The Knowledge, London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test, Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

The New York Times Magazine has a fantastic article by Jody Rosen about The Knowledge, which is as much about London taxi drivers as it is about what it is to commit to be the best in a certain field:

The examination to become a London cabby is possibly the most difficult test in the world — demanding years of study to memorize the labyrinthine city’s 25,000 streets and any business or landmark on them. As GPS and Uber imperil this tradition, is there an argument for learning as an end in itself?

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[Matt] McCabe had spent the last three years of his life thinking about London’s roads and landmarks, and how to navigate between them. In the process, he had logged more than 50,000 miles on motorbike and on foot, the equivalent of two circumnavigations of the Earth, nearly all within inner London’s dozen boroughs and the City of London financial district. He was studying to be a London taxi driver, devoting himself full-time to the challenge that would earn him a cabby’s “green badge” and put him behind the wheel of one of the city’s famous boxy black taxis.

Apple’s Jonathan Ive in Conversation with Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter

The full discussion from Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit.

Working Podcast: The “How Does Stephen Colbert Work?” Edition

Another great podcast. On the first episode of Working, David Plotz talks with Stephen Colbert on how he puts his show together and turns himself from Stephen Colbert into the character “Stephen Colbert”—starting from when he wakes up in the morning, what he watches for inspiration, how he knows the material is any good, all the way through to the actual filming of the show.

Jordan "DJ Earworm" Roseman: Music from the Crowd

Most widely known for his annual 25-song mashup video "United State of Pop," DJ Earworm has been working as a San Francisco-based producer and performer since 2003. He first landed on the music scene after being hired by MTV as resident DJ during the 2005 MTV Music Video Awards in South Beach, Fla.

A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive: The Man Behind the Apple Watch

The cultural shift at Apple continues. To the point they've allowed the publishing of a very rare profile of Jony Ive. But that's not even the most surprising thing, the profile was in Vogue, re-iterating how Apple is certainly moving towards fashion in their marketing of the Apple Watch, a device they allowed writer Robert Sullivan to know about and handle before the product announcement, which is unheard of for Apple. 

In 1985, the year Jobs was forced out of Apple, Jony Ive was in design school in England, struggling with computers, blaming himself. “Isn’t that curious?” he says now. “Because if you tasted some food that you didn’t think tasted right, you would assume that the food was wrong. But for some reason, it’s part of the human condition that if we struggle to use something, we assume that the problem resides with us.”