Every Friday I highlight the most interesting or entertaining items from my media diet from the past week. These weekly lists will include a variety of media—articles, blog posts, forum threads, podcasts and videos—from a range of sources.

Articles:

• The Big Data of Big Hair (pudding.cool): 30,000 high school yearbook photos from 8 decades and a machine learning algorithm are tasked with determining the peak era of “big hair” (you know you want it to be the 80’s).
• The Future of Work Looks Like Staying out of the Office (arstechnica.com): With all the clear benefits of telework—happier employees, increased productivity and lower overhead—why are so many businesses resistant to this trend?
• Here’s What Coronavirus Does to the Body (nationalgeographic.com): An organ-by-organ look at how the COVID-19, the novel coronavirus currently spreading globally, attacks the body.
• How ‘The Mandalorian’ and ILM Invisibly Reinvented Film and TV Production (techcrunch.com): Behind-the-scenes peek at the real-time composited sets that Disney’s Mandalorian production team uses to film the show.
• The New Business of AI (and How It’s Different from Traditional Software) (a16z.com): “We have noticed in many cases that AI companies simply don’t have the same economic construction as software businesses. At times, they can even look more like traditional services companies.”
• Prisoner’s Dilemma: What Game Are You Playing? (fs.blog): An examination of the Prisoner’s Dilemma thought experiment as a useful mental model for understanding the dynamics of cooperation.
• The Quest for the Best Amusement Park Is Ever-Changing and Never-Ending (theringer.com): Rides like Disney’s “Rise of the Resistance” and Universal’s “Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure” point to a future of more immersive experiences in which the fan is at the center of the storytelling.
• Second Order Effects of the Coronavirus (medium.com): A look at the economic and social impacts of the global health emergency. Will these repercussions be even more damaging than the virus itself?

Podcasts:

• Containers (flexport.com): An 8-part documentary mini-series from 2018 that explains how the largely invisible global shipping infrastructure is at the center of modern logistics and global trade.
• Darknet Diaries: The Courthouse (darknetdiaries.com): Two seasoned penetration testers are contracted by the state to break into judicial facilities in Iowa. Everything goes wrong one night while breaking into a courthouse in Dallas County.
• Dead Eyes with Connor Ratliff (headgum.com): Host Connor Ratliff attempts to solve a mystery that’s nagged at him for nearly two decades: Why did Tom Hanks cut Ratliff from a small speaking role in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”? Despite the trivial premise, Ratliff spins a surprisingly relatable yarn about reconciling our past failures.
• Rocketship: Product Failures: Google+ (rocketship.fm): Google poured millions of dollars into competing with Facebook and failed. The Rocketship team looks into the story of Google’s ill-fated foray into social networking.