The Quiet Stack - May 4, 2026
Here are some of the Substack posts, magazine articles, podcasts, and books that have caught my attention recently.
Content You May Have Missed from The Quiet (Nonbillable) Hour
Other Substack Posts and Notes
From Derek Thompson, on the generation of dads who are more present, more exhausted, and more satisfied with life than any generation of American fathers before them.
From Scott Galloway, arguing that America is careening toward a reckoning, the result of decades of compounding institutional failures — from financial crises to executive abuses to congressional corruption — that have gone largely unpunished.
Podcasts and Vodcasts
From Brené Brown and Adam Grant, “What the Return-to-Office Debate Gets Wrong,” from their joint podcast, The Curiosity Shop. A discussion of how the return-to-office debate is stuck on the wrong question — how many days employees should come — rather than what problem leaders are actually trying to solve.
Articles
From John Cassidy at The New Yorker, “The A.I. industry is booming. When will it actually make money?” Highlighting the questions that remain about when AI will generate sufficient revenue to justify its costs, and whether the boom will follow the pattern of past "productive bubbles" like the railway and dot-com eras. Link to the story here.
Books
Take care, and be well.