Are Europeans masters of the village?

Vol. 65

Jun 19, 2025

Good morning! Welcome to MF/TS. If you are new here, MF/TS is a newsletter focusing on culture, advertising, running, and performance. In the last MF/TS dispatch, we celebrated new advertising work that I’m super proud of, and also celebrated amazing advertising pioneers that evolved how advertisers make and produce the best kind of ideas.

In this week’s MF/TS we explore the power of getting out to new spaces, explore the magical importance of the village, and why continuing to jokes is good for your brains.

1. VISITING ITALY ALWAYS GETS ME THINKING…

"The Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo." - Mark Twain
"Italy was where the soul went to find calm and love, and I wanted to hold the best of it in the palm of my hand." - Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Follow-up Thoughts

Had the great fortune of visiting Italy a few weeks ago (Rome and Florence 🤌). It blows me away with how much my energy shifts when I am in Italy. All of those slow drip cortisol thoughts that typically swarm my brain seem to dissipate in Europe. And it’s in that moment where I tend to question everything.

2. QUOTE OF THE WEEK - THIS INSIGHTFUL AF

“Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of ‘familiar but not intimate’ relationships with the people who live around us, which Dunkelman calls the village. ‘These are your neighbors, the people in your town,’ he said. We used to know them well; now we don’t. The middle ring is key to social cohesion. Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance.” - Blurb from “The Anti-Social Century” by Derek Thompson (as told through Dense Discovery Newsletter)

Follow-up Thoughts

If you think about quote and think about how disconnected America is behind it’s screen and living arrangements, it is no wonder how we are in the type of space and place we are in this here year of 2025. It’s why little ideas like this one happening in Tempe, Arizona are incredibly powerful.

3. RESEARCH FINDING OF THE WEEK

“According to an article recently published by the British Psychological Society, dad jokes have a positive effect on children’s physical and cognitive development. Wrote Marc Hye-Knudsen, the author of the article and a humor researcher: “When considered properly, dad jokes are an intricately multi-layered and fascinating phenomenon that reveals a lot not just about how humor and joke-telling work but also about fathers’ psychology and their relationships with their children.” - Nice News, 4.15.23

Follow-up Thoughts

How do spiders earn online degrees? They sign up for webinars. 😆

Where do sea creatures live? In Wales. 😆

What’s a good snack to eat on Father’s Day? Pop-Corn 😆

Keep telling Dad jokes.