This week’s highlights:  The Life Changing Magic of Throwing a Frisbee, Retail isn’t Dead Yet, and Charlie Puth’s Path Through Fame.

Fifteen on Friday – 05/18/18 – Issue 285

Food for Thought:

1. TheAtlantic – The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy.  I almost hesitated to include this article because odds are you are going to see it regardless.  That said, it is worth a read and ponder.  The author continues a line of thinking begun by David Brooks in his 2001 Bobos in Paradise that Elizabeth Currid-Halkett picked up last year in her The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class.  The question raised is how to handle a society focused on ‘meritocracy’ vs. ‘lineage’ and the accompanying echo-chambers that naturally arrive from that.
2. WashPo – Less cramming. More Frisbee. At Yale, students learn how to live the good life.  Some 1,200 students were simultaneously taking Santos’s “Psychology and the Good Life” class.  It’s the largest class, by far, in Yale’s 317-year history.
3. NPR – Why So Many Gifted Yet Struggling Students Are Hidden In Plain Sight
4. TM – Steve Jobs’ Secret for Eliciting Questions, Overheard at a San Francisco Cafe
5. NYT – The Case for Having a Hobby  “Last spring, I forgot the word for hobby. I was on a hike with friends, and I was explaining how much happier my spouse had become recently after starting a band with some friends.”

Business/Economics:

1. TheCut – The Store (It Would Seem) Is Not Dead (at Least for Now)   Amazon isn’t going anywhere, so shops that would rather not shut down are adapting, resulting in a somewhat surprising retail renaissance.
2. GMO – Is Investing Starting to Get Difficult Again? I Hope So
3. TBR – Interview with Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates 
4. NYT – Google’s File on Me Was Huge. Here’s Why It Wasn’t as Creepy as My Facebook Data.
5. HBR – How Netflix Redesigned Board Meetings

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. Hodinkee – Apple, Influence and Ive. The greatest designer of our generation talks watches for the very first time.
2. NYT – Charlie Puth Got Famous. Then He Got Good.  Fame almost ate this 26-year-old pop singer and songwriter alive. Now he’s made one of the year’s best pop albums, “Voicenotes.”
3. Deadspin – The Ridiculous Saga Of Lance Armstrong, The Cheater Who Became An Enemy Of The State
4. Esquire – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Has Never Borrowed a Cent in His Life. The author of The Black Swan and Skin in the Game on what it’s like to have true financial freedom.
5. NYT – Chris Paul: Point Guard, Activist, Union Boss  CP3 plays many roles in the N.B.A. Besides being the starting point guard for the Rockets, he is an outspoken voice on social issues, and leads the player union.