Supercommunicators just spent its 22nd week on the New York Times bestseller list, so I want to share 10 🚫shallow questions vs. 🤝deep questions to help you become a supercommunicator at work:
A thread 🧵
For the last month, I’ve been trying to figure out why New York and Seattle fared so different in the pandemic. The result came out today in
@NewYorker
:
For the last 6 months, I’ve been embedded in OpenAI and Microsoft, studying how they build AI. Then Sam Altman was fired, sparking a five-day crisis that some insiders started calling the “Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck.” I had a front row seat. 🧵
Seattle, on the other hand, moved fast and put communications in scientists’ hands – making public health official Dr. Jeff Duchin into an unlikely celebrity.
It got so bad that some of de Blasio’s health officials said they would resign if the mayor didn’t order social distancing more quickly and start giving better advice.
Seattle was the first epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak. But by mid-April, New Yorkers were dying at six times the rate of Washington State residents.
Eventually, New York instituted social distancing rules as strict as Seattle’s. But because New York moved slower and communications were more muddled, it took longer to impact how New Yorkers behaved.
I hope you’ll read the piece – which was guided and edited by the inestimable Daniel Zalewski and fact checked by Teresa Mathew (
@_teamat
) and Dennis Zhou. (Dennis’s parents, incidentally, are EIS officers.)
1/ Why are so many people so angry? And what can we do about it? I spent much of the last year reporting a story for
@theatlantic
on who is to blame for all of the fury coursing through our politics and our personal lives.
Over the past year, I’ve been trying to answer the question: Who is responsible for the WeWork catastrophe? Why didn’t the board or venture capitalists stop C.E.O. Adam Neumann from wasting billions of dollars and almost destroying the company?
Just in case you haven't heard about it until now (tho, you should have, because, like, 30 people have already recommended it to me), you should read this beautiful article by
@nxthompson
about running, his father and life:
Publication day tweet! My book "HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth" is out today. And I have some news-about-the-news...
My new book on the science of communications - Supercommunicators - is out next week, and the Wall Street Journal was kind enough to excerpt it in the Weekend Journal:
And, most notably, Obama bent over backwards to compliment Republicans, because he didn’t want to politicize the pandemic (again, a CDC recommendation):
Whether we call it love, or friendship, or simply having a great conversation, achieving authentic, meaningful connection is the most important thing in life. Schedule a call with that friend you haven’t seen in a year.
@crampell
@lizzieohreally
Also the baby looks fab. Not as fab as your hair, but close. Also: I remember when we saw you on the street at that baby was still inside you! Crazy. And: Hi Catherine!
When I was writing my first book, I was so freaked out that it was going to fail - so totally scared of it all the time - that one night, I had to just imagine what it would feel like, pretend that it had totally failed, and let myself just be with it for a full night 1/2
You know what's really good? The Queen's Gambit. And, like, literally every other show that was taped before this evening. Much better than live TV right now.
One thing I like about The Witcher: If you leave the room, and come back 10 minutes later, it doesn't matter, because you had no idea what was going on before either.
Great speaking to
@cduhigg
, bestselling author of "The Power of Habit," about productivity & new habits we've adopted during Covid.
Also: How
#SPACs
work
🎧👉
#ProfGPod
@benedictevans
Benedict - thanks for your tweet. I'm a fan of your newsletter. Although VC might have a specific and limited definition in your book - as a certain kind of professional - it has a pretty common use in the vernacular: People who invest in
@MikeIsaac
just come! on an airplane! no life swapping needed. We're in playa guyones near nosara and we surf everyday and occasionally drink beer and I can do reporting from here. so, basically, im never coming back.
When you talk to
@richroll
, you meet someone who is authentic, and wonderful, and wise, and who brings so much of his full self to every conversation.
Studies show that settling in with a book before bed helps you get a better night’s sleep, boosts your mood, and reduces stress.
Start building your sleep habit today.
@penguinrandom
There should be something on twitter where if you see some incomprehensible meme, you can push a button and it will tell you what everyone is parodying, rather than having to search for 20 minutes for something as dumb as this:
After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.
And, it kind of worked. It sucked, but from then on, I felt less scared, like I had figured out how, precisely, things would be bad, and I knew I could survive. And I kind of feel, strangely, like the same thing might help now? Like its the dread that's the worst? 2/2