Dave

Dec 14 2025

An Hour Well Spent

Trying something new on this particular Sunday — as we continue our month of content — by sending you in the direction of two outstanding interviewers and one S-tier guest.

The interviewers: Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, co-hosts of the insanely popular Triggernometry podcast.

The guest: Eric Weinstein. Probably the most “practically brilliant” thinker out there. By practically brilliant, I mean:

YES he’s whip-smart
YES some of his ideas — and you’ll hear a lot of them during this hour-plus conversation — are out there
BUT there are practical applications to quite a bit of what he talks about.

For instance, at the end of the interview, there’s a really robust discussion about AI, where Eric says, in effect, “we are asking the wrong question.” The practically brilliant idea, which goes back to economic research, is to look at the tradeoffs — between human flourishing and machine-driven productivity — and incentivize the right part of the equation: the humans, not the machines.

The whole thing — aired a year ago, after Trump’s re-election — is not TOTALLY a political discussion; but it also sacrifices sacred cows on both sides of the political equation.

Like I said, practically brilliant. And Konstantin and Francis are really solid interviewers.

Enjoy.

Dec 12 2025

Every Year’s Top Song Since 2020

According to Dave, at least.

I’ve been blogging about all sorts of things for quite some time now, but the annual Top Songs list — which I’ve been doing both here and on Facebook and X — remains a personal favorite.

AND it’s fun to compare my lists to others, especially those who blog about music for a living.

In any event, let’s dive in with the top picks from each of the last six years; I’ll also rate each with “Staying Power” on a scale of 1 to 5; 5 means it still manages to maintain a certain level of coolness to me.

2020: The Districts, “Cheap Regrets”

Okay, I’m starting to think I’m the only one who has heard this song.

Not really, but, maybe the fact that this song’s video has only been viewed 195,000 times is telling me something.

Alas, Staying Power of 3/5. I still love it, and may still love it in a few years. But the rest of you have moved on (or never arrived in the first place).

2021: Glass Animals, “Space Ghost Coast to Coast”

Band: still at it. This song: still slaps. Staying Power: 5/5.

2022: Hemlocke Springs, “Girlfriend”

Turns out this song, which arrived near the end of 2022 and immediately shot up to the top of my list, launched a bit of a star. Staying Power Rating: 4/5.

2023: The Last Dinner Party, “Nothing Matters”

Yeah, considering the fact this band has gone beyond cult following, I’m giving this song a 5/5 for Staying Power.

2024: Mannequin Pussy, “Sometimes”

I listen to this song way too often. The band is cool enough to support Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age on next year’s tour.

Staying Power: 5/5.

2025: Preoccupations, “Ill at Ease”

I’d give this a 6/5 for Staying Power if I could. I can’t give it a rating, though, since it’s from this year.

But if I could will the band to visit Chicago again…

Dec 11 2025

The Fifth Dentist and The Tenth Man

On reading the fine print, studying the scenarios, and thinking differently

A year ago, I was working on a project and started wondering about The Fifth Dentist. You know, from the gum commercials.

Ages ago, the idea took hold that “four out of five dentists recommend Trident,” a brand of sugarless chewing gum. Simple enough, right? A survey was conducted, dentists were asked about chewing gum, and, for some reason, Trident was the winner.

In fact, if you were to ask me what other brands of sugarless chewing gum are on the market, I don’t know what I’d say. I don’t give it much thought, I’ve accepted the claim at face value — Get it? Dentists? “Face” Value? — and I guess we’ve moved on.

But…not everybody has moved on. And you shouldn’t either.

Four Out of Five…

Yes, there’s a mini-screed over at a blog from Ideal Dental. Yes, they take it rather seriously. Yes, the claims are really misleading.

I highlighted the part that got me thinking — and the rest of it is a fun read, sure — and then I started looking into what Trident actually said. From Wikipedia:

The survey wasn’t about Trident, it was about the category of “Sugarless Gum.”

Which brings us to…

The Tenth Man

After a surprise attack by Arab forces led to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli Army needed to come up with a system that would insure against overconfidence.

To put it simply, if nine people agreed on something, a tenth man needed to come up with an argument against the other nine.

It’s “Institutionalized Devil’s Advocacy,” as Chris Meyer tells us over at The Mind Collective:

Are These Two Things Connected?

We’re in the age of “Narrative-driven Journalism” so we’re often looking for facts when all the other side is doing is aiming to be “Directionally Correct.” In the Trident example, you can draw a couple conclusions:

Trident is in the business of selling sugarless gum
Of course no dentist in their right mind would recommend a particular brand of gum
It’s a win for the Trident marketing team to get you to think about their brand as tangentially recommended by a bunch of dentists.

Cynical, maybe, but…true. Trident is happy to be directionally correct.

And yes, you can make a connection between Trident and The Tenth Man:

Everybody seems to have accepted the connection between Trident and four out of five dentists, but should they?
Why DIDN’T the Fifth Dentist “cave?”*
What reasons would there be for a dentist to recommend gum at all?

Your Thinking Can Evolve

Cynicism needn’t drive your every move in business and in life, but healthy skepticism is often warranted.

The contrarian viewpoint — be it from a fifth dentist or a tenth voice in an argument — can be your friend.

Oh, and the * above? Well, IYKYK.

Dec 10 2025

Setting Yourself Up for 2026 Success

As we wind down 2025, and we keep on creating content in December, we look ahead at 2026. There’s going to be A LOT happening in 2026.

No matter what your role is — Corporate Person? Independent? Small Agency Creative? Sales Leader? — it’s time to take stock of what you need for 2026. Let’s Go!

1. Take a Look at Your ‘Stack’

New to the concept of a “Stack?” The technology industry came up with the concept of a “Tech Stack” to describe all of the tools at their disposal. (Imagine a rack of servers, stacked on top of each other, maybe with one running the company’s web server and another running its anti-fraud system, and so on…) Others have used the concept: a marketing stack or a talent stack can be used to describe the full suite of tools at your disposal.

Your own stack might be different depending on your industry, but you’re going to need a bunch of tools and systems and subscriptions to make that happen.

Here’s an example: I have more than a couple X mutuals — that’s what you call someone on what used to be known as Twitter when you follow them and they follow you; if you want to be my mutual, be sure to follow me — that make money from their posts.

It’s easy to say “just post more!” in order to profit, but there’s more to it than that: not only do you need to be posting A LOT and you need A LOT of viewers for your posts, you also need to have “Premium +” in your stack. (Which is an investment of an extra…30 more bucks a month. See item 4 below, though.)

MORE: I got a note today from Trello asking me to login to Trello to keep using my Trello account. So I did. And I realized that I haven’t USED Trello in maybe five years. So I probably don’t need it.

Again, no matter your work or industry, no matter if you’re solo or part of a big organization, you need to understand what tools are at your disposal and whether you need more of them. (Or fewer.)

2. The Calendar Is Your Friend

2026 is going to be YOUR year!

It’s also going to be a year like any other: January means the gym is packed for the first few days, then starts to slow down. March comes in like a lamb and out like a lion. And so on.

The point? When’s the last time you looked at the whole year, from start to finish, and actually planned the whole thing out?

Now I know what some of you are thinking: what about The Planning Fallacy? Yes, we do tend to underestimate how long something will take, and underestimate how much it will cost, and overestimate our own skills and abilities.

But I’ll counter with this: do you know what September COULD look like? Have you figured out where you might be a year from now?

That’s right, take out a calendar and start looking at the next 12 months. Do it today: even if it’s just a general idea, like “Finish writing the 3000 words of my book” in March, or “Have 30 emails sent to prospective clients” by September.

You’ll be amazed at what you’ll start to discover about the year ahead, and you’ll thank yourself next year at this time.

3. The Best Time to Reach Out to Your Network? Yesterday…

One general ideas in the book The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg and John David Mann, is the concept of not keeping score. (You’ll have to read the book, though…)

You should have a Rolodex of contacts — today, that’s kinda known as LinkedIn — and you may want to take a look at that list and figure out how you can help them.

And think creatively: Who are the people that you know that should know each other? Who are the people that you haven’t talked to in ages?

You want to make it a point to reach out to say hello — LinkedIn, email, text message — and just let them know they’re on your mind. Ask them if they’re free to catch up, or let them know you are here to help them if they need help.

4. Watch Your Spending. Seriously.

You’ve heard about those tools where you can see if you’re subscribing to stuff that you don’t need to subscribe to? Those are actually pretty nifty; but, really, you might get more satisfaction out of doing it a little manually.

Yes, the spreadsheet-obsessed (like me) just needs to revisit a couple of monthly statements.

Do you need to spend so much on [INSERT THING HERE]? Do you need that monthly subscription to [INSERT THING HERE]?

You know the drill, but…well nobody really knows what 2026 will bring, so best to give the finances more than a quick glance.

5. Don’t Stop Learning

You are living in a wonderful time: you have access to so much information.

Sign up for a Duolingo account. Check out Coursera. Play around with AI — even if it’s absurd — and learn how the tools work and how to use them.

Go down a YouTube rabbit hole and listen to experts — or people who promote themselves well who MAY be experts — and find a couple favorites.

A couple faves: I could watch Chris Williamson interview a brick wall and he’d probably get the wall talking. And if Eric Weinstein is on any podcast, I’ll watch; he’s one of the most fascinating guests anywhere. (Here is Chris interviewing Eric a year ago; 4 million views and counting.)

Are You Ready for 2026?

There’s still time to get ready…Go get ’em!

Dec 09 2025

Top Five Songs of 2025

Last week, we started the countdown. You can see Songs 20-14 here.

Then, yesterday, we gave you 13 on down to 6.

Now, it’s time for the Top 5 Songs of 2025. Let’s dive in!

5. Daffo, “Dagger Song”

I first heard this song in August on my way back from dropping a kid off at college. BUT, I had to…I had to search to find it. Like I couldn’t quite catch who the artist was and then had to listen to back episodes of The Download 15 on Sirius XMU.

But, I found it. And it entered heavy rotation for Dave, at least.

Daffo is the stage name for Gabi Gamberg and this song just hit me.

(I have found, FWIW, that The Download 15 often delivers songs that disappear from the playlists rather quickly. Not sure why this one didn’t get the staying power.)

4. Wunderhorse, “Rain”

Wunderhorse has been well-documented — not just by me; I did that here on my Substack — and they’re definitely going places. A trip to Lollapalooza underscored there otherworldly status.

Note that I’ll share a couple versions of this song below because they appear to be incredible live.

BUT how bout a bonus track, first? Here’s “The Rope.”

Here’s “Rain,” first live on Jimmy Kimmel.

AND, here’s the band Live at The Dublin Castle; shout out to the audio team, this is impeccable.

And, finally, the official audio from the band.

The song stuck with me all year. If you rank it first, I ain’t arguing with you.

3. CMAT, “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station”

This one is 100% on Canadian Steve. I can’t thank him enough for it, either.

I talked about CMAT on this page last week and she definitely has that certain something about her.

What’s beautiful about this song is not JUST that it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense at first, but that CMAT tells you that it’s not making too much sense.

But it makes total sense: Why do we hate certain people? Why are some things so triggering?

CMAT asks the question. And tries to answer it. Flipping glorious. I dig.

2. Bar Italia, “Rooster”

We thank the YouTube algorithm for this song. You’ll notice the Bar Italia song “Fundraiser” made the Top 20 list (yesterday, ranking 12th). YouTube decided to introduce another Bar Italia song a month ago — YES, THAT RECENTLY — and I absolutely cannot get enough of it.

The video is actually nuts: Get a load of the guitarist deciding to stop pretending he was singing into a live mic. (My buddy Ken said that moment was both “unsettling and very cool.”)

Kicking myself for missing this band when they were nearby. Will make it a point to see them live in 2026, God willing.

It’s the second-best song I heard this year.

1. Preoccupations, “Ill at Ease”

This shall be no surprise to anyone who has followed my work this year.

I telegraphed this decision in July, when I launched The Saturday List; in the very first edition of said list I made a declaration:

I was right. “Rooster,” above, Number 2, came close.

Impeccably crafted song. Lead singer Matt Flegel has a really amazing voice and the lyrics are top notch. For instance:

Let’s carve ourselves a tiny space to live in
And mutually assure our self destruction
Cause all the things I love are things that kill me
And all the things I dread aren’t really there

Funny enough, I heard this song AFTER my post of possible Song of the Decade candidates for the 2020s; It has since moved to the top of my list for the decade. It’s. That. Good.

Behold, Dave’s Song of the Year for 2025: Preoccupations, “Ill at Ease.”

Thanks for reading. Seriously, it means a ton to me.

We’ll have some Honorable Mentions to share later this month. And we’ll return to other programming tomorrow.

Cheers!