Tabby & Science of Motivational Speaking

Featured Articles

Tapia, Tabbi, Tabique, Tabby

Places Journal • 24 Sep 2024 • ~6350 words

In this piece, Jola Idowu explores the often-overlooked history of tabby architecture along the U.S. coast. It discusses how tabby architecture was shaped by the labor of enslaved Black people and Indigenous communities and how the preservation of these sites has often overlooked their complex histories. Through a personal journey across historic sites, Idowu uncovers how tabby structures serve as both a testament to resilience and a call for a deeper understanding of America's architectural heritage.

While the mixing of modern concrete often implicates distant geographies — sand from the West Coast, gravel from Appalachian quarries, with significant energy costs in the extraction and transport of materials, even before the manufacturing process — the ingredients for tabby could be sourced locally. The main cost was labor, which was forced upon the millions of people brought from across the Atlantic to work under slavery, and those born into it. Tabby architecture was made possible by the labor of Indigenous people who harvested oysters and created the middens, and the labor of the enslaved people who mined that resource, prepared the concrete, and built the structures.

When Stanford fell for Tony Robbins

San Francisco Chronicle • 24 Sep 2024 • ~5900 words • Archive Link

Tony Robbins, a famous motivational speaker and life coach, faced backlash in 2019 over misconduct allegations. Around this time, researchers at Stanford's Healthcare Innovation Lab launched studies examining Robbins' seminars, claiming they could effectively treat depression. However, experts who reviewed the studies found significant flaws, including calculation errors and a small sample size. This piece also explores the concerns around conflicts of interest, as the researchers had personal and financial ties to Robbins and how he heavily promoted the studies in his marketing materials.

. . . when the Chronicle asked more than a dozen experts in psychology, statistics and medical research to review Stanford’s Date with Destiny study, many raised serious concerns about its validity. They found basic calculation errors, head-scratching data points and conflicting statements about how study participants were selected. Critically, they noted that too few people participated in the research for the findings to hold meaning for the public at large.

Recommended Articles

The Line of Sherpas Saving Lives and Glaciers in the Himalayas

Atmos • 25 Sep 2024 • ~2050 words

In the face of rapid glacial melt, high-altitude communities in the Himalayas are rising to the challenge of preserving their way of life. This insightful piece explores the stories of Sherpas like Tenzing Chogyal, who blend traditional wisdom with modern science to tackle the existential threats posed by climate change.

The speed of the oncoming glacier melt, not only in the Himalayas, but also in the South American Andes, the European Alps and other high-altitude regions, is transforming life for people who live in the mountains. Season by season, changing weather patterns threaten to upend their access to water, while disrupting the agriculture and tourism that underpin their economy. Many live directly below a swelling glacial lake, which can burst into floods, sweeping away entire towns.

If you want to fix America, fix Detroit

Inside Story • 25 Sep 2024 • ~3050 words

Can the story of America be told through the rise and fall of a single city? This piece examines how Detroit's rise as the center of the American automobile industry and the implementation of Fordism shaped the city, as well as how the subsequent deindustrialization, racial tensions, and urban decay led to Detroit's downfall. The article poses the question of whether fixing Detroit could be a way to address the broader issues facing America.

Jeffrey Eugenides wrote that “most of the major elements in American history are exemplified in Detroit.” Race, immigration, the suburban dream, corporate power, class, capital and labour, dream and disillusion, corruption, crime.

The American Sentence: On Gertrude Stein’s Melanctha

The Paris Review • 24 Sep 2024 • ~3950 words

This piece explores Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" and how it departed from conventional storytelling, using repetitive and fragmented language to convey the inner life of its protagonist. It argues that Stein's innovative approach to language and form was influenced by the modern art movement she was immersed in while living in Paris, and her work helped transform the American novel and 20th-century literature by embracing the formlessness and expansiveness of the American identity.

It was her way of writing, and it was her way of being an American writer. If, as a child in America, Stein had felt hardly American, and as an adult in Europe felt at times helplessly American, on the page she was free to be her American self and, more than that—having arrived at this moment of revelation, she would have an unwavering sense of prophetic purpose—to free American literature to be itself.

Good Judgment with Numbers

goodthoughts.blog • 23 Sep 2024 • ~2150 words

This piece discusses the role of quantitative tools and numerical considerations in practical decision-making and moral reasoning. It argues against the "all or nothing" view and for a balanced approach, advocating for good judgment that neither blindly follows algorithms nor completely dismisses numerical insights.

I especially want to target the view (rarely explicitly defended, but often implicitly assumed) that the role of quantitative tools in practical decision-making must be all or nothing. On this view, either you’re committed to blindly following a simple algorithm come what may (a la naive instrumentalism), or you dismiss “soulless number-crunching” as entirely irrelevant to ethics. I think both options are bad, and moral agents should instead use good judgment informed by quantitative considerations.

Sacred Hydro

Atlas of Wonders and Monsters • 19 Sep 2024 • ~2250 words

This article discusses the special status and reverence that the state-owned utility company Hydro-Québec holds in the collective psyche of Quebecers. It explores how Hydro-Québec has become a symbol of Québécois identity, modernity, and collective success and how any suggestion of privatization or reform is met with fierce resistance as if the company has attained a sacred, untouchable status. The article ponders why people elevate certain institutions to this level of reverence and whether this devotion can blind them to the potential benefits of reform.

It would be an understatement to say that Quebecers are fond of Hydro-Québec. It goes further than that. The company holds a special place in the national mythos. It represents collective success and wealth; it is a source of pride.

After Apalachee: How America’s Gun Violence Epidemic Affects Us All

Literary Hub • 24 Sep 2024 • ~3150 words

In the wake of the shooting at Apalachee High School, Deirdre Sugiuchi reflects on the deep scars left by gun violence in America, connecting personal memories with the broader cultural implications. This explores the unsettling reality of living in a society where such tragedies have become all too common. It’s a heartfelt examination that invites us to consider how Americans can collectively respond to this ongoing crisis.

“Fuck this. I can’t do this any longer. I don’t want to work in a prison. I don’t want to get killed,” said my husband, who has been teacher of the year twice, and is, for most purposes, stoic, but in May cried on the last day of school, because he already was missing his graduating students.

Sunny Spain’s growing diasporas from Ukraine, Russia and Poland find no vacation from tensions back home

The Globe and Mail • 24 Sep 2024 • ~1600 words • Archive Link

The article discusses the growing influx of immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Poland to the Spanish city of Torrevieja, and the tensions that have sometimes arisen among these communities due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. It explores how these groups are navigating their new lives in Spain, the challenges they face, and the efforts to maintain a sense of community despite the political divisions.

“Right now, since the war started, I see less Russians. They try to hide that they are Russians,” said Mr. Karallos, who runs Polska Costa with his partner Monika Meduna, who is also Polish. “I remember five years or six years ago, I saw Russian cars and heard lot of people speaking Russian. But when the war started, they hide or change and say ‘I’m Ukrainian.’”

Eric Hobsbawm’s Lament for the Twentieth Century

The New Republic • 24 Sep 2024 • ~2250 words • Archive Link

Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes was a bestselling history of the 20th century, covering the dramatic changes of the "short 20th century" from 1914-1991, including population growth, economic expansion, the fall of empires, and social upheaval. This article examines how Hobsbawm's views on the century's political and social upheavals have stood the test of time, and how they continue to shape our understanding of this pivotal period in history.

if a classic is a work that remains worth reading both for what it is and for what it tells us about the time it was created, Hobsbawm’s text deserves that status. It rewards the reader not because a historian would write the same book today but precisely because they would not.

A New Generation Stewards America’s Lighthouses

The Saturday Evening Post • 24 Sep 2024 • ~2000 words

As the last Coast Guard lighthouse keeper retires, a new chapter begins for America's iconic lighthouses. This article explores how passionate individuals and organizations are stepping up to preserve these maritime landmarks, ensuring that their history and beauty endure. Dive into the stories of new stewards who are reshaping the future of these beloved sentinels along U.S. coastlines.

Government sales are not unusual in themselves — you can buy all sorts of things from the feds. A recent scroll through the GSA’s online auction site presented opportunities to bid on a 1985 fixed-wing Cessna airplane, a five-piece cookware set of unknown vintage, or a diesel generator spray-painted with sylvan camouflage. Lighthouses are different. Unlike used pots, historic light stations don’t simply go to the highest bidder. That’s because the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000, an amendment of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, directed the GSA to seek the best possible stewards for federally owned historic light stations up for disposal, holding a competitive application process before sending the lighthouse to a public sale.

John E. Mack and the Unbelievable UFO Truth

Los Angeles Review of Books • 21 Sep 2024 • ~2050 words

The article discusses the life and work of John E. Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist who took a leap to became a researcher of alien abduction experiences in the 1990s. It explores the controversies and challenges Mack faced within the academic community for his unorthodox research, as well as the broader societal debates around the credibility of such claims. The article also examines how Mack's story relates to contemporary issues around misinformation, disinformation, and the boundaries of scientific inquiry.

Yet by 2004, Mack’s reputation among his colleagues at Harvard, and in the wider psychoanalytic community of the United States, had suffered significant damage. Over the previous several years, Mack had dedicated much effort to investigating an idiosyncratic and seemingly unserious scholarly pursuit: the reality of alien abduction.

How Americans’ Trust in Big Business Went From Bad to Worse

Bloomberg.com • 25 Sep 2024 • ~2600 words • Archive Link

In this piece, the decline of trust in big business is explored through the lens of historical shifts and contemporary scandals. It examines how factors like income inequality and corporate accountability have contributed to a growing skepticism among Americans, particularly the younger generation. If you’ve ever wondered why faith in capitalism is waning, this article offers some insightful perspectives worth considering.

For some ordinary Americans, it felt like the US economy — and the corporations that power it — was breaking the covenant of what it had promised: a society where a job and hard work would let you pay your bills, maybe buy a house, and where, regardless of background, each generation could advance by building on the achievements of the last.