Uncategorized

Oct 19 2026

Talking Sports on The Vandy Program

A couple recent interviews — and one solo rant — to tell you about on Dave Van de Walle’s podcast, The Vandy Program.

What Manchester City Did, And the Possible Punishment

Ben Harris was my guest to talk through the English soccer scandal, and he speculated that the punishment against Man City could be severe.

College Football: A Couple Things

In early October, I sat down with Andrew Donaldson to talk about college sports and the Protect College Sports Act.

The full video is here:

And an excerpt, where Andrew asked Dave if the “Bro Shows” were gonna continue. (Dave Portnoy got canned from Fox the next day.)

Speaking of College Football…

The announcement of a 24-team College Football Playoff got Dave talking, and so a “Vandy Rant” followed.

Be sure to subscribe, and follow Dave on X.

Dec 30 2025

The Best Long-Form Videos of 2025

As I plan for 2026, one of the things I want to do is conduct more long-form interviews on YouTube.

As a result, I’ve spent much of the year — and especially the last three months — watching a ton of long-form interviews. I’ve got a few favorite interviewers: folks who put together a combination of interview subjects and their own ability to ask questions (and to let the guests talk).

So, while I plot my own next steps, allow me to share some of the best videos I’ve watched during 2025. (And there are two bonuses at the end: a couple good interviews that I conducted.) Here goes:

Triggernometry Interviews Richard Miniter

I’ve gone from “hey these guys are pretty good” to “OMG, ANOTHER VIDEO? I HAVE TO STOP EVERYTHING AND WATCH.” Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin know what they’re doing when they interview someone. So I have three of their chats on this list…

This first one was actually crazy memorable for me; I was shocked that a couple British folks wanted to talk with Richard about America.

The interview is a discussion of how America became…America. Big fun.

It’s great, I’ve watched it at least twice all the way through.

Triggernometry Interviews Jonathan Wilson

The subject, “The Real History of Football.” This is fun and *weird*, IMHO. As opposed to a discussion of American Football, this analysis of how football became “FOOTBALL” is really something.

It also just dropped within the past couple days, proving that sometimes they have a “run, don’t walk” subject. A propos as we enter a World Cup year.

Triggernometry Interviews Dr. Peter Attia

Dr. Peter Attia’s “Outlive” sits on my nightstand. It’s because of his work that I’ve tried to incorporate a combination of exercise, diet, and genetic predispositions — I just learned I’m A LOT MORE Italian than I had originally been told; I grew up being told I’m 0% Italian, so 20% is quite a lot more — to my own health journey.

I’m also now closer to 60 than I am to 50; so I’m hopeful that I can lean more on the part of the family that lived into its 80s (Mom just turned 80) than on the part of the family where the men die in their 60s (Grandpa was 61, Dad lived to 65). This is going to take a combination of…exercise — which Dr. Attia champions throughout his work — and diet; perhaps a few other medications can help me to ward off bad health.

Jordan Peterson Interviews Scott Adams

This becomes even better under the sober light of day: Jordan and Scott have both had some significant health challenges this year, so it is even more illuminating.

Chris Williamson Interviews Peter Zeihan

With the title of “The New World Order Is Here,” we get to listen to Peter Zeihan as he waxes poetic about the state of the world.

It’s all about demographics: and China’s demographics — and those of Russia and South Korea, too — are not good.

Chris Williamson Interviews Dave Ramsey

Big fans of both. But it’s real cool to watch a long-form interviewer (Chris) talk to someone who is used to five-to-ten-minute calls (Dave) over and over.

Dave Van de Walle (that’s me!) Interviews Stephen Barrigar

I interviewed Stephen three times in 2025, but this one was my favorite; partly because of the wide-eyed innocence we both had. Neither of us could have predicted how much impact the Trump tariffs would have had on Canadian politics — Stephen went so far as to say that Pierre Poilievre would be the next prime minister, and I didn’t dispute that assertion — but here we are.

Worth a watch to see just how wrong we both were.

Dave Van de Walle Interviews Jennifer Brown

Jennifer is a fun interview; the fact that she’s in Minnesota and, as I write this, news of possible widespread Somali fraud is making the rounds makes it all the more interesting and timely.

Also, the low number of views is a testament to me as a marketer, not her as an interview subject. SO WATCH, WILL YA???

See you in 2026. (And don’t forget to Like and Subscribe over at The Vandy Program.)

Dec 28 2025

What Is ‘Price’s Law’?

This post originally appeared on Dave’s Substack in March 2024. It has been lightly edited and updated.

If you’ve been anywhere around business or business books or hustle culture or anything related to GSD (“Getting Stuff Done”) at work, you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle.

The 80/20 Rule.

80 percent of [THING] will come from 20 percent of [GROUP]. Simple, really: if you sell something, 80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of your customers. If you take a category — like, for instance, music — you’ll find that 20 percent of the artists produce 80 percent of the songs that actually get listened to.

For a while, this was canon in business and you couldn’t go into a work meeting without trying to use that to sound smart. “Boss, why don’t we fire 80 percent of our clients so we can just sell to the 20 percent that we spend all our time with?”

This ignores…well…EVERYTHING about whatever business you’re in, but points scored for simplification!

Introducing Price’s Law

THE ECONOMY is in weird shape; Note that your job might be at risk if you aren’t deemed to be productive. However you slice that at work — look busy! be at your desk! — at some point you’re gonna start looking around and asking the question: Am I Getting Stuff Done?

Price’s Law is “stupid simple:”

The square root of the number of people in any enterprise will produce 50% of the results.

The credit goes to Derek J. de Solla Price for coming up with this scientific analysis.

Let’s apply this to your (hypothetical) team at work and figure out what that means for you:

If it’s a small team, it of course makes sense: in a team of 4, the square root of 4 — which is 2 — will do half the work. (I was told there would be no math.)

But in a bigger team Price’s law starts to have…bigger impact.

Raising Your Hand At Work

In a (hypothetical) team of 50, let’s call the square root 7. 7 People are getting stuff done, the other 43 are working at roughly 50% capacity. In a sales-driven organization, that doesn’t bode well for the other 43.

Now start to look around: are you one of the 7?

Probably pretty easy to answer that question in a lot of organizations. You have a little success on a project and then you have another project assigned to you. You open the door to sell something to a company and all of a sudden that company asks you to help them solve a different problem. You write a piece for the company blog and it clicks and then management realizes you should do more blog writing.

You are pretty obviously one of the 7.

Making Sure Your Department Is Productive, Too

Your job as “one of the 7” is pretty important when management starts to look to…well, how do we say this…cut the dead weight. These are sometimes the “get me the low performers” discussions, but they, too, are sometimes the “which departments can we do without?” discussions.

Yeah, that’s right. If marketing isn’t producing, marketing can easily be cut. Well, let me edit that: If marketing isn’t seen to be producing, marketing can easily be cut.

Your goal, then, as one of the 7 is to make sure that your department works on — and ONLY on — high-impact projects. If 20 of the other 43 are assigned to the Penske File and all they’re doing is moving the contents to an accordion-style file folder, that’s a low-impact project. If the other 23 are working on monthly TPS reports that don’t go anywhere, that’s a low-impact project.

Your Book of Business

It’s an insurance industry thing: the Book of Business. Or your portfolio. You should have a sense at all times of what that means for your personal situation: what are the clients you’re bringing in and/or responsible for? What are the projects that you are working on and how are they tied to the business and its bottom line?

What is your department doing on those days when they’re not planning or navel-gazing or working on Penske Files and TPS reports?

Your Book of Business should actually be yours. You should be able to discern where you have the most impact, and, if they show you the door, you should be able to say “hey, I was one of the 7 and here’s how.”

Or you should be able to say “here’s what the other 43 were working on, it added no value, I helped with the things over here that did add value, and I’m indispensable.”

You can thank Mr. Price.

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!

Dec 08 2025

Top Songs of 2025, Part Two

We’re back! It’s Part Two, so today’s post goes from 13 down to 6. The Top Five will come tomorrow.

Let’s go!

13. Youth Lagoon, “Speed Freak”

If you’re wondering who or what a Youth Lagoon is (or are), here’s a primer from Wikipedia:

So that’s settled.

In any event, Youth Lagoon brings it with this song, which clocks in at 13.

12. Bar Italia, “Fundraiser

This song served as my introduction to the band Bar Italia.

It won’t be the first time you’ll see them in the countdown, as they are one of two acts with multiple appearances; they’re also one of two bands — see Witch Post, on last week’s first installment of Top Songs — that moves back and forth between male and female voices.

The video makes little sense, but the song is a banger.

11. Geese, “Taxes”

One of 2025’s “It Bands” is Geese. Part of the reason: front man Cameron Winter’s voice is unlike anything I’ve heard in quite some time.

And the lyrics? Way-too-Gen-X to be a band of kids in their 20s; angsty enough to get invited to sit in the driveway with me, pop open a lager, and yell at the kids to “get off my lawn.”

Below, the official video, and the band’s performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.