Why Older People Are Cooler, the Worst Graduation Speech and Meta’s Big Problem

Dear Fellow Non-Obvious Thinker,

It seems we’re in full pitch season right now, as I have had a flood of emails these past few weeks from authors pitching their book ideas, entrepreneurs promoting their startups, podcast hosts inviting me on their shows or job-seeking friends asking for connections. Some are pitches meant for me, some are just asking for advice to help their pitches land with the right person in my network. All week I’ve tried to respond because I know that asking for help is hard. I wish I could fund every startup or accept every author’s big idea or appear on every podcast, but these aren’t the only ways to be helpful.

When I can’t say yes, at least I can offer some small but specific feedback. Or just a bit of encouragement without further commitment. Or a rejection with kindness. And if I can do any of these things quickly enough, maybe it matters in the moment because someone feels heard instead of just having radio silence from everyone they contacted. It took me a while to realize that I don’t always need to have a solution or opportunity to share. Sometimes just responding is enough. So that’s my shareable tip for this week: try to respond.

Moving on to this week’s stories, you’ll read how Netflix is finding the right way to integrate advertising into their service, Meta is accused of treating workers like “human garbage” and the newest proof that older people are indeed cooler. Plus in bonus stories you can learn about LEGO changing their maximum age to 100+ in honor of David Attenborough and a graduation speaker who got a rude awakening after being booed by students for mentioning the most taboo topic to young people … AI’s disruptive role in the workplace.

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

This Week’s Videos…

Why Streaming Entertainment Is the One Place People Hate Ads Less

This was a big week in the advertising industry as the TV upfronts happened where advertisers buy large chunks of ad time for the entire year ahead while networks pitch their latest shows. Netflix is expanding their offering again with announcements of new programming and an expanded schedule of NFL games. Their latest numbers promote a reach of 250 million global monthly active viewers. What’s more interesting, though, is the strategic way that they have managed to grow advertising and raise their prices over multiple years while maintaining the appeal of their premium level experience.

According to public analysis, they have raised prices relatively infrequently over the past two decades. Along the way, they have avoided doing things that many other services have done to frustrate their most loyal and highest paying subscribers. Premium passengers on airline flights still have to sit through pitches for branded credit cards. Paid subscribers to subscription services like Intuit QuickBooks are still subjected to constant upsells for lines of credit or branded financial products. Social media platforms are even worse: there is no tier of access you can pay for on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn that would allow you to avoid all advertising. The idea that you can pay for a tier that opts you out of constantly being marketed towards only seems to exist within premium entertainment streaming and Netflix is leading the way.

This also matters because as new reports come out about how Americans are increasingly cutting their spending on streaming services due to economic pressures, those subscribers at lower tiers generally understand the tradeoff they are making. Their frustration at watching ads, therefore, is less emotional. When we understand advertising as a form of “payment” for our own money-saving choices, we’re less likely to revolt against it. Especially if programmatic ads can deliver more relevance and focus on things we actually care about.

For anyone in marketing, a world where people don’t hate advertising is a good thing. For a case study in how to do it, the long game that Netflix has been playing since starting their streaming service back in 2007 is worth studying.

Everything Looks Cooler with Age

Last week at the Met Gala one of the most non-obvious looks of the night came from rapper Bad Bunny who aged himself 53 years to show up as an 85-year-old man. His commitment to the look was extreme, spending hours in the chair getting transformed by Hollywood prosthetics designer Mike Marino. His choice was widely interpreted as a criticism of the inherent age-bias we often see in the fashion industry. It seems to be having an impact too. This week I also read a story about the iconic fashion looks of older people:

“Old people just look cool. Cooler than the rest of us, for sure. And everything they wear looks cooler by default. Everyone knows it: Fashion brands rake in platitudes every time they cast a senior model and garments associated with the elderly uniformly shape the canon of good clothes. What is the science here? It’s simply that everything, from clothing to cars to people, looks better with some life in it. Everything is cooler with age; a life well lived and all that. That’s partially why old folks make things look cool by default. That’s reality. They are real. (The juxtaposition between the elderly and hip new clothes also helps.) Also, they have a sense of ease that whippersnappers lack. Confidence comes with age (or so they tell me).”

Combined with the idea I shared from a previous week’s newsletter about the shift from men of a certain age talking about “hotspan” versus healthspan where the new focus is “staying hot into your 60s,” there is something fascinating happening here around the current conversation about age. Being older is now cool. Hopefully it stays that way when I get to my 60s too.

The Science Is In. AI Is Definitely Making You Dumber, If You Let It

This is a story that will surprise no one who reads my newsletter regularly, but what was surprising to me over the past few weeks is how regularly I’m seeing examples of the same conclusion coming up in multiple stories across many sources. This week alone, there was a story in Fast Company about how cognitive scientists found that using AI for just 10 minutes impairs brain performance. Just a day later, 404 Media reported that many developers believe that AI is not only making them dumber but leading to a widespread de-skilling within their industry.

As automated tools make our work easier, they also make the reality of brain rot a major concern as we may start forgetting to do the things that were previously essential in our work. Some would suggest that we have seen this before. Most of us who haven’t spent time on a farm don’t know how to skin a chicken or milk a cow anymore. Many younger people have already lost the ability to read a map or write in cursive. Thanks to automation in cars, many next-generation drivers will never need to learn how to parallel park.

You may look at some of these shifts and see them as great modern conveniences. After all, who ever loved parallel parking? Or you may see these as lost arts worth mourning. I do still love a good map, personally. Either way, this is going to be a tension we all experience in our lives with greater frequency. The question of what skills to retain and which ones to give up will soon be a daily decision for us all—if it hasn’t become one already.

Meta’s Big Self-Inflicted Problem

This week Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will be offering “completely private” encrypted chat for users. That sounds like great news. The problem is in the same week, Meta announced it will no longer be providing this sort of encryption on Instagram conversations, and ongoing news of planned layoffs have created a widespread unhappiness among employees who feel they are being treated like “human garbage“ even as the company places mandatory tracking and surveillance software on all their computers presumably to help them determine who is doing essential work and who isn’t.

In the span of a few days, you can see a perfect compilation of the biggest problem facing Meta right now: a deep lack of trust that prevents any effort, even a seemingly positive one, from being received that way. In time (if it hasn’t happened already), I suspect Meta/Facebook will be studied by academics and top business institutions alike for how completely they have destroyed trust, reputation and goodwill that they did enjoy at one time (back in the early days when they were Facebook). None of that makes it easier to live through right now for those most directly affected, but at least there’s hope future leaders can learn from their missteps and perhaps do better.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

Freight Caviar Magazine

How much do you really know about the freight trucking industry? Probably not a lot, but some of the stories from this newsletter and magazine may be more relevant to your life and work than you think. Recent stories from Freight Caviar have focused on the growth of automated trucking services, Amazon’s recent moves to open their logistics services to all industries beyond just Amazon sellers, and an illuminating look at the modern realities of the trucking industry. While some content is behind a paywall, what you can see publicly and from subscribing to their newsletter offers a useful deep dive into an industry that affects us all but that is too often ignored. For that reason, Freight Caviar is my pick for the Non-Obvious Media of the week.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

China’s 90% Model

This week the long-awaited US-China summit is finally happening after weeks of delay and so it’s a perfect time to bring this book up for you, which is an Ideapress title from legendary business consultant Ram Charan. I’ve been collaborating with him to support the writing of this book for the past few years, and the experience has been eye-opening. Dr. Ram has one of the clearest perspectives on all the things that have happened between these two superpowers, and why China is continually winning. The structure of the book is a prescription for the US on what needs to happen for America to truly fight back and in the early days of release it’s already been a big hit. If you want to understand exactly how business happens (or doesn’t happen) between these two countries, this book should be your next read.

Buy-on-Amazon
Buy-on-Bookshop-

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? 

Watch my new 2025 speaking reel on YouTube >>