Two for Tuesday early in today's newsletter.  Two of our favorite writers provide more content in the fewest number of words than any other writers we know.  They are the kings of cleverness, and today the theme is how we see ourselves.  Before we get to brevity, we highlight part of an interview with intelligent people discussing what narcissism is and our initial impressions were wrong.  After all that deep introspection, the mood lightens, and we see The Presidents as wrestlers and finish with another 1983 top song highlight.

The algorithm minions inside YouTube prompted a partial clip of an interview between Lex Fridman and Paul Conti.  Fridman is a Research Scientist at M.I.T. and podcaster – Paul Conti is an M.D. and Psychiatrist who graduated from Stanford and Harvard.  This twenty-minute clip has a lot of brain power; what we liked about it is how they both defined and discussed Narcissism.  It wasn't what we thought it was; these days, the term narcissism is tossed around to describe big personalities doing outrageous things in public, or let's be honest, on Twitter.

Fridman asks many questions about our perspective on narcissism; for example, Fridman asked Conti if narcissism is related to arrogance.  To our surprise, Conti says narcissism is the opposite of arrogance.  Conti explains that narcissism is fear and deep feelings of inadequacy.  A narcissist is desperately afraid and feels such a deep sense of inadequacy there is nothing they will not do to remove or reduce this fear.

If you think about narcissism as a fear or a narcissist as someone who sees what you have as a threat, be careful the next time you walk down the mental alley with this them.  Envy is a gun.

If the assignment is ever "be clever and brief," Seth Godin wins every time.  Today he comes in with another story about wearing your success.  Some people wear wealth and achievement in a way you can't miss, others you may never know.  We know a few of them would never know, and it doesn't mean as much to them when you find out.

This story reminds us about our early jobs in the restaurant industry in our unscientific office poll – non-rich people tip better than rich people.  The only exception to this rule is the billionaire in a t-shirt.  We would also like to add the millionaire who wears flip-flops and jeans to most meetings.

Godin wraps up his 115-word post with a lesson, what you make for others is a better status symbol than how you wear what you wear.

We've described Nik Goke as Seth Godin Jr., hit our inbox right behind Godin today, and came in strong.  His also brief post, at 299 words, compares a God as a single deity or Gods as a family of deities.  His post is not religion focused; you could replace "God" with "Higher Power," and the concept remains.  One of his thoughts is that it might be more manageable when trying to reconcile your earthly problems with a higher power group than one higher power.  The group dynamics are more like a family or community and less like a massive judgment from "On High." 

Take a simple concept and associate it with something else.  Godin and Goke are at the top of this list.  Like a Jerry Seinfeld bit, each read takes less than one minute and always makes you think. 

Reuters is a global news organization; each week, they put out 25 photos of the week, and it's an excellent way to remind yourself how big the world is and where it is, good, bad, and beautiful.  Our favorites for the week are below; click the photos or the link to see the other 23.

Time for this week's installment of the 1983 Top 100 Songs by RollingStone and Rob Sheffield.  This week we are diving into spots 21 through 30.  Spot 29 is Husker Du, who we discussed last week, based on the 80s picture (remember boat shoes?)  Spot 28 is one of our favorite bands, The Cure, and in 1983 following up the heavily Goth-driven album and tour for Pornography, Robert Smith took a break and created several un-goth-like songs like The Love Cats and Sheffield, correctly placed it in the top 30.  Down the road from The Cure are The Smiths at 26 with This Charming Man – frontman Morrisey sings poetry while Johnny Marr re-invents guitar playing repeatedly.  The final highlight of this section is Echo and the Bunnymen at 21 with Never Stop.  Several bands grew out of the 80s that we describe as being album-based; we would put R.E.M. along with Echo and the Bunnymen in that list.  What we mean is that we enjoyed the album as a whole better than any one single.  Sometimes we miss the album days.

The Love Cats.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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