Hi and welcome to my very first issue of The Rabbit Hole, an effort to collate all my fave reads/watches/listens over the past month and pay it forward.
I am a deeply curious human, and consume a lot of content despite a crazy work schedule - I listen to podcasts while I’m walking my dog or cooking, I curl up with Netflix or a bookmarked film/tv show in the evenings, and typically read before I go to bed or over the weekend. I end up ruminating on common themes and threading connections among the pieces that resonate with me most. Great books/podcasts/shows/articles not only bring me a lot of joy, they are often things I love to share & discuss with my friends and community, which now includes all of you. Enjoy!
We can’t mention rabbit holes without talking about the mother of all rabbit holes, Netflix. Let’s be real - in quarantine, bingeing Netflix shows is what has saved us all. But how did Netflix become Netflix? My husband and I are listening to and love the podcast Land of the Giants, via Recode, which delves into how tech giants like Amazon, Netflix, Google and the like have changed the world. Their Season 2 focuses exclusively on Netflix, and it’s a fascinating take on the rise of a company that was once upon a time a tiny startup that could have been crushed by then-giant Blockbuster - but somehow the opposite happened. I’d recommend listening to the entire season, but this episode on the Netflix recommendation algorithm (and why/how we are all seemingly watching the same damn thing) is especially fascinating.
Speaking of Netflix, the platform has released some original short documentaries this past month, and this 40-minute film, called The Speed Cubers (trailer above), tells the story about competitive speed cubing. (If you are like me, and didn’t know what this was, allow me to enlighten you: speed cubing involves people solving a Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible.) This description doesn’t accurately capture how wonderful and heartwarming this film is, though - while watching people solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 6 seconds (!) is mind-blowing, the film centers on the friendship between the two best speed cubers in the world - Australian Feliks Zemdegs and American Max Park. Max is on the autism spectrum, and speed cubing became a way for him to improve his motor skills, and ultimately develop his social skills. Feliks is not only Max’s friend, he in so many ways is his shepherd as well - and even though Max continues to break all of Feliks’ world records, Feliks responds every time with a congratulatory phone call and authentic kindness and love for his friend. I genuinely loved it and cried at the end - in a world of dumpster fire-style content, this hidden gem may restore some faith in humanity.
If you are a fan of John Oliver (his “YASS QUEEN” rendition will never not have me laughing out loud), his last episode was an important one, delving into the treatment of the Uighurs at the hands of the Chinese government. If you are not aware, the Xinjiang region, where the Uighurs (Turkic-speaking ethnic minority) live, is currently one of the most heavily policed places in the world. In fact, Oliver likens the Chinese government justification of the treatment & persecution of Uighurs to the Tom Cruise film, Minority Report (i.e., China believes they are being “proactive” because they believe Uighurs are “capable of committing a crime,” so “should we wait for them to commit a crime, or prevent it from happening?”)
According to CFR, the Chinese government has reportedly detained more than a million Muslims in “re-education camps,” and most of those who have been arbitrarily detained are Uighur. Those who are in these camps participate in forced labor, and according to Oliver, 83 foreign and Chinese companies directly or indirectly benefit from Uighur labor, including Volkswagen and Nike.
Yup, Nike - the brand that has stepped up considerably in support of the Black Lives Matter movement (see this change to their slogan, Just Do It) and released the ad, “You Can’t Stop Us,” which has already been viewed more than 14 million times since its release on July 30th. While Nike responded to the John Oliver show saying they no longer use the factory that reportedly employs Uighurs, Oliver suggested a more apt edit to their slogan - "Just talk about doing it and hope people eventually stop asking.”
This cognitive dissonance between what a brand says they stand for and their actual actions is not new - in fact, if we were to reexamine most of what we consume, we may be appalled at the questionable practices of most brands and what our subsequent purchases say about ourselves and what we stand for. And very few of us are perfect - short of living in a yurt off-grid, it can sometimes feel exhausting to police everything we buy and do to ensure we are not adding to the problems in the world. I know I personally feel overwhelmed by what I don’t know most of the time, but I do try and hold space for that, and do my best once I know better.
Not all brands are bad, and my personal favorite example is Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and this piece in the recent New York Times Magazine was a delightful showcase of a company that started with social justice roots. This was my favorite part:
“The other thing I want to mention is that Ben and I are sometimes asked, “Why has Ben & Jerry’s been successful?” We usually say it’s because of three things: really high quality ice cream, great ingredients, very unusual flavors – and also the activist social mission of the company. Some other company could start making ice cream with big chunks the same way Ben & Jerry’s does, but Ben & Jerry’s having this activist, outspoken social mission — other companies can’t copy that. It’s not something you can just say. It has to be who the people are.”
Baking social good into who you are is not easy; it often means making hard decisions that could impact your business margins in the short-term - which is tough as an early-stage company. But while most consumers are lazy in interrogating companies on their supply chains and labor practices (or maybe not “lazy,” since buying decisions are often economic and there is privilege baked into choice), I think there’s a growing number of consumers who are more mindful of what they buy & consume, and will demand that bigger brands like Nike and VW actually match their practices to what they market to the world.
Speaking of interrogating ourselves, I’ve been thinking a lot about how shame is inherent in this process. The past few months (and a few years before that), has been a massive period of unlearning & relearning for me amidst the protests and fight for racial justice here in the United States. I’m a big fan of Brene Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us, and in this episode, she delves into the perceived tension between shame & accountability - namely, “being held accountable for racism and feeling shame is not the same thing as being shamed.” This distinction is so important because feeling shame is such a critical part of the process in unlearning - as humans we experience fight or flight whenever we are confronted when we are wrong - so many of us react in a very defensive way, especially when are shamed for not knowing better. Resisting that urge takes a lot of work, and it means we need to hold space in ourselves for shame and accountability. I often repeat Brene’s mantra to myself in my own learning process, “I am not here to be right, I am here to get it right.”
Amidst the protests and big conversations that are being had, I’ve often ruminated on the difference between the individual vs. the collective, and how this comes to head so much in America, a capitalist society that upholds and celebrates the individual more than the collective. America has become so tribal now, and the idea of the collective has become sequestered along these lines. I’ve been so disheartened by how some Americans have reacted to the Black Lives Matter movement, disregarding the centuries of suffering and oppression experienced by African Americans in this country. I felt some hope, though, listening to Michelle Obama’s new podcast, Higher Ground, which launched this week with an interview with President Obama. I cannot explain how special it was living in Washington, D.C. during the Obama presidency, or what it felt like to become a U.S. citizen when Obama was in the White House. I feel their absence almost viscerally, and definitely ugly cried watching Michelle’s documentary Becoming last month. I felt similarly emotional listening to Michelle’s conversation with Barack this week (do you like how I talk about them on a first-name basis as if they’re my friends?), but especially loved what they said here:
“You have all these institutions that used to be support systems shrinking. So more and more people start thinking in terms of me…And not us.”
One major reflection listening to Obama speak: I forgot how important it was to hear a leader using the word “we” versus “I” - the current President (He Who Shall Not be Named) in comparison almost exclusively uses variations of “I” (for e.g., there is no greater president than me, etc.). I wonder what the psychological ramifications are on a society that only hear statements that over-emphasize the individual versus the collective over time?
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve been nerding out about TikTok, and how it has manifested in Pakistan. We’ve invested in a localized messenger platform for Pakistan (shout out to TelloTalk!), so my curiosity started because I wanted to understand how and why TikTok took off, and what learnings we could extract for our investee. For those who don’t know, TikTok is probably one of the fastest growing social media platforms in Pakistan, but more interestingly, its appeal is to a lower socioeconomic class. The medium is easy to access and to use, and it has provided a democratized platform to anyone - from someone who is transgender to a tribal man in the northern areas of Pakistan - to express themselves. This is a great piece on what the platform tells us about the country, and speaks to how much people want to not only be heard, but seen as well.
I’m a huge fan of new media outlet Rest of World, and this piece by Nilesh Christopher on the rise of TikTok and video apps in India was super interesting and presented a lot of learnings that could apply to Pakistan. He writes this about Likee, a TikTok competitor which has taken off in India: “Likee’s focus on hyperlocalization has been crucial to its growth; the app allows users to choose from among 14 different Indian languages and draws a large number of users from northern and western India, whose inhabitants, thanks to the low cost of internet data, have become among the most prolific consumers of it in the world.”
So much of why apps like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube take off is ultimately because of the “network effect,” a phenomenon where the increased number of people or participants improve the value of a good or service. Companies launching new apps need to understand this and their early adopter base in order to tap into this, and apparently, since 1994, 70% of all the value created by technology can be traced to the network effect. I’m currently diving more into this via The Network Effects Bible, so hopefully more soon as the rabbit hole continues.
Kim Namjoon! Kim Seokjin! Min Yoongi! Jung Hoseok! Park Jimin! Kim Taehyung! Jeon Jungkook! BTS! Oh yes, friends. This quarantine period has solidified my place as an unapologetic member of ARMY, i.e., the fandom of K-pop band BTS (aka, the biggest boy band in the world). The last time I “stanned” (this is a new word I just learned while in quarantine) a boy band, I was in high school and it was the Backstreet Boys. What I soon discovered is that BTS is singular, not only in their success, but also for who they are and what they stand for. The fact that a k-pop boy band who mainly sing in Korean and are unapologetic about their culture has connected so authentically with a global audience truly showcases how language is only a perceived barrier.
If you’d like to read a breakdown on this phenomenon, Jae-Ha Kim wrote this great article for Rolling Stone that I very much enjoyed. For those who really want to go down the BTS rabbit hole, I just finished and loved BTS The Review: A Comprehensive Look at the Music of BTS, a book written by music critic Young-Dae Kim that delves into the group’s discography (16! Albums!), but also includes interviews, critiques, and analysis. If you’re a nerd like me, you’ll find that this book (which I read on my Kindle) will give you a much deeper appreciation of the group’s music and overall evolution over the past seven years. And because I often fall down a rabbit hole, I was introduced to my first Korean drama (k-drama) because BTS member V had a song on the soundtrack of k-drama Itaewon Class, which then introduced me to Crash Landing on You, which then led me to King: The Eternal Monarch…and the rabbit hole continues.
Thanks for coming down this month’s Rabbit Hole with me. Have comments or feedback? Send me a note - I’d love to hear more.
In the words of BTS - Borahae (and also Eid Mubarak to those who celebrate!),
Kals