Month: October 2021

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S5 E19: Joshua Wohle, Mindstone

Joshua Whole was born in the Netherlands. Before he was 13, he actually went to 5 different schools. Afterwards, he moved to Switzerland and went into the public school system - which was all in French (which he didn't speak). In his younger years, he started building websites and ultimately started a company, with 35 other high school students building these sites.

Eventually, he moved to London, initially to shape up his computer science background, given he was a self taught developer. He attended a 3 year Computer Science program at King's College, and the last year of University, he attempted to try to start another business. He and his co-founders declined an investment, and never got another one... so the business was out.

After University, he started a company called SuperAwesome - providing tools for safe digital engagement to almost half a billion kids every month, while also ensuring that parental consent was baked in. Seven years after starting the company, he eventually sold this to Epic games, the makers of Fortnite, and at the time of acquisition, the company was 170 people with offices all over the world.

For fun he is a whiskey lover, and has been collecting them for over 10 years now. In fact, once a week, he does a (fully remote) whisky tasting with a friend of his. His favorite is The Ileach, with his backup being a 10 year Laphroaig.

After many self learning adventures in his life, Joshua set out to create a product that would allow people to go through self directed learning online, but in specific learning pathways... and allow them to learn faster in the process. Self taught developer? Be able to prove you went through the appropriate material that you acquired the skills necessary.

This is the creation story of Mindstone.

Sponsors

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  • Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

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Honestly with Bari Weiss - Pain, Wisdom and Mercy

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist, a father of four, an author . . . and also someone who lives with a tremendous amount of pain. Ross has been battling chronic Lyme disease since 2015. It's a disease that doesn’t officially exist, but it managed to bring this otherwise healthy man to his knees.

This is a conversation about something we all have or will experience: pain. How pain can distort, but also how it can clarify and humanize. In Ross's telling, pain has proven a deeply powerful teacher. 

Ross is one of my favorite thinkers and writers, so we also covered some of his core topics: Catholicism, populism, the future of the political right and left, the internet, and, of course, decadence.

You can buy his new book, "The Deep Places," here:

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Places-Memoir-Illness-Discovery-ebook/dp/B08Y1BFFWC

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The Intelligence from The Economist - Meeting them where they are: a British MP’s murder

Sir David Amess was killed doing what he loved: speaking directly with voters. We examine the dangers inherent in the “constituency surgeries” that British politicians cherish. The fight against tuberculosis is made harder by mutations that confer drug resistance; we look at research that has traced nearly every one of them. And why Andy Warhol is big in Iran, again.

For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer

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The Best One Yet - 🥣 “The Oat-pocalypse” — Oatly’s all-time low. Roblox’s meta-life. J&J’s toxic Texas two-step

We’re on the verge of an oat-pocalypse as the US faces its greatest oat shortage in history… so good time to check out Oatly’s stock. Roblox is the #1 destination for American kids (online or off), but its newest thing is Roblox for adults. And Johnson & Johnson created a brand new company filled with all the toxic stuff from the old Johnson & Johnson — Call it “The Texas Two-Step.” $OTLY $RBLX $JNJ Got a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYork Want a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9 Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - How Should We Remember Colin Powell?

Colin Powell, known as a “trailblazer” and “pathbreaker” in his military career, leaves behind a complicated legacy. The four-star general became a household name during the first Gulf War as the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later the first Black secretary of state. Thirty years after his rise to national prominence, Powell’s death has prompted reflections on the Iraq War and his role in using false intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion.  

Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate’s War Stories columnist. 

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.

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Bammers - Is it Even Football without Tailgating?

Due to the pandemic, the University of Alabama banned tailgating on campus for the 2020 season. No tents, no noise, no food -- nothing. A UA rep talks about what went into that decision, while fans discuss what an Alabama football season without tailgating looked like and why tailgating makes gameday so special in Tuscaloosa.


Guests: 

Roger Myers, Alabama superfan and tailgating veteran 

Nick Ferenz, University of Alabama Associate Director of Event Management 

Ben Shewmake, Marine Corps veteran and president of the Campus Veterans Association. 

Lacey Cencula, Die-hard fan and Bama Twitter personality from Birmingham


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Everything Everywhere Daily - How LIGO Works

To explore the universe humans have made any manner of telescopes. These telescopes can observe visible light, infrared light, radio waves, and even x-rays. One of the most important forces in shaping the universe is gravity. How can astronomers observe gravity? In 2002, the National Science Foundation, Caltech, and MIT managed to build a gravitational observatory.

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NBN Book of the Day - Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale, “The Darker Angels of Our Nature: Refuting the Pinker Theory of History & Violence” (Bloomsbury, 2021)

In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker's reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis?

In Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale's book The Darker Angels of Our Nature: Refuting the Pinker Theory of History & Violence (Bloomsbury, 2021), seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker's arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker's sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, 'fake history' with expert knowledge.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

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What A Day - SCOTUS Stands Up For Qualified Immunity

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of police officers in two cases dealing with qualified immunity. Both decisions were unsigned, and none of the justices dissented – a possible indication that they are sadly not planning on overturning qualified immunity entirely any time soon.

Boston is poised to elect its first woman of color as mayor, and the election is just two weeks away. We talked with candidate Michelle Wu.

And in headlines: former Secretary of State Colin Powell passed away yesterday, the Biden administration is tackling ‘forever chemicals,’ and the union for Chicago Police Officers is fighting the city’s vaccine mandate.


For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday