Suing Opioid Marketers, Vaccinating India and Why Everyone Hates "Instagram for Kids"

A Mind Blowing Chinese Skyscraper Made of Stacked Farmhouses

In China, the Hmong people are a "farming community being displaced by modern planning," and so an inventive team of architects have proposed lifting farmhouses by crane into a wood structure to effectively create stacked communities that elevate vertically. The design-centric article doesn't offer much background about the Hmong people, or why they are displaced in the first place, but this story was just so intriguing. What if we could relocate entire homes into vertical communities this easily anywhere? And what if skyscrapers, an urban idea, became an option in rural communities too? Yes, this story raised lots of questions for me.

Humans May Have Contaminated Mars ... With Life

"Clean rooms might serve as an evolutionary selection process for the hardiest bugs that then may have a greater chance of surviving a journey to Mars. These findings have implications for a form of planetary protection called 'forward contamination'. This is where we might bring something (accidentally or on purpose) to another planet."

Spacecraft are meticulously sterilized in clean rooms to minimize the potential of taking unintended bacteria to space, but recent research suggests that we might already have accidentally "forward contaminated" Mars. Based on the speed with which microbes can mutate, it's even possible that years from now if (or when) we do discover "life" on Mars, it might have evolved from something we brought there in the first place. Talk about a space paradox story ...

New Research Reveals Majority of Americans Do Not Believe Racism Is Systemic

"When asked whether racism is primarily an individual problem or a systemic one, over half of Americans continue to believe that racism comes down to racist people, not racist systems. Only Black Americans and those 18-34 identify the problem as systemic. For Corporate America, understanding the problem as systemic is the first step to creating the change that Black audiences, and others of color, hope to see."

These were the opening words of a viral LinkedIn post from new Edelman PR CEO Lisa Ross, as she introduced highlights from the firm's new Trust Barometer research on business and systemic racism. The bottom line: Corporate America has a long way to go, but it all starts with recognizing that "institutions, and the systems they create, are often the sources of racial discrimination." Once we acknowledge the problem, we can imagine the solution for it. Pretending nothing is wrong, as some leaders continue to do, won't get us there.

Watch Break Sh!t and Help the Global India Fund to #VaccinateIndia!

Every tention For the past several weeks, I have been part of an ambitious team that is working to support efforts in India to combat the COVID-19 crisis by addressing the fact that only 1.8% of India is vaccinated. Only vaccines offer a long term solution to the crisis, and the need is extreme right now. Just $12 is enough to provide one vaccine and a nutrition pack to one person. You can learn more about Global India Fund's efforts in this interview, and donate to the cause here.

I also have a chance to raise $10,000 for the Global India Fund. Next week I will be participating virtually in a speaking competition aimed at reimagining how to "break marketing" and do things differently. My short 12 minute talk will feature three lessons for doing marketing differently and the speaker with the most votes will win $10,000 for the charity of their choice. Watch and vote for my talk here >>