Hey all,

Happy new year! We hope you had a good break.

First thing this year – we’re hiring! We’re looking for a full-time podcast producer to join the Storythings team on an initial six-month basis. If you’re passionate about audio and know what good audio storytelling sounds like, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by the 25th January.

Our pro-bono consultancy First Draft is back and seeking applications for 2024, with three sessions running this year in April, June and September. If you’re a small organisation, network or collective who creates change by working with under-represented communities and have a particular communication project you’d like to start, we can help.

That’s all from me. Enjoy this week’s stories.

Chloe

Jealousy List 2023 (14-min read)

2023 Climate Wins, Wrapped (9-min read)

The Best Podcasts of 2023, According to People Who Make Podcasts (18-min read)

Macro and Strategic Trends in the Tech Industry for 2024 (slides or 27-min watch)

Tom Scott Stops Making Weekly Videos After 10 years (8-min watch)

How to Cool Down a City (10-min read, interactive)

WTF Is the Fediverse? (5-min read)

How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice (38-min read)

Have We Reached Peak Immersive Art? (9-min read)

Difficult and Bad (14-min read)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. If your content isn’t getting the results you need, let us help you understand why. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Research – We help B2B brands understand modern attention patterns and how they can get more engagement with content.2. Content Strategy – We use our bespoke process to develop unique content formats that hold audience attention, build community, and increase brand salience.3. Content Production – We craft beautiful and diverse stories of impact that capture and hold attention using podcasts, videos, editorial, and newsletters. We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

Jealousy List 2023 (14-min read)Since 2015, the editors of Bloomberg Businessweek have published a list of stories that they wish they’d published that year. The 2023 edition came out just before Christmas and is well worth a read – featuring 44 links to some of the year’s best reporting. The Jealousy list is something to look forward to every year.

2023 Climate Wins, Wrapped (9-min read)Wild fires, dying reefs and extreme weather events: News stories about the climate rarely give the impression of hope. But this piece from Atmos purposefully charts the record climate progress made in 2023, providing much needed optimism. As ecologist Vigdis Vandvik says in the piece: “The incredible forgiveness of nature, its potent powers and ability to bounce back [and] fill the spaces that we allow it, is perhaps my greatest source of hope.”

The Best Podcasts of 2023, According to People Who Make Podcasts (18-min read)This is the third annual Vulture podcast survey, which polls a few hundred people working across podcasting – producers, hosts, engineers – on their three favourite podcasts from the year (that they didn’t work on). In this list, they present the 15 shows with the most votes.

Macro and Strategic Trends in the Tech Industry for 2024 (slides or 27-min watch)For the past two decades, analyst Benedict Evans has produced an annual presentation that explores tech industry trends. 2024’s edition is titled ‘AI, and everything else’ – you can flick through the slides for yourself or watch his presentation at the Slush conference in Helsinki.

Tom Scott Stops Making Weekly Videos After 10 years (8-min watch)Tom Scott has called time on his YouTube series that has been running weekly for a decade – never missing a show. Over the years he has built an incredible archive of knowledge. In this final weekly instalment, posted 10 years to the minute from his first, Scott reflects on the past decade.

How to Cool Down a City (10-min read, interactive)This NYT interactive takes the case study of Singapore as a model for how cities can cool themselves down in an ever hotter world.

WTF Is the Fediverse? (5-min read)The fediverse is the emerging protocol for social posts in the post-social platform era – this explainer will catch you up and analyse its promise.

How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice (38-min read)Full of insights on scriptwriting, storytelling, and creative endeavours, this in-depth profile with screenwriter Scott Frank (who has touched up nearly sixty Hollywood scripts, including Saving Private Ryan and The Ring) is incredibly inspiring.

Have We Reached Peak Immersive Art? (9-min read)We’re living in the midst of an immersive art boom: from London’s Outernet to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors and Las Vegas’s The Sphere. Critics say that immersive events are diluting the gallery experience, but is it wholly bad if the experience is opening the art world to people who might not normally gravitate towards it? This piece posits that we may have reached peak immersive art and asks: where do we go from here?

Difficult and Bad (14-min read)This piece in Too Little / Too Hard – a new online publication that asks writers to consider the intersections of work, time and value – addresses class within the publishing industry and the rupture that occurs when the boundaries of class are broken. The author Rachael Allen reflects on 12 years in the industry. “I don’t believe I am working class anymore, but feel limbo-stuck, unable to return, and prevented from being where I thought I was supposed to be. I did not transcend my class, I just complicated it.” 

We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.