📚 #243 Broken Windows, Very Important People, Shops with Rules, Fifteen Years, Art of Gathering
Dense Discovery and 4 Podcast recos for the New Year
Hello,
Welcome to Stay Curious #243.
Last post of 2025. One more year of hitting publish every Monday, without fail. Each post carries around ten ideas, which adds up to 500 plus ideas curated in this small corner of the internet. Not bad at all.
Many people ask me how I find the time and energy to do this. And what I get out of it.
My answer is simple. This is the one thing that is truly mine. It gives me energy no matter what. That is why I always make time for it. It is my thing, and I am proud of building it. I have never had a hobby that pushed me so hard toward exploration and discipline at the same time.
The bonus is the people. I have been lucky to engage and excite others along the way. People I have enjoyed getting to know and sharing ideas with.
So thank you, if you are reading this. You are part of my journey of chasing curiosity. I am glad you joined, and I would be happy to have you along for as long as you wish.
Today’s curation fits the year end mood perfectly. Cheery, thoughtful, and full of positivity. What better way to close a fantastic year and welcome a new one than by noticing and celebrating the goodness around us.
Here’s a quick look …
Let’s jump right in.
🪟 Broken Windows of Our Moral Life
Every day I see people breaking traffic rules. Wrong side driving. Jumping signals. Acting like it is normal. My blood boils when this behavior feels accepted, even expected. This is not about class or privilege. It cuts across everyone. It has become a collective habit, spreading fast and unchecked.
Founding Fuel’s “The Broken Windows of Our Moral Life” hit me hard. It shows how this problem is not limited to society alone. The same cracks show up in our workplaces and our personal lives too.
Vladimir Lenin once wrote, “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” Moral decline follows that pattern in reverse. For decades, nothing seems to happen. Then one day, everything already has.
It’s not that the collective will has vanished. Far from it. We still care deeply—about our families, our faiths, our neighbourhoods. But the bar has sunk by degrees. We still want to do the right thing, but we now measure goodness in convenience units: how much right we can do without being late for work.
A few skipped rules, a small lie on a form, a casual bribe—and suddenly the moral landscape looks like a city of broken windows.
The cause lies within us. So does the solution. We have to notice every broken window and fix it before it becomes the norm.
I clipped this below graphic from a recent Gapingvoid post and set it as my laptop wallpaper to remind myself every day: it is not okay to be okay with lowering the bar. Not on quality. Not on morality.
💖 Very Important People
Mike Nagel reflects on ‘not being famous’ in this short and touching piece for DIRT magazine titled “Very Important People”
The byline reads “Whichever line is the longest,” I said. “That’s the line I belong in.”
There is no single moment to highlight. That feels intentional. Just read it for the feeling it leaves behind.
📵 No Phones in The Ten-don Shop
Craig Mod writes about shops with rules, and why we could use more of them. This piece is inspired by Imoya, a tiny tendon shop near his university where the story begins. Craig paints a vivid picture of this small slice of heaven.
The shop was run by the crankiest husband and wife you ever met. The whole place was just seven or eight counter seats around an open kitchen. The husband apparently lived in the attic of the shop. A little hatch in the ceiling opened and down fell a ladder. Up he climbed like a spider. (So went the college kid lore.) The wife lived down the road a few miles away in Iidabashi and walked back and forth each day. But together they had decided that their community role — as a cantankerous duo — was to provide as many delicious bowls of tendon to as many students for as cheaply as they could. I forget the precise cost, but it was probably about ¥500. Boy was it voluminous. And I think a fat ōmori heaping was free. But they had rules, and you had better obey those rules.
Just four rules. No talking. No books. No phones. No wasting food.
By today’s standards, this feels unimaginable. It probably was not easy even back then. Yet they ran the place on their own terms. And in doing so, they created something magical. Something they wanted. Something others, like Craig, only fully appreciated after living through it, or after it was gone.
Beautiful food for thought.
📝 xkcd: Fifteen Years
If you’re an xkcd fan, you’re going to like xkcd: Fifteen Years.
Here’s a bit of background. Randall’s then fiancée, now his wife, was diagnosed with cancer in late 2010. He has spoken about this through his comics over the years. It has now been fifteen years since her diagnosis and treatment, and this latest comic shares where they are today.
By xkcd standards, this one is long. It is also hard to describe. There are no big declarations or dramatic turns. It is simply xkcd’s quiet way of saying life happens.
If you are not deeply familiar with his world, the explainer “3172: Fifteen Years - explain xkcd” does a great job of adding context and helping the piece land better.
🫂 Art of Gathering
Priya Parker’s writing, including her book The Art of Gathering, is among the most thoughtful and exciting work on building human connection. She offers clear frameworks, practical tools, and simple suggestions on how to bring people together better. More importantly, she shows how it actually works, through hundreds of real examples, often from places where you would least expect it.
Her newsletter regularly surfaces such stories, featuring people who care deeply and go on to build something meaningful. One recent gem was her conversation with Emma Straub, who runs a tiny bookshop called Books Are Magic and has grown it into a vibrant community and gathering place.
If you are not a paid subscriber to her newsletter, you may not be able to watch the full video. But the blog post more than makes up for it. It distills ten sharp and practical takeaways from Emma’s journey and lived experience.
Here is one that really stayed with me, and something I can personally vouch for.
“The chef is in.” I’m always slightly surprised when I go to a restaurant where there’s a beloved or famous or iconic chef, and they’re just hanging out cooking in the kitchen. I think to myself, “You’re here?” I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but, there’s a small part of me that’s like: Don’t you have somewhere to be? And, they’re like, “No. This is what I do. Where the heck else would I be?” And that’s how I think about Emma: she’s a chef in the kitchen. She and Mike are in the room, in the details, in the daily decisions that make Books Are Magic feel like a place you want to return to. It’s also a reminder about the micro: so much of what makes a gathering or community space, work isn’t some big, sweeping move. It’s being there, being present, and letting the small be its own vessel. And it’s enough.
✨ Dense Discovery
When I look for inspiration on how to build something that reflects personal passion and is also useful to others, Kai Brach’s Dense Discovery is my gold standard. His weekly newsletter has stayed remarkably consistent in both the quality of ideas and the clarity of why they matter.
From the beautifully crafted header visuals to his opening note that expands on one thoughtful idea, from small tools worth trying to gentle conversations with like minded creators, and finally a wide curation of interesting things from across the internet, Kai weaves it all together with care. The magic shows up every time. And it never feels old. He has kept it warm and exciting, post after post, year after year.
If you enjoy the warm and reflective pieces in Stay Curious, a lot of that influence comes from Kai. I have shared many of his recommendations over the years and learned how to shape my own taste through them.
This is a simple thank you to Kai. And a small nudge to you. If you have not already, go subscribe to Dense Discovery. There is plenty of inspiration waiting there.
Below is a screenshot from a recent Dense Discovery post. I tried the first three recommendations and they are genuinely good.
If you are looking to add new podcasts to your diet, especially ones that do not preach or tell you how to live, but instead help you notice and enjoy the small things in life, you will likely find something worth picking up here.
🏠 The Curious History of Your Home
Ruth Goodman shares surprising, and often epic, stories behind everyday objects in our homes. I tried the episode on wallpaper and was amazed by what she uncovers.
Here’s a quick glimpse from the podcast episode page.
A wasp leads to the invention of paper in ancient China. Rich Europeans have to find another way to decorate their walls when coal fires ruin their valuable tapestries. Anger over wallpaper helps ignite the French Revolution. And a silent killer is found hiding in plain sight on nursery walls across Victorian Britain…
📉 The Economics of Everyday Things
This one comes from the folks at Freakonomics, so you know what to expect. Economics told through great storytelling, packed with fun facts. Zachary Crockett has a way of telling stories.
I tried the episode on Girl Scout Cookies and found it thoroughly enjoyable. This one is definitely going into my regular podcast mix.
🐟 No Such Thing as a Fish
As Gordon explains, each episode brings together four researchers who share a favorite fact they recently discovered. What follows is a free flowing conversation that tries to make sense of it, or sometimes does not. There is no agenda and no forced takeaway. The fun lies in the conversation itself. Fair warning, the language and themes can be mature at times.
One episode I tried and can vouch for is No Such Thing as The Gordon Ramsay Songbook.
♥️ Strangers on a Bench
I’ll end with the most fascinating and heart warming conversation I heard this week. Tom Rosenthal sits next to a stranger on a park bench and asks if he can record their conversation.
What follows are intimate and anonymous exchanges filled with surprising life stories and quiet revelations. Each episode reminds you what a genuine human connection can feel like.
I tried Episode 67: What We Do to Survive, and I can vouch for it. It is a beautiful listen for cozy winter evenings. Put it on when you are in the mood for something warm and comforting.
ICYMI, here is the link to last week’s post:
If you are in the mood for something warm and touching, read There Is No “There”. And do queue up the Stewart Butterfield episode. It is one of the best conversations on product and craft that I have listened to and shared in a long time.
That’s all for this week, folks!
I hope I’ve earned the privilege of your time.
Very happy new year! See you in 2026.
Loved all the articles and collections .. one that resonated with me was around the ten-don shop and especially the rule around not wasting food. With so much surplus and consequent food waste that we see around us, it is a timely reminder.
Also loved the article and thought around how standards get lowered by very small (in)actions.
Wishing you and your loved ones a super happy and prosperous 2026, Pritesh.