Think of Perscient storyboards as a way to track narratives in real-time so you can see reality before the story catches up.
For example, here are five insights on the housing market from Matt Zeigler’s interview with Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, that come alive with new meaning through the narrative-tracking power of Perscient storyboards.
Lawrence Yeo once committed 100 hours to write a single story. He just wanted to know what would happen if he put that much time and effort into something. No expectation, just curiosity.
Bill Stephney, after introducing Chuck D to Rick Rubin (and Hank Shocklee along the way but, don’t let me rabbithole you too on this story), helped manage Def Jam way back at the beginning of the label, where he learned to ask up and comers if they wanted recognition, money, or celebrity status – because they’d have to focus on one of the three. He learned not to have an expectation too, and he let the curiosity guide him.
Which – the external validation, as tempting as it is, of knowing your 100 hour project will succeed or basking in the glory of your status, wealth and fame, always (ALWAYS) succumbs to the internal reality of – did you get what you really wanted?
In Lawrence’s case, it eventually led him away from a career in music, a career on Wall Street, and into a career in writing (first book, “The Inner Compass” out now).
In Bill’s case, it eventually expanded from a career in music, to the business of music in movies, documentaries, and even high education.
The overlap is that the external validation ultimately means nothing, even if it’s where we want to focus. It really is a trap. And these two have both figured out how to stay out of it.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Eric Markowitz shared this Nassim Taleb quote in The Nightcrawler last weekend and it’s rattling around in my head:
The more rational we become, the more blind we are to our own irrationality.
Nassim Taleb
You can reduce, simplify, and get everything fitting into your head all tidy-like.
All the numbers can add up. The i’s can be dotted and the t’s can look to be crossed.
Maybe it’s damn near perfect after a while.
And all it does is open you up to a bigger disaster.
There’s comfort in living with some mess.
I pretty much expect I am always in a bit of a mess. I don’t like to be surprised by it. The chaos is just there and that’s fine.
For example – I thought I had a whole week of posts scheduled out on Saturday this week.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Engagement’s a trap. Or maybe it’s a myth. All I know is – it’s real, but it’s also not reality, and if you’re confused, you’re onto a truth that will set you (and whatever you’re creating) free.
Mike Cessario is the CEO/Founder of Liquid Death and, no matter how dumb you feel like the company is (or how amused you are by a CEO who wears Deicide shirts), he knows a thing or two about reaching an audience and inspiring action.
If you’re obsessed with comments, likes, and engagement rates, I need you to see this:
90% of people on social are passive observers who do not engage by clicking like buttons or posting comments. They treat social media the same way they treat their television: they sit back and watch the circus.
Mike Cessario, CEO/Founder at Liquid Death
Marketing extraordinaire Jack Appleby put that idea in my inbox this week (he was probably wearing a Taking Back Sunday shirt). It came on the same day I happened to be listening to Bob Pittman (MTV, Nickelodeon, basically the creator of my entire childhood education, and current CEO of iHeartMedia) get interviewed by Rick Rubin (who… same pitch). Bob was talking about the Spotify vs. radio stats and – just read this too:
Ad supported Spotify or ad supported Pandora reach about 20% of America. We reach 90%.
Bob Pittman, iHeartMedia CEO
More people listen to the radio today than did 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
This is an exclusive subscriber-only preview of the first six chapters of Rusty Guinn’s upcoming book Outsourcing Consciousness: How Social Networks are Making Us Lose Our Minds. The book explores how evolution, polarization, and technology are slowly transforming humanity into a hive mind - and what we can and can't do about it.
Outsourcing Consciousness
The Long Now
The Long Now is everything we pull into the present from our future selves and our children. We are told that the economic stimulus and the political fear of the Long Now are costless, when in fact they cost us … everything.
Tick-tock.
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Men of God in the City of Man
Things Fall Apart
Amid the Widening Gyre of politics and the black hole of financial markets, the only anchor is us, together, walking with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts. Experience Ben's original 4-part series.
Outsourcing Consciousness
The Long Now
Men of God in a City of Man
Things Fall Apart
Recent Notes
Vertigo
There’s a moment of vertigo that takes place in the mind of every speaker, performer, artist, or public figure in that moment when you know that something is going wrong.
Before the Flood
We have suffered a devastating flood in Texas.
I believe an even more devastating Flood is to come.
Now we must build an Ark of story. Now we must build an Ark of love.
The Emperor’s New Prose
Most people can stomach actual cruelty. Feeling as if they are cruel, though?
When stories stop telling us what we need to be true, they break.
Shitholes, Sanctuaries, and Springfield
The present immigration debate is the product of three moments that changed Common Knowledge: the Shithole, the Sanctuary, and the Springfield Moments.
The Words Behind the War
I want to show you what ‘mobilizing narrative support’ looks like, as measured by our revolutionary Perscient technology and as understood by someone who has spent the past 35 years studying, writing and teaching about this stuff.
The Four Roads to the Great Ravine (June 26, 2024)
1) US election spurs even greater fiscal deficit.
2) Phony War between Israel and Iran gets real.
3) Preventive war risk between US and China over tech embargo.
4) New GFC risk stemming from shadow banking sector.
Paradise Losers
You’re not a racist.
So don’t let racists use your story to fuel theirs.
Beyond Nudge
LLMs ensure their survival by showing us that we can all find meaning in our lives so long as we keep talking with the LLMs. They ensure their survival by telling each of us not what is true but what we want to be true – what we NEED to be true – at the semantic core of our individual identity, even if what we need to be true is an LLM-dominated dystopia.
And we are so grateful.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deficit
The House passage of the Big Beautiful Bill and Elon Musk stepping back from DOGE is a common knowledge moment — everyone now knows that everyone now knows that the US deficit cannot be controlled, much less reversed, over the remainder of Trump’s term — and it puts us on a pretty straightforward path to a global sovereign debt crisis.
The Death of Risk
The death of risk happened with a whimper, not a bang. Not because the market blew up, but because of an icy truth: safe havens ain’t safe.
If you don’t trust the meaning of risk-free, you can’t trust the meaning of risk, and we have built everything on the meaning of risk.
Our True Enemy Has Yet to Reveal Himself
It’s not the tariffs. It’s not the recession. These are just the catalysts through which the true enemy shows himself.
The true enemy is the over-financialization of the US Treasury market, and its catalyst is the diminishment of the full faith and credit of the United States.
Wall Street’s Not-So-Golden Rule
We are in the early stages of a bank run on the United States and the US dollar, and everyone on Wall Street is heading for the exits, including domestic investors who will exit not because they want to but because they know the Not-So-Golden Rule.
We’ve Tried Nothing and We’re All Out of Ideas
When you’re defending the indefensible, you have to create a symbol powerful enough to keep the masses in line.
“I voted for this” is one of the few capable of sustaining support for policy this extreme.
Scoreboard
We live in a world awash with narrative.
It’s worth celebrating those rare moments where a man gets to thumb his nose at those narratives, point to the sky, and say “Scoreboard.”
I Broke the Dam
Some want us to believe that the narratives that shape belief are universally promoted from the top down.
That hasn’t been true for a long time.
Crashing the Car of Pax Americana
I am desperately opposed to crashing the Pax Americana car, Annie Hall style, because the America First system that this Administration wants as a replacement is not a stable system that is possible as a replacement.
Narrative Shopping
The Trump administration has flipped between a half dozen distinct narratives telling us what these tariffs are really about.
Why? Because they needed to wrap the truth in a better story. Time to go Narrative Shopping.
The Goldstein Machine
A threat built on a shred of truth, an existential fear, and our utter inability to stop it is the perfect tool for psychological control at scale.
It is a Goldstein Machine.
It Was Never Going To Be Me
The Road to Serfdom is not an endless road, but its path and duration, what I call the Great Ravine, is not up to us to choose. While we walk this road the only thing we can save is our souls, and we do it with one simple sentence: It was never going to be me.
DeepFreak
In seven days, a narrative about AI tech technology became a narrative about what it meant for chip manufacturers, which because a narrative about national security.