This week’s highlights: Podcast fatigue, Costco loyalty, and the best ticket scalper of all time.

Food for Thought:

1. BusinessWeek – How to Keep Up With the Podcasts: Don’t.  They’ve become high culture, like adult homework. And I’m not doing it anymore.
2. FastCoDesign – The $25K Pod That Could Ease L.A.’s Homelessness Crisis.  These bright, airy shelters are carefully designed to sidestep red tape.
3. NYT – Losing a Fortune Often Comes Down to One Thing: Family
4. TM – How To Get People To Like You In 5 Seconds or Less
5. Guardian – I accidentally bought a giant pig.  I was told she was six months old, had come from a breeder and wouldn’t grow any bigger than a very large cat.

Business/Economics:

1. Economist – A world turned upside down. – Credit CD – Wind and solar energy are disrupting a century-old model of providing electricity. What will replace it?
2. ZH – Art Market Bubble Bursting – Gauguin Collapses 74% To $22 Million
3. TFR – What’s A Prudent Investor To Do? – Credit JC
4. AP – Were Fama and French Right about Value and Size? An Ex-Post Test.  Fama and French’s 1992 seminal research, which identified the value and size factors, was met with skepticism. Even the authors questioned the underlying economic rationale for their findings. With a quarter century of data, let’s look back and see if the skepticism was justified. Have value and small-cap outperformed?
5. SI – The Fervent Loyalty of a Costco Member

Culture/Tech/Science:

1. Bloomberg – JPMorgan Software Does in Seconds What Took Lawyers 360,000 Hours.  AI and deep learning are targeting another industry.
2. BC – This Man Makes Founders Cry. Jerry Colonna helps CEOs make money by making peace with their demons.
3. Motherboard – The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster  The most infamous ticket scalper of all time used bots to buy millions of tickets. Now he wants to stop them.
4. BOTB – The Confidence Code.  It turns out, “success correlates more closely with confidence than it does with competence… [and] there is evidence that confidence is more important than ability when It comes to getting ahead.” For too long, women have overlooked this critical component of achieving professional success.
5. WSJ – It Can’t Be This Hard to Board a Plane.  American, Delta and United can’t figure out how to get people onboard quickly and without drama; you’re in Group One, which means your group boards fifth.