The Professor Saving History, a Myth About Las Vegas and Your Afterlife Soundtrack

It was a quiet week, the calm before a storm of 6 keynotes in 12 days culminating in SXSW as I look forward to heading into a transformed Austin without its convention center for a different sort of gathering. If you’ll be there too, be sure to hit reply and let me know so I can get you some invitations to a few private events we’re hosting or you can join our private WhatsApp group here. And for the other events, if you’re in Orlando, New York or Las Vegas – let me know so we can connect in one of those cities as well!

For stories this week, there are some interesting developments on the AI marketing battlefront with Anthropic emerging as the clear winner so far. You will also read about a professor with a unique way to try and save history from being erased, as well as my take on why the “death spiral” of Las Vegas may be exaggerated. In bonus stories, Spotify reimagines the afterlife, a whiskey-sniffing robot dog and ​yet another Meta employee becomes a whistleblower after regrettably discovering he had actually been doing evil work.

Enjoy and stay curious!

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This Week’s New Videos…

The Professor Saving History and Truth with Guerilla Teaching Methods

When the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery changed the image of the current President in January, it also removed the original placard which mentioned Donald Trump’s impeachments and the Jan. 6 insurrection. Local historian James Millward had the sense that this was wrong and he shared with the Washington Post that after feeling that we were all witnessing “history being snipped and clipped and disappeared,” he decided to do something about it. So he went to the museum with a stack of paper in hand and gave any interested museum visitors printouts of the old wall text that stated plainly that Trump was “impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection.” He called it “guerilla teaching.”

This was a personal fight for Millward, as the co-founder of Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, a group that has made it a mission to spend thousands of hours tracking changes made by the Trump administration to change the way history is preserved and show that people are paying attention. Their group recruited hundreds of volunteers last summer and fall to take more than 50,000 photos of every sign in the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo. A similar effort is happening digitally to save websites, online data sets and other knowledge in danger of being wiped away.

The fight isn’t isolated to DC-based museums either. National Parks around the country are being hit with removal orders to take down signs related to Native Americans and climate change. This is a heroic fight and it’s being waged by normal people who are deciding to show up and do something. As Stanford art history professor Richard Meyer also told the Post, he says, “the worst kind of censorship is the censorship we never know has happened.”

How Anthropic Is Winning the AI Platform Marketing War by Being Less Evil

Anthropic is winning the AI platform marketing war. In the quest to become the dominant category-defining player, OpenAI had the largest lead with ChatGPT. Then they abandoned their non-profit business model, integrated advertising and compromised their original moral principles. Now Anthropic is getting aggressive in their bid to promote themselves as a more responsible alternative. With their highly effective Super Bowl ads attacking OpenAI with humor to their latest high-stakes stand against the Pentagon, the message is consistent: we are the only AI company that isn’t being reckless and is standing for something.

“Anthropic has argued that it was asking for reasonable assurances that its model would not be used for surveillance of Americans or in autonomous weapons, such as drone operations, that did not involve human oversight. The Pentagon wants all artificial intelligence contracts to stipulate that the military can use the models for any lawful purpose.”

Whether you trust these principles to last or not, the message is winning right now. Fast Company noted that their branding and actions are burnishing their reputation while TechCrunch suggests that against the Pentagon in a “serious game of chicken, Anthropic may not be the one to blink first.” I realize this may seem like a strange brand for me to be complimenting, given they agreed last year to pay a record $1.5 billion to publishers and authors for illegally stealing more than 500,000 copyrighted books to train their models (including several of mine).

The thing is, it’s pretty clear that all the other platforms also ingested data illegally and often scraped the content of books as well. Yet as of today Anthropic is the only AI platform that I currently have at least a chance of receiving some compensation from—which is kind of the point. In a world where we have lots of bad actors ready to manipulate us while stealing our data, any company that leads with principles will certainly stand out.

Is Las Vegas Really Experiencing a Death Spiral?

They say it’s just for rich people. Visitation is down 7.5% thanks largely to tariffs and reduced travel from international visitors (particularly Trump-despising Canadians). By most news reports, Las Vegas is in deep trouble (maybe even a “death spiral”) and the rest of the country may not be far behind. That’s the conclusion of an investigative report going viral this week from More Perfect Union provocatively titled “Why Vegas Doesn’t Care If You Visit Anymore.“

The numbers and public sentiment certainly seems to tell this story. The effect of Formula One on Las Vegas, for example, has been a windfall of nearly $1B yet economists suggest the revenue has only flowed into a limited number of hands. Among most locals, it’s almost universally hated because it kills business (many small businesses report 30% drops in revenue) and many locals describe it as a “shitshow” with partitions over bar windows, entire streets blocked and iconic sights like the Bellagio fountains inaccessible.

The reality of Las Vegas, though, is more than this experience. I’ve been there several times in the past few months and will be back again next week. Like most places, when you venture out with locals (beyond the strip and casinos), you see a different side of the city. You might experience the emerging Arts District on the North side bringing people and foot traffic from locals and tourists. Or you may see unique local shows like Mondays Dark filled with overflow talent from the more touristy shows just gathering to raise money for local charities. Just 30 minutes outside the city, you can experience the awe of the Seven Magic Mountains public art exhibit designed to be a “creative expression of human presence in the desert.”

This isn’t the F1-crazed and gambling driven side of Vegas portrayed in movies that is too expensive for anyone but the rich and famous. This is the local Las Vegas that feels resurgent and alive. Most cities have this side to them, it’s just not what most people tend to find. Unless they choose to seek it out.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

The Bitter Southerner Magazine

These are regional stories from the American South, and they come from a magazine called Bitter Southerner. In its pages, you’ll read about the lunch ladies of Trenton, Tennessee feeding children in their community along with some fascinating history of the school lunches program itself. Whether it’s a tale from the county fair, or letters written by those detained in an ICE facility, the stories you’ll find in this publication are unique and unlikely to be covered elsewhere. This is exactly the sort of regional journalism that can open your mind and transport you inside their place whether you happen to live in the American South or not.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Another World Is Possible

What if you could study the best programs and ideas from around the world and offer an argument for how to replicate them elsewhere? That’s the ambitious goal of this book from journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata who travels around the world to uncover how different places solve seemingly impossible problems. From the UK’s universal health care system to Singapore’s affordable public housing initiatives, each story offers not just analysis but also some practical suggestions for how that program might be used as a model to inspire others like it. The book is described as “a work of keen analysis as well as enormous heart and optimism.” Exactly the sort of thing we need more leaders to read right now.

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop? 

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