No #162 | January 12, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

Unofficial rules of a community rec-centre sauna:

1. No phones or mobile devices (take a digital break)
2. No lying down on the benches (unless you are the only one inside the sauna)
3. Any conversations should be quiet and uncontentious (the sauna is not the place for an in depth argument/debate on

Am I missing anything?

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 🕵️‍♀️The Whodunnit Bias
• 🎹Bohemian Rhapsody
• 🤜Protest
• 😂Out of Office
• 😎Cool Links

🕵️‍♀️The Whodunnit Bias

Over the Christmas holidays, I watched Presumed Innocent (on Apple TV+!).

The series stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a lawyer who finds himself accused of the murder of his mistress. What follows is a compelling, tension-filled series that keeps viewers guessing: Did he do it, or didn’t he?

What I find so enjoyable about the whodunnit genre is its ability to exercise our minds, especially when it comes to our confirmation biases. A confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new info as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories, often overlooking contradictory information.

In Presumed Innocent, the show skillfully leads viewers to draw their own conclusions, only to later reveal how easily we can be misled by our assumptions and expectations.

This misdirection works because the show plants clues and red herrings that appeal to our natural tendency to seek patterns or align with what feels right based on our initial judgments. It’s a reminder of how often we fall into similar traps in our everyday lives: drawing conclusions from limited information, or, worse, believing something just because it aligns with what we already think.

I won’t spoil the ending for you (you’ll have to watch it yourself!), but I can say this: It’s a gripping story and a great workout for your cognitive biases.

🎹Bohemian Rhapsody

Over the holidays, I casually mentioned to a friend that I hadn’t seen Bohemian Rhapsody yet. My friend promptly responded by punching me in the face🤣.

So, I finally watched it this past Friday night (on Disney+!), and I’m deeply, deeply regretful that I didn’t see this movie in the theatre. It’s incredible. The concert scenes, especially the final 20 minutes (iykyk), hit hard.

One of the best moments in the film though is the making of the iconic song Bohemian Rhapsody. For anyone unfamiliar with the song (or who hasn't seen Wayne's World), Bohemian Rhapsody isn't so much a song but an experience. It follows none of the traditional song rules (verse-chorus repeat) and defies all genre boundaries.

Naturally, when Queen was creating the song, everyone around them was skeptical. And the initial reviews for the song? Let’s just say they were less than glowing:

• "Brazen hodgepodge"
• "Perfectly adequate"
• "Pretentious and irrelevant"
• "Empty"

And yet, here we are today, debating whether it’s the greatest song of all time. Thank goodness Queen ignored the critics and followed their hearts and intuition.

So, here’s the takeaway: don’t listen to the critics. Just make stuff that you love.

🤜Protest

I wholeheartedly agree with this protester😄. (source)

😂Out of Office

This is so good😂. Brendan Loper goes all in with his comics.

😎Cool Links

🤔The disappearance of rituals: The difficult task of finding one's place when everything changes. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han talked about this disappearance of rituals and their role in creating personal identity. Rituals are predictable, you get used to wanting something that you know is rewarding and your whole group does it with you, it defines your identity; “we like this”, “on Saturdays we go to this restaurant”. Those rituals are dissolving and the identity is fragmenting.

🎮Are Video Games Good for You? Your Brain Thinks So. “When looking at video games in general, we tend to find that visuospatial effects, like hand-eye coordination, and directed attention tend to get a little better when we’re playing video games,” shares Dr. Austerman.

🧠Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform. The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful thinking tool that not only solves problems but avoids them.

🙃"I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life". Life has been a haze this last year. After selling my company, I find myself in the totally un-relatable position of never having to work again. Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way. I don’t have the same base desires driving me to make money or gain status. I have infinite freedom, yet I don’t know what to do with it, and, honestly, I’m not the most optimistic about life.

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