ImagineEntangled Vale
🎵 Shazam Turns 20
An enjoyable look back at the most-Shazam'd songs over 20 years, along with some other notable and surprising stats from the music-discovery service that quietly became part of everyone's phone.
Topic
Snackables
ImagineHearthlands
📈 Viral Post Generator
A tongue-in-cheek tool for generating one of those bloated, hyper-inspirational LinkedIn posts that make the platform such a thrill to be part of. Feed it a humble brag, set the cringe level, and enjoy.
ImagineEntangled Vale
📖 Recommend Me a Book
A cute, simple website where you read the first page of a random novel — no cover, no author — to see if it grabs you before the title is revealed. I'm yet to meet someone whose problem is not having enough to read, but it's fun, and yet another reminder that one day I'll die not having re
WonderWild Margin
🏙️ City Beautiful
Cities are a confluence of social, spatial and structural activity that express the many dimensions of human life — and Dave Amos, the geekily excitable host of City Beautiful, is exactly the kind of person who geeks out about that. He makes enlightening video-essay case studies on public
ImagineEntangled Vale
🎬 Working Titles
Do you skip TV opening credits, or consider them part of the storytelling and, at their best, an art form in their own right? If the latter, the Working Titles series has online creators lovingly unpack the credit sequences of their favourite shows. I already loved the BoJack Horseman intr
Surprise meUnfolding Realm
🧠 Why Aren't Smart People Happier?
Don't be misled by the title — intelligent readers will already sense it's the wrong question to ask. Instead, strap in for a wide-ranging, well-read essay that's basically an attack on the concept of intelligence itself, which the author sees as a category error: we equate intelligence wi
Surprise meWild Margin
💃 How a Movement Actually Starts
Watch a lone, shirtless man dance ridiculously in a field — and then watch, in under three minutes, an entire movement form around him. Derek Sivers narrates it as a lesson in leadership: the pivotal figure isn't the leader but the first follower. 'If the leader is the flint, the first fol
Less aloneUnfolding Realm
🔀 CTRL SHIFT!
A signature theme of my own podcast is that no-one is on Plan A in life, and the unplanned path often turns out to be more interesting. In CTRL SHIFT!, people who set out to create one thing end up creating something else — often something better. Start with the episode on the scientist wh
Less aloneHearthlands
🦕 Dinos and Comics
A delightful series of comics dealing with friendship, loneliness and self-esteem — drop it into your rotation for an easy pick-me-up. The author has also bravely created a 'message for my haters' page.
Surprise meWild Margin
🏠 The Housing Theory of Everything
A well-researched article that places housing affordability at the root of a vast range of other social issues — poor health, financial instability, economic inequality, falling fertility, even climate change. You don't have to agree with every conclusion to admire the argument.
Make senseSoma Isles
🗣️ Why We Say Um
A well-produced short talk on the social function of discourse markers, filled pauses and other hesitation phenomena in language. They're not necessarily just filler, or a kind of mistake — they do real work in conversation.
Make senseEntangled Vale
📝 Language, Please
One to bookmark: a free, living resource for writers seeking to thoughtfully cover evolving social, cultural and identity-related topics, including a style guide and a find-an-expert directory. Their entry on 'neurodivergent' is a good example of the care they bring.