What’s Shaping Our Minds?

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind.
– Napoleon Hill

FAVORITE READS OF THE WEEK

Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension
The landscape of cultural and political power is shifting.

Surviving the age of information junk
How to protect your mind.

Health care inflation leaps big time
Is health care remotely affordable anymore?

MUST LISTEN OF THE WEEK

The fuel cell future is here
Bloom Energy founder joins the Veriten podcast.

THINKING OUT LOUD

What’s Shaping Our Minds
Entertainment media is not helping

The violent and shocking murders of recent weeks require us to reflect on the obvious question: WHY?

Why were the minds of these perpetrators so far removed from reality? Why were they so focused on wanting to be destructive rather than productive contributors to our society?

Utah’s governor blames social media’s capacity to radicalize. The progressive wing of the Democrat party blames “hate speech” from the “far right,” which includes people who practice Christianity and support the traditional nuclear family. Churchgoers blame the decline in religion, which has reduced the value of community. Most political conservatives blame liberal media for brainwashing our youth with anti-American ideas and a fixation on the oppressor/oppressed paradigm. Surely all these factors played a role.

But what about the “entertainment” we consume? Do we under appreciate its effects on minds?

Today’s media entertainment ecosystem is vastly different from that of a few decades ago. Where once there might have been one horror or dystopian film for every twenty-feel good or human-interest films, that balance has flipped today. TV shows like Family Ties, Cheers and Seinfeld have now been replaced with The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead as our cultural touchstones.

What’s behind this transition? One word: Profit.

Streaming technologies made the entire globe the potential customer of entertainment companies. The streaming wars are a different beast from the studio wars, which primarily focused resources on locking in the biggest stars and producing art and film across genres. The competition was who can make the best films. Today, it’s who can grab the most eyeballs.

This has changed the rules: Streaming thrives on content that hooks the brain fast. Horror and dystopia do this by triggering fear and arousal—our amygdala fires, adrenaline and dopamine spike, and we experience “safe fear,” a thrill without real danger, which keeps us coming back for more. These genres also exploit our negativity bias, drawing attention to threats more than positives, while their shock and cynicism fuel engagement and virality on social media. From a business standpoint, horror is low-risk and high-return: cheap to produce yet reliably profitable. And unlike affirming stories that depend on cultural nuance, fear is universal—a monster, corrupt system or cynical antihero resonates across markets.

Audiences who consume this amygdala-hijacking, profit-maximizing content gradually acclimate to it. Soon enough, they not only need more of it to keep the dopamine hits going, but they also find uplifting content unsatisfying or boring.

In this paradigm, no wonder rom-coms, comedies and dramas are on the outs. These genres make us ponder the human condition, empathize and long for connection, behaviors that are antithetical to profit maximization in an attention economy.

This matters because stories don’t just reflect culture, they shape it. The narratives we consume become the lenses through which we interpret reality. When we consume darkness, we feel darkness, we think darkness. Media theorist Neil Postman once said of the television era that we were “amusing ourselves to death.” Today, we’re despairing ourselves to death.

We must remember that entertainment companies are now algorithmic-addiction companies. When they suck us into their doom loop, we are pawns in their cynical, profit-maximizing game.

We are profoundly fortunate to have the world’s strongest free speech protections. This means no regulating entertainment media’s content, and we remain free to make and consume the content we want. As it is said, with great freedom comes great responsibility. End of the day, it is our responsibility not to consume the brain poison that is today’s dominant media. We must resist the pull of dystopian dopamine doom loops and instead seek stories that grapple with life’s challenges while ultimately affirming humanity. May the success of shows like Ted Lasso, still too few and far between, inspire more entertainment companies away from darkness and back to light.

The world contains vastly more hope, kindness and genuine human connection than our screens suggest. But we have to step outside the algorithmic darkness to remember that light exists. If we don’t, then our future will look like recent headlines—dystopian, and full of horror.

THE RANDOMS

China is going all in on humanoid robots. Tesla is going all in on humanoid robots. Exactly who wants an AI-trained robot “living” in their house?

What is the most effective way to deter crime? Is it to accept a criminal’s plight and forgo or reduce punishment while providing “helpful” counseling? Is it to inflict repercussions commensurate to the offense? Or is it some combination of both?

Why is there so little productive discourse in the world? Why so much divisiveness and hate? Why so many mental health issues? Are these VERY BIG challenges the cumulative effect of decades of parents going to great lengths to remove any and all challenges, no matter how small, from their kids’ lives? From the culture of trophies for merely showing up? From a culture that brought us microaggressions, which trained entire generations to believe that “words are violence”? Letting everyone experience mundane and normal challenges may be our only way out of our very big challenges.

Hopefully the jobs created by the AI gold rush will create more jobs than the AI gold rush destroys.

And hopefully reshoring manufacturing investment cycle will follow the AI gold rush.

We have a lot of big challenges today. One of them is that social media has convinced pretty much everyone they need to have an opinion about everything and that their opinion matters. And for some reason, the most dysfunctional opinions out there seem to dominate our narratives.

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy

Fed lowers rates as expected
Retail sales beat expectations
While cracks emerge in consumer finance
The rich are holding up the economy
US industrial production edges up
Import prices higher than expected

Labor

The job market is worse than it looks
Consider contemplative leadership
How to get welfare recipients into the labor force

The Lone Star

South Texas is booming
Toyota commits more to San Antonio manufacturing
Austin drone boat company poised for growth

BUSINESS

Finance

Will AI replace Wall Street?
The SEC wants to inspire more IPOs
Trump wants to ditch quarterly reporting
Former Goldman CEO thinks crash is coming
Private credit risk is on the rise

Tech

Nvidia to invest $5B in Intel
Meta wants us to need another device
The world’s not ready for driverless cars
Google joins the $3 trillion dollar club
AirPods can do translations in real time
Are humanoid robots really the next big thing?

AI

Software programmers may need a new profession
Teen boundaries coming to ChatGPT
AI is exacerbating digital addiction
OpenAI chairman calls out AI bubble
AI is now helping the aged and lonely

Energy Transition

There’s a big problem in the Permian
The sun is slowly waking up
California set to increase oil drilling!
Team Trump says fusion is coming soon
Sea levels are NOT rising
Apocalyptic climate predictions keep crumbling

THE NATION

The Washing-Tone

Team Trump seeks manufacturing catalyst
US hits another drug smuggler boat
Will Obamacare cause a government shutdown?
Memphis welcomes the National Guard

Tariffs and Trade

US-India trade talks look promising
US tech to invest big in the UK
China bans Nvidia AI chips
Time to redo the Mexico-Canada deal
Is tariff cheating going on?

Social Trends

Birth rates favor conservatives
Why divorce plunged in Kentucky
America’s college towns, from boom to bust

GEOPOLITICS

Global

Argentina legacy bureaucrats challenge Milei
Turkey wants more nuclear power
And they want nuclear weapons, too
Yet another scandal in Mexico

Europe

Eurozone economy strengthens
UK has giant anti-immigrant protest
EU looks to grow Latin American trade
Will Poland replace a country in the G20?

Ukraine

US and Europe struggle with strategy
China to raise money for Russia
Russian hackers hammer Poland
Ukraine no-fly zone means NATO war
Russia flies drones over Romania

Middle East

Israel-Syria deal may be close
Israel launches new Gaza ground invasion
“There will never be a Palestinian state”

China

Chinese AI is stealing US copyright content
China’s economy keeps slowing down
China set to open world’s tallest bridge
China rekindles Japan conflict

War Creep

Taiwan has a new autonomous cruise missile
First came drones, now comes the drone killer
China accuses Philippines of illegal intrusion

MAKING A BETTER YOU

Mind
Get more quiet time.

Five books to supercharge your intellect
Why you need boredom
Doctor suggests five ways to relieve stress

Body
Get more outside time.

Toxic food is our real nemesis
Eat beans, you’ll live longer
How to do coffee naps

FUN STUFF

Let your hair down, baby! Even if you’re all alone.

The Extraordinary

Taking down an industrial chimney, brick by brick
The world stone skimming championship
We may no longer see the stars

Music That Found Us

Hermanos Gutiérrez Tiny Desk Concert
Ludovico Einaudi Tiny Desk Concert
Ed Sheeran Tiny Desk Concert

Worth a Watch

Downton Abby: The Grand Finale trailer.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues trailer.
Emma Stone in the nutty Bugonia.
Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother trailer.

The Yum Yums

Various Indian rice recipes
Butter chicken
Chana masala
Turmeric rice
Vegetable curry
Cauliflower curry
Mango chutney

PARTING THOUGHTS

I will eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, selfishness, and cynicism, by developing love for all humanity, because I know that a negative attitude toward others can never bring me success. I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself.

–Napoleon Hill

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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September 10, 2025

Our Resilient Economy
September 5, 2025