Colin Nagy | January 2, 2023
The MMD Recap Edition
A data driven deep dive into 2022's MMDs
Recommended Products
Repeated book recommendation.
Colin here. Friends of WITI Kelly Berold (KB) and Jenni Dawes (JD) went super deep on a data-driven end-of-year compendium for our ongoing MMD series. I found it super helpful to zoom out and understand, as well as add some new tabs, follows, and subscriptions. They have also shared their data collection in a spreadsheet here.
In their words: “We wanted to keep tabs on all the recs that came up in MMD this year, for our own personal interest. That then evolved into keeping tabs on repeat mentions, then broader patterns, then into a 2022 best of.”
We were very happy to have this effort and detail, so thank you both. Happy New Year from WITI.
International newspapers are back at the Emirates lounge in DXB. Praise be. -CJN
AT A GLANCE
Interviewees:
51 interviewees
39 are based in the US, 6 in Europe and the UK, 2 in Canada, 4 in Asia and Australia, 1 in Mexico (23% are non-American)
50% are writers in some capacity (25/51)
Half are founders or creators (26/51)
Twenty-two work a corporate or 9-5 job
Fifteen percent work in radio or host podcasts
Industries: digital media, tech and startups, fashion and circular economy, food, design, community, publishing and magazines, government and security, investing and startups, music, marketing and advertising, hospitality
Media
Top print subscription: The New York Times weekend print edition (11/51)
Most mentioned diet opening: Twitter first
Most popular reading strategy: skim and select
Repeat newsletter loves: Read Max, Garbage Day
Most recommended places to visit: Naoshima, Japan; Mexico City; many go-tos in Italy
Repeated book rec: My Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart (twice)
MOST CONSUMED
PUBS
Most mentioned:
New York Times, The New Yorker, FT, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Economist, El Pais, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Monocle, New York Review of Books, NPR, Pitchfork, The Ringer, Vulture, Washington Post, WSJ.
Mentioned more than once:
Apartamento, Bankless, Bloomberg, Business of Fashion, CNN, The Creative Independent, ESPN, Fast Company, Gossamer Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Grub Street, The Oxford American, The Paris Review, The Scientific American, Vox, Wired.
WITI Classifieds:
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PODCAST & RADIO
BBC World Service’s Global News Podcast
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Inspiring Futures with Ed Cotton
Keep it
Know your Enemy
Longform
Multiple podcasts from the Ringer catalog: Reality Show, Big Picture, the Watch, Plain English with Derek Thompson
How Long Gone
Normal Gossip
NPR Up First
Pivot
Reply All
Squawk Pod
The Daily
Throwing Fits
WNYC
SUBSTACKS AND NEWSLETTERS
Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study
Maxwell Anderson’s The Weekend Reader
https://monocle.com/subscribe/newsletters/
Opulent Tips
APPS ON REPEAT
BeReal, Brian Eno : Reflection, Dark Sky,, Libby, Flightradar24, Surfline.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
Art
Business building
Collaboration and community building
Design
Evolution of industry
Food and culture
Futuristic ideation
History and economy of fashion
History of everything
Human connection
Interior design
Internet culture
Lifestyle
Metaphysics
Music musings
New technologies and their socio-cultural implications
Philosophy / psych
Profiles and interviews
Sport obsessions
Startups and Tech
Storytelling
Subcultures
Travel
EVERYONE SHOULD READ
AUTHORS
Hubert Selby Jr (Zaira Stefani Vallejo)
Joseph Henrich, anthropologist (Matthew Weaver)
Haruki Murakami (Theresa and Corinna Williams)
Kafka (Theresa and Corinna Williams)
Terry Nguyen (Kyle Chayka)
George Saunders (Louis Cheslaw)
Ellen Huet (Mary Childs)
Emily Oster, American economist (Juno DeMelo)
Lydia Kiesling (Juno de Melo)
Lisa Hanawalt, illustrator (Juno DeMelo)
Gwendoline Riley (Megan Gibson)
Louise Glück, poet (Rafa Jimenez)
Wendell Berry (Ari Kuschnir)
Octavia Butler (Saidah Blount)
Roxane Gay (Saidah Blount)
Maxwell Anderson (Cody Min)
Nassim Taleb (Cody Min)
Cal Newport (Randa Sakallah)
May Sarton (Randa Sakallah)
Sheila Heti (Randa Sakallah)
Dick Hebdige (Bojan Shahvali)
Annie Cohen-Solal, researcher and historian (Kurt Slanaker)
Haska Shyyan (Abby Rapoport)
Anand Giridharadas (Abby Rapoport)
COLUMNISTS
Ginia Bellafante, NYT culture and city critic (W. Christine Choi)
Rebecca Jennings, Vox (Anna Doré)(W. David Marx)
Ann Powers, NPR (Saidah Blount)
Phil Schneider, The Ringer (Yang-Yi Goh)
Amanda Mull, The Atlantic (W. David Marx)
Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker (W. David Marx)
Simon Kuper, Financial Times (Brian Morrissey)
Eric Kim, NYT (Matt Rodbard)
Shannon Mattern, Places Journal (Martin Thörnkvist)
NEWSLETTERS
Laurie Stone’s substack, Everything is Personal (Daisy Alioto)
The Fence (Daisy Alioto)
Walter Pearce’s substack, walt’s Important thoughts (Tyler Bainbridge)
David Yaffe’s music musings on Substack (Armando Bellmas)
A.J. Daulerio and Edith Zimmerman at The Small Bow (Nick Catucci)
Edith Zimmerman again with Drawing Links (Nick Catucci)
Max Read’s Read Max on Substack (Nick Catucci, David Cho)
Brian Morrissey’s newsletter, The Rebooting (David Cho)
Luke O'Neil's newsletter, Welcome to Hell World. (Matthew Ingram)
Ryan Broderick and Allegra Rosenberg’s, Garbage Day (W. David Marx, David Cho)
Puck – a newsletter politics meets media meets the entertainment world. (Marc Polymeropoulos)
John Ganz’s Unpopular Front (Abby Rapoport)
Craig Mod (Matt Rodbard)
BOOKS
Bob Iger’s memoir, “Ride of a Lifetime” (Murray Bell)
Henry Miller, “The Colossus of Maroussi” (Jason Charles)
Tao Te Ching and Bhagavad Gita (Ari Kuschnir)
Atul Gawande, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” (Christine Amorose Merrill)
Evan Mandery’s “Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us” (Avery Trufelman)
Min Jin Lee's book, “Pachinko” (Scott Norton)
“The Longevity Code” by Dr Kris Verburgh (Maud Pasturaud)
PUBLICATIONS
Consumer Reports! Magazine (Laura Meyer)
The journalism project The Long Lead (Alex Thebez)
Stranger’s Guide (Abby Rapoport)
PODCASTS
Know Your Enemy (Daisy Alioto)
OTHER
Stephen Satterfield (Saidah Blount)
Criterion Collection films (Sue S. Chan)
Keith Mcnally's insane takes on IG (Cody Min)
Anything that helps people understand the frames of thought that drove the creation of the things they love. (Aimee Yang)
Claire L. Evans, @theuniverse on Twitter (James Bridle)
Subjects that helps us progress as a civilization: formal logic, reason, grammar, and rhetoric (Chris Papasadero)
Courtney Desiree Morris (Abby Rapoport)
A comprehensive list of amazing music journos here. (Shawn Reynaldo)
PLACES TO VISIT
* = repeat mentions
Asia
Beniya Mukayu onsen in Kaga, Japan
Dapur Bali Mula in North Bali
Kobe, Japan’s most underappreciated city
Korea
Naoshima, Japan*, an island town in Japan where Tadao Ando has installed forever works from James Turrell, Lee Ufan, and Claude Monet.
Singapore
Australia
Walls of Jerusalem National Park in Tasmania
A ski town called Falls Creek in the Australian Alps
Central & South America
Chile’s Atacama desert
The island of Nevis in the Caribbean
Europe & UK
Barcelona, the group of vermouth bars Morro Fi
Casa Mãe in Lagos, Portugal
Corsica
Helsinki
Hiking the first 100km of the Kungsleden in the far north of Sweden, within the Arctic Circle.
London
Matera, an ancient city in southern Italy
Naples
Pantelleria, Italy
Sicily
Slovenia
Stromboli, near Sicily
Tbilisi, Georgia
The Jardin du Palais Royal in Paris
North America
Cellar Stories Bookstore in Providence, RI
Chateau Marmont, LA
Coatepec near the Gulf of Mexico
Kauai
Mexico City*
Monhegan Island
New York City
Oahu, Hawaii,
Richmond, Virginia
The Astoria Greek taverna, Elias Corner for Fish
The Barnacle Historic State Park in Miami’s Coconut Grove
The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta
The Flower Shop NYC
The New York Transit Museum!
The North Fork of Long Island
Toronto (Eat at Milou. Shop at Better Gift Shop and Lost & Found.)
Tulsa, Oklahoma
A holy mountain like Mount Shasta
A place like Marfa, that Donald Judd built with the intention of making permanent art away from all people
An unnamed inn, built in 1937 along the Big Sur coastline
Middle East & Central Asia
The Old Souk in Erbil
The Kolumba in Cologne, Beirut
Urban sites in Southern Turkey: Çatalhöyük, near Konya, and Göbekli Tepe
Essaouira, Morocco
The Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan, adjacent to the Chinese and Afghani borders, a short distance from Pakistan.
Location-independent
Your local spa or bathhouse
Anywhere that would challenge preconceived notions of who you are, and put you in a place of discomfort. Somewhere where they are not the majority.
Any national park or some place of great natural beauty
QUOTES
From ‘Everyone should read…’
“Books, printed on paper. I find it astonishing to go into houses and see a complete absence of books. There is something about the physical impact of a book—the dust jacket, the texture, the quality of the pages, the maps, the ability to scrawl in the margins (in 2B pencil) and insert bits of paper as labels—that cannot be replicated in e-books and audio.” - Toby Harnden
“We’ve lost the thread on the very subjects that allowed us to progress as a civilization: everyone should be reading about formal logic, reason, grammar, and rhetoric - your classic trivium. These topics are the only antidote to the post-truth cancer.” - Chris Papasadero
“I think people should try to dig deeper to understand the frames of thought that drove the creation of the things they love! As an example, I used to go to Disney World with my family every year growing up. Reading Roger Iger’s book - The Ride of a Lifetime of his 15 years as the CEO of Disney really brought an additional layer of understanding and perspective into the level of thoughtfulness, commitment and care that it takes to build an incredible establishment” - Aimee Yang
“I recommend people return to mid-century nonfiction and cultural theory, as these books are always more subtle and complicated than how they are summarized in passing. And writers like Hannah Arendt, Daniel Bell, and Arthur Danto predicted our current cultural moment better than you’d imagine. I also recommend reading books that posit theories you don’t agree with.” - W. David Marx
GENERAL
“My media diet isn’t publications, it’s people. I like to outsource my thinking to people who are smarter than me on a thing, I think it’s better than having to sift through the opinions of strangers.” - Chris Papasadero
“Opening up my sources and feeding my then dormant curiosity made me so much better at my job. I believe linking disparate ideas can help you solve problems in some of the most creative ways. Sometimes the most obscure reference can find its way from my subconscious, into the problem at hand, and create a breakthrough. When that happens, it’s thrilling, and it only makes me more curious.” - Hamish Smyth
“[People should visit] anywhere that would challenge their preconceived notions of who they are, put them in a place of discomfort. Somewhere where they are not the majority.” - Alex Thebez
Thanks for reading,
Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Kelly (KB) & Jenni (JD)
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