This may be the only time in the history of ever that the CEO of a condiment company, the former head of a covert agency and Abraham Lincoln are mentioned in one article. Spice up your life No matter how you feel about spicy food, the story of Sriracha, and the enigmatic CEO of the company that popularized it, is worth checking out. (If you don’t want to read about it, you can always wait for the Sriracha documentary to come out.) Abraham is kind…
Read MoreBooks and movies and music and mansions, oh my. Here’s what we’ve been reading around the Hodges office this week. How do you get to the corner office? What’s the connection between studying music and professional success? My theory is that it teaches you to persevere through failure. If you’ve heard a middle-schooler practice the clarinet, you know exactly what I mean. Yo! NPR raps NPR’s The Record takes a look back at what turned out to be a pivotal year in rap (and pop)…
Read MoreFrom particle physics to popcorn, this week’s stories take a behind-the-scenes look at topics big and small. A Nobel particle It’s been back in the news a lot lately, with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for its discovery, but what exactly is a Higgs boson? It’s a perfect little snowflake, just like you. The other shutdown The fallout from the government’s arrest of the alleged leader of Silk Road, an online marketplace for illicit goods, is just beginning. One of the more fascinating stories…
Read MoreIn honor of National Taco Day, I’d like you to imagine each of these stories is wrapped in a delicious soft corn totilla. The cost of doing business You might have seen or heard the NPR piece on the dangers of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, which was produced in partnership with ProPublica. But did you know the reporting took two years to complete and cost $750,000? It’s like texting, only online and public On the occasion of Twitter’s IPO, Quartz brings us a…
Read MoreIf there’s one thing I learned this week, it’s that the writer/director of Clue also directed My Cousin Vinny. If there’s five things I learned this week, they’re all listed below. ‘The only true test of a movie is time.’ Apparently there are some people who don’t feel that Clue is one of the greatest movies ever made. Those people probably wouldn’t be interested in this long look at the making of a flop that became a classic. There’s a voice for that app The…
Read MoreToday we have a look into the design process of one of the world’s richest companies, which college majors earn the most (and the least), what rich people say in wedding announcements, how to make billions and still be called a failure and how to monetize Instagram. Behind the music (phone) I’m a sucker for the “oral history” format, which strings together direct quotes from disparate sources to tell the story of some event or product. I’ve also been called a sucker for Apple products….
Read MoreHow the British learned we dumped them, why we get ideas in the shower, what it was like to work with Stanley Kubrick and more in this back-to-school edition of HodgePodge. Slow news days News today spreads more or less instantly, but how quickly did news of the American Declaration of Independence reach England? The Journal of the American Revolution takes a look through some news archives to find out. Rinse. Lather. Eureka! Mental Floss explores why we get our best ideas in the shower….
Read MoreEach Friday, we bring you look at some of the interesting news we’ve seen recently around the office. Today we’ve got stories of a stolen bike, a second chance, an inside look at SNL and more in this Miley-free edition of the HodgePodge. What the bleep are you talking about? The Verge takes a long look into the history of the bleep, from Congress drafting the first amendment to Arrested Development and others using it for comic effect. Be warned, though: there’s some rough bleeping…
Read MoreFrom an epic true tale to your favorite movie posters and all the cups of coffee in between, this is your weekly dose of stories we’ve enjoyed recently. Going commando The Mercenary is not only an impressive look into the incredible life of a self-styled commando, it’s the debut of a new attempt to give longform journalism a first-class home on the web. Do you brew? I’ve always wondered how to make perfect cup of coffee. Now that I know, I think I’ll stick with…
Read MoreA jury doesn’t understand computer programming, a pot head doesn’t understand social media, teetotalers misunderstand soda and more in this premature fall edition of HodgePodge. You can’t take it with you A cracker-jack programmer took a project he was working on with him when he left Goldman Sachs and ended up with an eight-year prison sentence. But did the people who convicted him even understand what he’d done? Michael Lewis (of Moneyball and Blind Side fame) takes a look at the case in Vanity Fair….
Read MoreA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a new edition of the HodgePodge—a round-up of the most interesting things we’ve read this week. Fortunately there’s also an edition in this galaxy right now. Nothing but Internet Lots of people have had lots to say about the big news just up I-95 that Internet-bajillionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, but perhaps most interesting among all the articles was this open letter from Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD. Cool…
Read MoreWelcome to another episode of HodgePodge, brought to you from our brick enclosed nerve center in Shockoe Bottom. Fish do it all the time What would happen if everyone peed in the ocean at the same time? Spoiler alert: not much. If those kinds of calculations interest you though, you’ll probably like the XKCD What If? blog. Would that be semi-hydrophobic? Sorry to disappoint the entire Internet, but Slate says NeverWet isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Bookish people The Atlantic asked a bunch…
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