of communities, each of which has a “subreddit” where they post links and text around a certain topic (e.g. Internet is Beautiful, NoNoNoNoYes, AskScience,TinyTrump etc). Anything you’re interested in is on Reddit.
• Vimeo Staff Picks - Short film nirvana. No better place to veg out and watch beautiful videos.
• Youtube Trending - Trending is a great mainline into what’s happening in the culture of the American mainstream. If you don’t have an account yet, make one and follow anyone who makes videos you find interesting. I’m now spending more time on Youtube than any service besides Pocket and Netflix. If there’s interest, I’ll make a list of the Youtubers I follow as well.

Public Intellectuals

• Tyler Cowen - Polymath conservative blogger who writes on a wide range of economic/policy/culture topics. Unique perspective with conservative leanings. Usually the first site I read in the morning.
• Ezra Klein - Head at Vox, and one of the best interviews on the planet. Cannot recommend his interview podcast enough. Start with the Yuval Harari,
• Mathew Ygelsies - Smartest writer around. I will read anything he writes (mostly policy and politics related)
• Slate Star Codex- Healthcare and public policy blog, wonk oriented.
• Robert Reich - Extremely progressive. Think Sanders and Warren side of the spectrum. Served under Bill Clinton as Secretary of Labor.
• Atul Gwande - Superhuman doctor/professor/author. Currently changing the way we die.
• Gary Vaynerchuk - Marketing “guru”. Not actually an intellectual in any way (he’s neither articulate nor particularly insightful), but his energy is contagious. Also has an otherworldly intuitive sense for what will work in digital media.

‍