#52 - What People & Place is Really About
The next step of the process
After more than 50 issues of People & Place, I finally understand what this newsletter is about.
When I launched the newsletter I had just sunk my teeth into Robert Greene’s bibliography, and it’s no understatement to say it changed my life. Books, podcasts, and ideas have a way of doing that to us. Consider it - you can buy someone’s life’s work for $30. The irony of the increase in book prices in recent years is that they have never been more accurately priced.
I started with Mastery - not the typical place to start - but it found me exactly when it meant to. As if by fate, like in the magical world of Hogwarts ‘…The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter. It's not always clear why. But I think it is clear that we can expect great things from you.’
Great things only if we accept what has chosen us. That’s the message of Mastery and it is a simple, yet profound one. Mastery and Power for Robert are the manifestations of having acquired the skills, found the mentors, and built the relationships necessary to effect the world in the way that you want to. You’re able to find your life’s work, and you do that by combining your natural gifts, with the things you’re passionate about, acquiring skills over time, often via mentors, until you have mastered…being you.
What could be more wonderful?
And so I set off to build this platform - my own personal manifestation of my life’s work.
What do I love?
Stories of people and place. Since I was a child I’ve been over old encyclopedias, photos, maps, and biographies or books of the Great Wide World, trying to discover something fascinating that I could tell other people about.
What are my natural gifts?
Writing, speaking, connecting the dots where they aren’t obvious, and building meaningful relationships with people from all four corners of the world.
And so it is crystal clear to me what People & Place is and what the next iteration of the platform can and should look like.
People & Place is the newsletter and podcast that explores why it happened, where it happened.
The Macro 🌎
Each week I’ll give you the 3-5 top stories of People & Place that have come across my newsdesk, so to speak. I will likely default to simply telling you what happened - a dying art - but if there is a parallel to be drawn, a question to ask, or something obvious to say about it, I will do that.
Somewhere along the way I lost my confidence in doing the latter. Probably because it’s hot in the streets and publicly standing on the things you believe are right and true - to the best of your knowledge and ability - is intimidating in a way it has never been before. We are a family divided.
The good news is I think that the Great Remembering is upon us, optimism is rampant if you know where to look, and the extremes are beginning to fray, in favour of something more durable, reasonable, and based in the better angles of our nature.
There could be nothing as dangerous as the death of civil discourse.
Courage, dear friends! I trust that you will all be there when I fall, as I will be for you.
This Week’s Content
The majority of the newsletter will remain unchanged and will be a deep dive (2,000-3,000 words) on something that I believe is a worthwhile exploration of why it happened, where it happened.
This is the grand idea of Scenius - the combination of scene and genius - that asks the same fascinating question.
Why was the industrial revolution born out of a rather small island in the North Atlantic?
Why did one country produce such a high percentage of the world’s most dominant technology companies?
How is a country of 5 million people dominating endurance sports?
Why did one obscure pub in Oxfordshire inspire some of the greatest works of english fiction that we have?
Why do states either succeed or implode?
Why is optimism so important and how is it created?
Why do some people have a sense of discipline and purpose that others can hardly imagine?
We will ask all of those questions, draw some conclusions, and take next steps together on the newsletter.
If you’re curious, here are the newsletter issues you enjoyed most in the first 50.
Is there any better indicator of a quiet, simmering optimism than the newsletter you read and shared the most?
The Tool(s) 🧰
Surely there will be something to be done about all of this, and so each post will end with a Tool. This is a nod to the work of Phil Stutz and Barry Michels - who realized that there ought to be something to do about all this, and people need a set of tools to do it.
It may be something as simple as calling your Mother (nobody loves you like your Mother, even if you don’t know it yourself) and it may be as complex as building a series of policies that can help your place achieve its full potential.
New Tools will be spun out of the newsletter itself as well, the first being the Spotify feed, more recorded conversations, a subscriber chat, and the YouTube channel.
What an absurdly interesting time to make our work.
I hope you will too.
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All we need is a point of view, a set of tools, and a lot of time.
See you on the road.
