A summer of Sundays following a brilliant strawberry moon, today we listen to a physicist tell us about art networks, a fictional media mogul about power and money, and a creative who turns his cubical space into his own.  Tell us what category that fits into.  Welcome to Sunday and With A Shout, the Cover Band of newsletters.

-

Thinking in the vein of an artist might suggest that an artist creates for the pleasure of designing good work, for the outlet, the expression, something a person would do whether or not it will ever make it to the public.  The other side of this is the person who does want the work to go out into the world.  This analysis is not to say either way is right or wrong.  Still, in a clip from Big Think and a conversation with the physicist Albert-László Barabási, he talks about how important the network is in correlation with the exposure an artist gets.  Barabási doesn't discount talent; if an artist has talent, it improves the networks they access and the reach each network will provide after the artist gets.

Barabási uses science to study the networks of artists the same way you would study any other network.  In his clip, he focuses on artists who show their work at galleries.  The type of gallery the artist can get into is one of the most significant indicators of the artist's success when success is defined by external recognition.

As the saying goes, “it’s not what you know, it's who you know that matters."  If external recognition is what you are trying to achieve, what you know is less critical if nobody knows who you are and what you do.  Create art for your own reasons, but part of artistic expression is expression, and that cannot be done in the dark.

7 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

The series finale of Succession recently aired on HBOMAX, or what is now called MAX.  The last time we heard as much critical acclaim and praise for a show was HBOs The Wire.  There have been podcasts explicitly created to talk about each episode of this show; we will save that analysis for another day; there has also been a lot of talk about why some people started the series and stopped.  We fall into this category of not wanting to spend time watching miserable people being miserable.  A funny thing happened on the way to not watching this series; we've now listened to multiple podcasts and read in multiple newsletters all the things that have already happened in this series.  The mystery is gone, but the characters, exceptional writing, and Shakespearean themes are drawing us into this series.  It went from watching bad people to a masterclass on the relationships between money and power. 

What tipped the scales for us is a 400-word blurb written by Felix Salmon of Axios, who writes the Axios Markets newsletter.  Salmon does the best quick take on money and power.  He describes the show as Logan Roy, the self-made billionaire media mogul who amassed power – versus his billionaire children who spent the series trying to turn that money into power.  Watching the show through a different lens, a no-spoiler lens because we already know the ending, will let us watch it for the dynamics of the money vs. power vs. money.

Who tells you they like working in a cubical is lying to you.  Unless it's this guy.

Two bass players!

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.

7 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

O/X