Introvert Black Friday & Cyber Monday

My Media List and Tools (updated 3/4/25)

Whether you use AI tools or not, this ought to be required reading

This is my collection of frequently read, listened and considered materials in thinking about the future of restaurants and their place on the world. I also included the tools I use to synthesize my own thinking with that within these materials.

I believe I pay for everything that allows me to. Honestly, one time payment for a book like the The Coming Wave or Extremely Online is insufficient in the modern age. I can use excerpts from any of these materials to directly inform a knowledge base that is always a click or two away. Hopefully a world emerges where the creators of this content can be paid fairly for how I, and many others, use their work. Until then, giving credit where it’s due is the least anyone can do.

The Current Podcast Episode Mindmap on Podwise

Tools for Digesting, Synthesizing and Playing With a Lot of Stuff

• Snip'd: My primary podcast listening platform- capture quick insights

• Podwise: For really geeking out on a podcast

• Julius.ai: AI data research assistant

• Claude.ai: AI language model for conversation, analysis and, yes, writing too

• Agent.ai: Playground for an agentic present/future from Hubspot co-founder

• Replit: Natural language coding for the many-ish

• Lovable: Engineering for the rest of us

• NotebookLM: Sometimes turning something into a podcast is the best way to learn it

• Suno: Sometimes turning something into a trap track is the best way to learn it

Books for Thinking About the Future of Restaurants

• The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant: It’s the restaurant industry’s CUDA moment

• The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr: How Opentable broke the host stand

• The Coming Wave, Michael Bhaskar and Mustafa Suleyman: Do robot line cooks cook electric lamb?

• Rethinking Real Estate, Dror Poleg: Real Estate + Ecommerce + Remote Work= (Restaurants + Hospitality)²

• Rethinking Work, Rishad Tobaccowala: Real Estate + AI + Remote Work= (Restaurants + Hospitality)³

• Anatomy of Breakthrough, Adam Alter: How does a stuck industry get unstuck?

• Think Again, Adam Grant: I’m wrong a lot…so are you!

• Scaling People, Claire Hughes Johnson: People, practically speaking

• Extremely Online, Taylor Lorenz: How the F did we get here, the B sides?

• Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino: How the F did we get here, Deep Cuts?

• Nexus, Yuval Noah Harrari: Am I fascinated or terrified…YES!

• Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz: Sometimes obnoxious venture capitalist but he’s not wrong…should-read for opening a restaurant

• Co-Intelligence, Ethan Mollick: Perhaps the most important book I’ll ever read as a parent, NOT HYPERBOLIC

• Read, Write, Own, Chris Dixon: The most thoughtful crypto bro makes his case really well and restaurants should probably get behind it

• Moneyball, Michael Lewis: What is the On-base percentage of the restaurant industry?

• Filterworld, Kyle Chayka: Culture atrophies in an algorithmic world.

• Hoop Atlas, Kirk Goldsberry: Alternatively, what is the ‘corner three’ of restaurants?

• Hitmakers, Derek Thompson: New but not too new, familiar but not too familiar—Hillstone, Earl’s, Cava, and many other successful restaurants

• Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish: Mental models for everything, including restaurants

• Setting the Table, Danny Meyer- Staying grounded, Part 1

• Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara- Staying grounded, Part 2

• Blood, Bones, and Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton- Staying grounded, Part 3

My Favorite Newsletters in Their Own Words

• Feed Me: “A daily newsletter about the spirit of enterprise”

• SIC: “A digest of developments”

• Wonder Tools: Helps you discover the most useful sites and apps

• Why is this Interesting: “A daily newsletter for the intellectually omnivorous”

• Understanding AI: “Exploring how AI works and how it's changing our world”

• Simple.AI: Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot on AI agents

• Benedict Evans: “What happened in tech that actually mattered, and what did it mean?”

• Honest Broker: “A trustworthy guide to music, books, arts, media & culture”

• Hngry: “Examining a world where technology shapes what we eat”

• Snaxshot: “A product oracle, we see for you”

• User Mag: “A tech and online culture publication”

• Line Sheet: “All about fashion as an entrepreneurial sport”

• Expedite: “Restaurant technology and the big ideas shaping the future of hospitality”

• After School: “An examination of youth culture”

• Who Do You Know: “A daily newsletter on brands, business, and culture”

• The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past: “Helping leaders see, think and feel differently…”

• One Useful Thing: “Trying to understand the implications of AI for work, education, and life”

• New Consumer: “A publication about how and why people spend their time and money”

• Stratechery: “On the business, strategy, and impact of technology”

Favorite Podcasts: I Am an Auditory Learner

• People vs. Algorithms: The changing world of media- restaurants are kinda media too

• Pivot: General, Useful…Generally Useful

• Prof G: Frequently Insightful, Occasionally Obnoxious

• Another Podcast: Deep thoughts on current tech hype, emphasis on hype

• Ezra Klein: I (not so) secretly want to be the Ezra Klein of restaurants

• Plain English: Or the Derek Thompson, either way’s cool with me

• The Current: Marketing stories for the marketing adjacent

• Marketecture: Marketing stories for marketers

• Founders: Obsessive about business biographies, maybe DSM level obsessed

• Decoder: Big ideas, big problems (aka, tech moving fast and breaking everything)

• The Simmer: Restaurant tech from people who care

• Switched on Pop: What makes a hit, a hit

• Panic World: Weird corners of the internet, explained

• Business of Fashion: The world of fashion can predict the world of food