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A peak experience

The idea of "peak experiences" was created by psychologist Abraham Maslow in the mid-20th century. Such experiences inspire feelings of intense happiness. They are said to give you a sense that you're one with all of creation.

I've had a few peak experiences. The one I think about the most happened about 20 years ago. At the time I lived in the southwest desert of the United States. About an hour from our home was a small lake called Whitewater Draw where tens of thousands of Sandhill cranes spend the winter. Sandhill cranes are the oldest living bird species, going back at least 2.5 million years. I used to go visit them every year.

Digital privacy and advertisements

According to The Economist, in April 2021, Apple, which supplies one-fifth of the world’s smartphones and around half of the United States', introduced a software update that will end targeted advertisement by companies. Its latest mobile operating system forces apps to ask users if they want to be tracked. Many are expected to decline. It is the latest privacy move forcing marketers to rethink how they target online ads.

By micro-profiling audiences and monitoring their behavior, digital-ad platforms claim to solve advertisers’ problem of not knowing which half of their budget is being wasted. According to Group M, the world’s largest media buyer, in the past decade, digital ads have gone from less than 20% of the global ad market to more than 60%.

What is great listening?

According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), people often think they are better listeners than in actuality. They believe good listening means just a few things: not talking when others are speaking, letting others know you are listening through facial expressions and verbal sounds (e.g., Mm-hmm), and being able to repeat what others have said.

HBR analyzed data describing the behavior of 3,492 participants in a development program designed to help managers become better coaches. The study concluded that good listening is much more than being silent while the other person talks.

People perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight. Good listening also includes interactions that build a person’s self-esteem. The best listeners make the conversation a positive experience for the other party, which does not happen when the listener is passive.

Short film: "Float", and metaphor

First, make a choice about how to watch the film. It is about 7 minutes. You have a few options.

  1. Watch the film before the lesson as pre-study homework.
  2. Watch part of the film in the lesson.
  3. Watch the whole film in the lesson. 
    • If you choose to watch the film, please do your best to describe and discuss it as you watch. There's almost no dialog, so you can easily talk while watching.

This discussion topic is based on a short film by Pixar, called "Float". It uses metaphor to express a complex truth in simple terms.

What is a metaphor? It's saying one thing is another thing, but it's not literally true. Here are some examples:

The ancient giant shrimp

According to Shape of Life, an online resource on everything related to animals, the Anomalocaris (ah-NOM-ah-LAH-kariss), from the Greek meaning “unusual shrimp”, was a major predator of the ancient seas during the Cambrian Explosion 530 million years ago. 

It grew up to 182 centimetres (almost 6 feet) long and had eyes with thousands of lenses, which gave the Anomalocaris extremely sharp vision. It was a fast swimmer, and once it caught up to its prey, the creature could grab it using front limbs equipped with sharp spikes on each segment. This combination of excellent vision, speed and spiky front arms would have made it a formidable predator.

The Anomalocaris’ mouth was composed of 32 overlapping plates. Some scientists interpret this as meaning that it could easily crush prey.

Workers struggling and burning out

Bloomberg News reports that according to Microsoft's Work Trend Index, which polled 30,000 people from a variety of companies in 31 countries and used trillions of data points, the majority of workers feel they are struggling or just surviving in pandemic work conditions and a large percentage are considering leaving their employer this year.

Nearly half of respondents said they are planning to move to a new location this year, which reflects the greater flexibility of working from home. Also, 41% of those surveyed said they're mulling leaving their jobs. The data found that burnout is widespread: 54% of workers said they are overworked and 39% said they are exhausted. 

Warp speed—"Make it so!"

"Prepare for warp speed." If you're a Trekkie or Star Wars fan, and maybe even if you're not, you've heard about warp drives and probably dreamed of being able to travel faster than the speed of light. It seemed like the stuff of fantasy—until now. Physicist Erik Lentz has come up with a theoretical model of a warp drive that would shorten a trip to the star Proxima Centauri, the closest star beyond our solar system, from 50,000–70,000 years using rocket fuel, or 100 years using nuclear fuel, to just 4 years and 3 months.

Opera helps COVID-19 patients

The English National Opera (ENO) has teamed up with a London hospital to teach breathing techniques to people recovering from COVID-19. One of the common lingering effects of the virus is difficulty breathing. Proper breathing is essential for opera singers, so they're in a unique position to help patients recover. 

When in-house opera concerts were cancelled due to the pandemic, the ENO wanted to find other ways to use their skills to help others. They realized they are experts in breathing, so they created a 6-week program, called ENO Breathe, that uses therapeutic techniques reworked by singers. The techniques help restore lung capacity, as well as lessen anxiety through deep breathing exercises.

The ego's effect on leadership

According to the Harvard Business Review, the higher leaders rise in the ranks, the more they are at risk of getting an inflated ego. The bigger their ego grows, the more they are at risk of ending up in an insulated bubble, losing touch with their colleagues, the culture and ultimately their clients.

An unchecked ego can warp our perspective, twist our values and corrupt our behavior. When we believe we’re the sole architects of our success, we tend to be ruder, more selfish and more likely to interrupt others. An inflated ego also narrows our vision. The ego always looks for information that confirms what it wants to believe. Basically, a big ego makes us have a strong confirmation bias.

Can language change culture?

Languages generally develop organically, following changes in culture. But sometimes we have to purposefully change our language to create the culture we need.

Take, for example, sexism. In English, seeing the masculine form of a word—e.g., adding "-man" to a job title, and using he/him/his pronouns—as neutral had been accepted as the norm since the 19th century and still often is. In the 1970s, however, women began to demand equal representation in all things, and that meant in the language, too. 

Studies have shown that people are influenced by the words they see. In one study, people were asked to read a story with the following sentences in it:

  • “The foreman reassured himself he had made the right decision.”

  • "The foreman reassured herself she had made the right decision.”

Will US hedge funds go bankrupt?

An interesting situation has emerged in the American stock market. It has caused the stock of several companies to be extremely volatile.

Hedge funds in the US have opened so many short positions—basically, they have bet that stock prices will fall. Now it is believed that they have short sold more than the number of shares available on the market.

However, savvy retail traders noticed this. They started to buy up these shares in large volumes in the hope to push up the price.

Trading has been so aggressive that the share prices have wildly fluctuated and multiple brokers have been refusing to even allow purchases. The situation has gotten lots of attention, with multiple members of congress showing interest in the behaviors of brokers and hedge funds. Some have called for congressional inquiries.

It isn't clear what the aftermath will be. Only time will tell.

The Swiss Cheese model of defense

Human beings are flawed. So no system of defense that depends on human action is going to be able to protect us 100% of the time. But we can prevent most problems. In 1990, Professor James Reason came up with the "Swiss Cheese model" to create defenses that are hard to break through.

Think about Swiss cheese—it has lots of holes in it, right? Well, the Swiss Cheese defense model takes the "holes", or human flaws, into account by using several layers of defense. Each layer has holes, but not every layer has the same holes. So, put enough different layers together and there won't be a complete series of holes that line up to allow something through. Each human failure will be blocked by other successes.

The success of Bookshop

According to The Guardian, a newspaper based in the United Kingdom, Bookshop is a socially conscious alternative to Amazon that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller.

Bookshop was founded by writer and co-founder of Literary Hub, Andy Hunter. It allows independent bookshops to create their own virtual shopfront on the site, with the stores receiving the full profit from each sale. Customer service and shipping are handled by Bookshop and its distribution partners.

Visuals: language speed & density

According to The Economist, languages face a trade-off between complexity and speed. Those packed with information are spoken more slowly, while simpler ones are spoken faster. As a result, most languages are equally efficient at conveying information.

For instance, a Japanese translation of this text would be longer and a Thai one would be shorter, but readers would finish reading it at about the same time.

Have a look at the graph below and discuss what you see with your teacher.

Black holes support relativity

Albert Einstein spent nearly a decade developing his theory of general relativity, which he published in 1916. The theory asserts that gravity is matter warping space-time and so gravitational bends in space can alter the passage of time. While an appealing theory, it is yet unproven.

According to CNN, the first image of a black hole, captured in 2019, has revealed more support for Einstein's theory. The new finding has suggested his theory is now 500 times harder to disprove.

The black hole in this study is 6.5 billion times more massive than our sun. The research team measured the distortion in the black hole’s gravitational pull and found that the size of this black hole's shadow aligns with the theory of relativity, or matter warping space-time to create gravity.

While the theory of relativity has passed all of the tests thrown at it over the past century, further study is needed to confirm whether it continues to match up with astrophysical objects.

The mission of the century

CNN reports that according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), providing a single dose of a future coronavirus vaccine to all 7.8 billion people in the world will require the use of 8,000 Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, and that planning needs to begin now.

IATA's director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said in a public statement that "safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry."

There are multiple vaccines being tested in human trials simultaneously around the world. Once a vaccine is approved for use, licensing and large-scale manufacturing will take place. However, without proper planning, these vaccines won't be able to fly the skies.

The decline of the yakuza

The Guardian reports that more than a decade of police crackdowns on major gangs and economic uncertainty are making it harder for the yakuza to tempt young men with promises of easy money.

For the first time since records began in 2006, 51% of regular yakuza members are aged 50 or over, according to a new report by the national police agency. Less than 15% are under 40, and those over 70 account for just over 10% of total membership.

Stricter laws, including those targeting businesses with links to gangs that had once operated with near-impunity, have made a life of crime increasingly unappealing. Yakuza members are forbidden from opening bank accounts, obtaining a credit card, taking out insurance policies or even signing a contract for a mobile phone.

Venture capitalism and online games

Unable to hold face-to-face meetings with potential investors, venture capitalists are seeking new ways to meet start-ups, including a service which arranges virtual meetings inside the video game, Fortnite.

Matchbox.vc matches technology investors with start-up executives through video game sessions in the hopes that companies will find their dream investment.

“Games are an incredible way for people in tech to connect,” said the site's co-founder, Alex Walsh. “It's a lot less stressful since both parties are doing something they enjoy, making it perfect for a first meeting. It's just like any other activity that's been tangential to business for years, like golf, getting coffee, or going for a walk.”