Every Friday I pick five things worth your time: what I'm reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm building, something from the desert, and a line I'm chewing on. This is the very first one. Watch the full episode below, or read it here.
1. What I'm reading: The Sovereign Individual
The Sovereign Individual (1997). Cover: Simon & Schuster.
This week I'm listening to The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. It's a book about the economic possibilities of a technology-enabled future, and some of its ideas about where governments and citizens are headed.
I came across it through my study of where technology and culture overlap, and specifically through Peter Thiel, one of the original members of the "PayPal Mafia". Thiel wrote the foreword years after the book was published. As I understand it, he, Elon Musk and others have been heavily inspired by it.
Peter Thiel. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0.
I'm about a third of the way through, and it's a tricky listen. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what the authors write, but there's a nefariousness to it that makes me uncomfortable when I picture a world run that way.
Why it's worth your time: if you believe the future could be something better, it helps to read the playbook. It's how you see what's being built, and how you choose what you'd build instead.
2. What I'm listening to: Ezra Collective featuring Olivia Dean, "No One's Watching Me"
Ezra Collective. Photo: CamilaAlves.raf, CC BY-SA 4.0.
I came across this one completely at random, on a drive with a jungle playlist on. What a beautiful song. I don't know if it's the chords, the harmony or the rhythm, but I've caught myself playing it over and over all week. Highly recommend.
Olivia Dean. Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. What I'm building: Words Make the Room
My girlfriend and I got into a word-nerd debate this week about nouns and verbs, and when it's fine to use one in place of the other.
Take Google. It's the name of a company, but it has pierced the collective consciousness so deeply that "to google" now means to search, wherever you're searching: Instagram, Facebook, even your own inbox. Band-Aid is another favorite example. It's a brand that became the word for the thing.
If you're a builder, that's the dream: people assume your product is the solution. But it raises a question: when is becoming the verb a problem?
I'm exploring that in this week's Write On, Words Make the Room. On the side, I'm building my own predictive linguistics tool: a way to read what people have talked about and what they're talking about now, so we can see what we'll be talking about next. More on that to come.
4. From the desert: the Twentynine Palms Book Festival
The Twentynine Palms Book Festival ran Friday through Sunday, November 13 to 15. It's free, with more than 100 authors, panels and a book fair, right here in town. I went as an attendee, and I'm technically on the agenda as an author. My goal was to meet writers who've been directly inspired by 29 Palms, the Mojave and Joshua Tree National Park.
Details and next year's dates: 29pbf.com.
5. A line I'm chewing on: Octavia E. Butler
Octavia E. Butler. Photo: Nikolas Coukouma, CC BY 2.5.
Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors and one of my inspirations. If you've never read her, start with Parable of the Sower, one of my favorite books of all time. She was a genius. She could predict things because she could discern and speak the language of what was happening, and because she looked into the past.
Parable of the Sower (1993). Cover shown for identification.
My favorite quote of hers:
"All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change."
That's your Five for Friday for November 13, 2026. Peace and love.
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