Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Patagonia back in the news, RIP Marc Johnson, and the best thing on Substack.
1. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have sent me links to the Patagonia x Pattie Gonia story this week. And my LinkedIn and Instagram feeds have been ablaze this week with outraged people asking “What did ‘Earth is our only shareholder’ even mean!?”
If you’re interested in actually finding out the answer to that question, you’re in luck: last year I made a three-part podcast series called The Announcement in which I tried to get to the bottom of the whole story, and which none other than the great sustainability pioneer John Elkington praised as “capturing the thinking on the future of evolutionary paths of business, markets and capitalism”
Listen above, although fair warning: it might involve you engaging in some critical thinking, rather than jumping to binary conclusions based on whatever you’ve read online that day. (Not very fashionable these days, I grant you).
10 Things will always be free, but it takes a lot of effort, love and curiosity to pull this thing together each week.
So if you want to support Looking Sideways without taking out a paid sub - you can! Click right here.
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2. One of the really interesting things about releasing my The Announcement (apart from the number of people whose work I’ve actively supported through Looking Sideways not returning my calls, especially if they had a relationship with Patagonia) was the surprising number of listeners who questioned why I’d gone so deep on such an esoteric topic, saying things like ‘Well, now I know more than I’ll ever need to about what a 501(c)(4) is!’
Which, I must say, surprised me: given that for me the point of creative work has always been to follow the threads of your own curiosity, see where they lead, and, all going well, end up with a piece of work you can be proud of, whatever form that takes.
So it was really gratifying this week to listen to Conan O’Brien on the 99% Invisible podcast, discussing Robert Caro’s work on The Power Broker, and to hear him talk about this as being one of the exact reasons why he admires Caro so much: the idea that undertaking vast pieces of work for their own sake is reason enough.
I also found the point that, in writing The Power Broker, Caro had deliberately eschewed the New Journalism style - which I hadn’t actually clocked while reading it, but which now strikes me as one reason why the book is so authoritative.
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3. On topic: I’m three weeks and 1000 pages into The Power Broker, which as I predicted is one of the most memorable reading experiences I can remember.
And Robert Moses has finally - finally! - been clocked as a total wrong ‘un. I must say, it’s a pretty satisfying moment. Calling this book ‘encyclopaedic’ really doesn’t do it justice.
4. I’ve been raving about Becky Coley’s brilliant Nias documentary Point of Change for months now, and it is available to stream free online for the next 48 hours! Watch it here and the trailer above.
5. Back in 2020-2021 I was heavily involved in helping to establish the organisation that eventually became Opening Up The Outdoors, the non-profit initiative founded in 2021 to support the progression of continued inclusion within outdoor spaces.
So I was really interested to read my pal (and OUTO founder) Phil Young’s reflections on that last five years for Huck Magazine.
6. Rest in peace Marc Johnson. What a loss.
7. Closer to winter I’ll be recording an episode of Looking Sideways with my friends and colleagues Jen Sherowski and Tricia Byrnes in which we’ll discuss their brilliant Going Off snowboarding history podcast. In the meantime, they were just guests on Trevor Graves’ Co-Pro show.
8. Is Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas document the most significant intervention yet in the debate around the ethics of AI?
9. As long term Looking Sideways watchers will know, my friend and mentor Chris Hines has been one of the most important voices in UK ocean activism for at least thirty years, and his forthcoming event with Rising Tide looks like a brilliant opportunity to glean some insights from one of the most influential voices in the game.
10. Finally, if you don’t subscribe to Walter Martin Radio then really, what are you doing? It’s one of my only paid subscriptions on here and improves my life every week. Walt’s none-more-geeky Beatles season, which has been running for weeks now, is a brilliant place to start.