Curious Content: Better conversations, the Aquanaut, and Eggs Tyrone

Welcome to the 43 new folks who joined since last Saturday! That brings us to 75 on this journey.

I appreciate you jumping on early and trusting me with your attention. Themes and ideas are emerging. More on this soon. Until then, let's get going!

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Better Conversations

There’s a feel-good story that circulates at this time of year. It started with this text Grandma sent to the wrong number:
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Four years later, Grandma and Jamal are still celebrating Thanksgiving together.

We need more of this in the world.

But their connection is random and hard to replicate. Right?

Maybe not. I started thinking about a habit of mine. Call it a hidden talent. Sometimes it’s a game I play.

If I want to, I can get most seatmates on an airplane to start talking. Before you groan and wonder why I would do this, consider these random, accidental conversations:

• Mikhail Baryshnikov. We talked for 6 hours. Weeks later he got me into his new off-Broadway show seated next to the NYTimes theater critic.
• CFO of Marriott. We talked for 4 hours and he told me to give him a call if I was ever looking for a job.
• A woman who I ended up dating for six months after we got off the plane.

Ok, so the above were no-brainer conversations. But I make the effort with others. Most are like grandma and Jamal. Many times I have more to give them than vice versa:

• The college-aged girl from China traveling to the US for the first time. I marked up her guidebook. When the flight was over, she wanted to take a picture together.
• The 20-something guy moving to Houston for a fresh start after his 2nd DWI conviction. He called a month later to express gratitude for the job hunting advice.
• The 65-year old Colombian photographer living in the Hamptons. She had been on the fence about getting vaccinated because the news was confusing. She claims her first stop when the plane landed was to get vaccinated.

So where am I going with all this?

We’re heading into the holiday season. Many of us will meet in person again. There may be some strangers, people who feel like strangers, and some who are strange. Just lean in. Here's the formula:

• Bring a grandma and Jamal kind energy. Postitive. Open to possibilities.
• Ask questions until you hit something genuinely interesting to YOU. Once you find it, interrupt them, and ask genuinely curious questions. They will often be surprised by your interest. You've now shifted from an artificial to a natural, easy flowing mode.
• If they ramble and it gets boring, interrupt them. “Wait, sorry. I am distracted by what you said a few minutes ago. Tell me what you meant by X.” They won’t notice. Even if they do, they are just excited that you’re interested.

If things stall:

• Have them explain something to you like you are 5 years old.
• Ask them how they think the world is changing or will change.
• Ask them for their top 3 of anything and why.

Most of the time, the other person does 70% of the talking. And that’s kinda the goal. Salespeople are taught this.

Finally, and yes, this section was loooong...it’s easy to talk to strangers because it’s a fresh start. There’s no past or necessarily a future. Grandma and Jamal both knew the worst case scenario was a few tedious hours.

What if all our conversations assume a fresh start every time?

Good luck with your holiday conversations.

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Deep Dive

I caught up with Nic Radford, this week. I think of him as Houston’s Elon Musk. He was the lead roboticist at NASA on the Valkyrie project.

He left a few years ago to do something harder: build the aquanaut. Harder than space? The ocean is dark and always moving.

The Aquanaut is a lower cost, more efficient, greener approach to subsea pipeline inspection and repair. And there's a lot of work to be done. There are over 25,000 miles of pipelines in the image below.

Instead of sending a ship with crew and a tethered robot, the Aquanaut will swim to the destination. A small boat at the surface controls it. Eventually, the vision is to control and monitor them from shore.
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Other uses include offshore wind farm inspection, aquaculture, and other areas of the "blue economy." If you’re interested in one for yourself, you can get one from Houston Mechatronics. Price is ~$5M each.

Ps - Most people don’t realize that Houston has more engineers than San Francisco or Boston. They are hidden inside the energy companies and at NASA and elsewhere. Houston knows how to put people 8 miles up in space and 2 miles down a hole, hook a right, and go another mile until they hit a target the size of a 5-gallon bucket.

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We're All Dancing to the Same Beat

Back onshore and on the ground, it turns out we're all dancing to the same beat. Eggs.Tyrone understands it. He mashes up middle eastern dancers and overlays hip-hop music. He mashes up country-western dancers and heavy metal. The effect: he tricks the brain and our expectations. Two examples:

Click on each image to go to Instagram. SOUND UP!

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Ok, that’s it. Hopefully, this entertained you while eating your Cheerios or standing in line at the grocery store.

If you know someone curious, forward this email and invite them to subscribe.

- Michael

Ps - if I created a special Thanksgiving Eve edition with a Thanksgiving-theme, would you read it? Topics might include random statistics, turkey humor, etc. If enough of you reply with a "yes," I'll do it. Otherwise, I will assume you're stuffed by now.

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