An awesome interview on how to build cool stuff (with the guy who built the iPod and iPhone) + the BBC skims the surface of the GEM
Do you want to build things for fun and profit — physical things, software things, creative things? You need to listen to Verge boss Nilay Patel (Twitter)’s most excellent interview with Tony Fadell (Twitter). Haven’t heard of Fadell? He played a pivotal role bringing to life the iPod and iPhone, went on to build a company called Nest that he sold to Google for USD 3.2 bn, and now runs an investment firm called runs Future Shape. The occasion? Fadell’s new book: Build: An unorthodox guide to making things worth making.
Bonus for fellow tech nerds and entrepreneurs: Patel writes that the book is “one part memoir, one part tech industry gossip, and one part org charts and decision-making. Seriously, this book has a lengthy section with actual diagrams of org charts to illustrate how company cultures change as things get bigger.”
LISTEN to the interview (runtime: 1:17:20) or read a condensed version of it here — or go check out the book on Amazon.
Looking for something Egyptian-ish? The BBC podcast The Documentary’s latest episode spotlights the Grand Egyptian Museum. God keep us and save us from another piece by a foreign correspondent that opens with “I’m on my way now in a taxi to find the Grand Egyptian Museum. It’s about 10 km west of central Cairo and we get there down this road lined on either side by rough and ready concrete buildings that look like they’re half demolished or half built — and streams and streams of honking traffic.”
The episode skims the surface of what the GEM could mean for Cairo (and the country at large), but doesn’t go much deeper into what is set to become the world’s largest archaeological museum when it opens later this year.
Worth thinking about about: David Sims worries the GEM’s proximity to the new Sphinx International Airport could put Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo and “a lot of interesting architectural history completely off the beaten track.” We’re looking forward to visiting the GEM once again in person (we had a brief tour back in 2017) — and we’re optimistic that our great city has so much to offer that we’re not going to see folks turning Cairo into a day trip.
LISTEN and make up your own mind (runtime: 24:00).