Carrot Cake 6-9-2020

Here’s what’s on my radar this week.

Podcast: “Wind of Change”

Wind of Change is beautifully produced. It listens like a documentary. It’s about a song performed by 80s hair metal band, The Scorpions. The narrator hears a story from a reliable source that the CIA wrote this song as propaganda during the cold war. It’s a fascinating behind the scenes look at how the CIA likes to partner with movie producers and musicians. Must listen.

Person: Jim Dethmer.

I found Jim through the Tim Ferriss podcast. I don’t always love Tim’s show, but once a month he has someone on and they get into a rhythm that blows my wheels off. Jim wrote a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. This show explores a few of them. Even more stunning is Jim’s story. He talks openly about burning his life down to start over. You can hear the pain in his voice. The episode alone is worth listening to for the concept of “leading above the line.” I’ve since bought his book on Audible and watched a bunch of his stuff on YouTube. An even better podcast with Jim is from a show called The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish.

Remarks and questions:

It’s incredible to see what’s happening across the US in support of Black people. Just this weekend, I was riding my bike through Hingham and stumbled upon a protest that was about 100 or 200 strong. Lot of cops. I saw similar activity at the rotary in Scituate.

Couple things that I noticed: If I had to guess, I’d say the average age of demonstrators was around 19. The broad majority of participants were white kids. These are two of the whitest towns in MA. I feel extremely hopeful that young white kids are paying attention. Which led to these questions. Maybe you are feeling them also:

What will I do to contribute and make a difference?

What will this movement look like in a couple of weeks or months?

Will it fade into the background like school shootings do every few months?