March 31, 2024
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
followHim Podcast – Easter – Sister Reyna I. Aburto:
- Hank Smith: “So there you were Reyna and excuse me if I keep asking questions, but there you were, you’re probably eating lunch occasionally with these special witnesses. You’re probably having conversations with these special witnesses. What did you learn there?”
Sister Reyna I. Aburto: “It was wonderful to see the different personalities and I always tell people, you will never guess who I think, of course, this is my personal opinion, who I think is the funniest of all of them. And I honestly believe that is President Oaks. When you are in a very relaxed setting like in a dinner table, he makes everybody laugh over and over. And even Sister Oaks has to say like I do to my husband, okay, I think that’s enough. But I think that is cute because they are human beings. They’re like all of us. They all have different personalities. Each of them is amazing.”
Eye.
“Bradley Cooper and Jimmy [Fallon] Can’t Stop Laughing” (YouTube)
- I hadn’t laughed this hard in awhile. I had watched this video years ago, but watching it again with my family and my parents this week was incredible!
Read.
“The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell:
- “In the late 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is known as the small-world problem. The problem is this: how are human beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world, are few and distant? Or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web? …
“Milgram’s idea was to test this question with a chain letter. He got the names of 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was the name and address of a stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it on to a friend or acquaintance who he or she thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker. If you lived in Omaha and had a cousin outside of Boston, for example, you might send it to him, on the grounds that — even if your cousin did not himself know the stockbroker— he would be a lot more likely to be able to get to the stockbroker in two or three or four steps. The idea was that when the packet finally arrived at the stockbroker’s house, Milgram could look at the list of all those whose hands it went through to get there and establish how closely connected someone chosen at random from one part of the country was to another person in another part of the country. Milgram found that most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps. This experiment is where we get the concept of six degrees of separation. …
“‘When I asked an intelligent friend of mine how many steps he thought it would take, he estimated that it would require 100 intermediate persons or more to move from Nebraska to Sharon,’ Milgram wrote at the time. ‘Many people make somewhat similar estimates, and are surprised to learn that only five intermediaries will — on average — suffice. Somehow it does not accord with intuition.’ How did the packet get to Sharon in just five steps?
“The answer is that in the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal. When Milgram analyzed his experiment, for example, he found that many of the chains from Omaha to Sharon followed the same asymmetrical pattern. Twenty-four letters reached the stockbroker at his home in Sharon, and of those, sixteen were given to him by the same person, a clothing merchant Milgram calls Mr. Jacobs. The balance of letters came to the stockbroker at his office, and of those the majority came through two other men, whom Milgram calls Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones. In all, half of the responses that came back to the stockbroker were delivered to him by these same three people. Think of it. Dozens of people, chosen at random from a large Midwestern city, send out letters independently. Some go through college acquaintances. Some send their letters to relatives. Some send them to old workmates. Everyone has a different strategy. Yet in the end, when all of those separate and idiosyncratic chains were completed, half of those letters ended up in the hands of Jacobs, Jones, and Brown. Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.”
💡
Complete a “book report” at the conclusion of each book I read / listen to. Then, to make sure I complete these “book reports”, send them to my accountability partner.
- This idea was inspired by a coworker who shared that she utilizes a book journal to answer certain questions about books she completes.
Additional Content
Next Newsletter (April 7, 2024 – Newsletter Subtitle)