As part of his Awesome Presenting 50 series, Nicholas Bate reminds us: More stories. Definitely more stories. Stories are memorable: they have links, flow, drama. They are easy to remember. Bullets are forgettable.   Remember! Read the rest, here.   Photo by Mark Rasmuson on Unsplash

Neuromarketing expert Roger Dooley has a great post on the lessons we can  learn from stage magicians For example: The Unexpected Attracts Us When I watch a magician, I’m always trying to pay close attention to spot any shady moves. So is the rest of the audience. It’s rare to spot a skilled magician’s tricks, […]

An interesting piece from yesterday’s Times on the power of vivid imagery to engage and influence. Ancient literary critics called this quality enargeia, the ability to instil a scene so powerfully in the reader’s mind that they feel as though they are living through it themselves. Psychologists studying how 402 people responded to classic Japanese haikus […]

Maria Popova’s BrainPickings.org has an interesting piece on creativity and Oliver Sacks’ essay on the subject. It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the […]

One of my corporate clients is an icon of the virtual world, a pioneer that took a process as old as civilisation itself – the visceral exchange of cold, hard cash – and converted it into a convenience of clicks and bits. The firm’s customers love it and it invests heavily in supportig them with […]

Here’s an interesting piece on the evolution of grammar. It’s more random that you think. The study also revealed that a flower today is more likely to be “smelled” rather than “smelt” and that the neighbour’s cat probably “dove” behind the sofa – although, as Plotkin notes, British felines remain more likely to have dived. […]

Richard Thaler, one of the founders of behavioural economics, is the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. As co-author (with Cass Sunstein) of the book Nudge, Thaler has had a huge impact on the field of influence whether in government (the UK government, under David Cameron, established the Behavioural Insights team in 2010) […]

Red sun going down, way over dirty town Starlings they’re sweeping around, crazy shoals Yes and a girl is there, high heeling out across the square The wind, it blows around in her hair and the flags upon the poles Lions (Knopfler), Dire Straits “High heeling out across the square”, not walking or striding in high […]

Just because. I was searching for something else on my favourite image site, Unsplash.com, and I came across this beautiful image by photographer Todd Diemer. I thought it was too good not to share. Photo by Todd Diemer on Unsplash  

Five tips for good writing, grounded in the works of Charles Bukowski: Write with emotion Write with brevity Write with clarity Write with honesty Write with style Read the full post, here.   Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash