The Cassette Cafe, Saving Science and How To Get Excited About the Winter Olympics | #500
02.05.2026 - The most fascinating non-obvious stories of the week curated by Rohit Bhargava.
It’s issue number #500 for the Non-Obvious Newsletter this week! That’s the equivalent of nearly ten years of weekly curated thoughts and the moment has me wondering about my longest active readers. So here’s a question for approximately 42% of you who open this email every week ... what date did you first subscribe or start reading these insights on my blog (which started before the newsletter)? Hit reply and let me know - I’ll send a signed book and offer a mention next week for the most loyal subscriber who’s been reading the longest!
In stories this week, you’ll read about one theory on how to save science in the age of disbelief, the curious rise of the cassette cafe and a primer guide on how to get excited for the 2026 Winter Olympics starting tomorrow.
Enjoy the stories and stay curious!
Rohit
Saving Science In the Age of the Modern Believability Crisis
Among scientists and believers of science alike, there’s a frustration with all the voices out there who question science. From conspiracy theorists to pseudoscientists, anyone with an idea to share (and occasionally attribution to offer) can find an audience of believers. Many of them have profited from it. Often, this is presented as a problem of manipulation. “Those people” are telling lies to advance their own agendas despite contradictory evidence. In Undark magazine, Yale professor C. Brandon Ogbunu offers a different perspective. Rather than casting blame, he suggests the problem may really come from how scientists communicate and the scientific method itself.
“While different issues have contributed to Trump’s low approval ratings, there is little evidence that attacks on science are among them. We can illustrate this with a fictional scenario: Take away college football tomorrow and watch college towns descend into chaos. But when they came for our pipettes and microscopes, almost nothing happened ... Science has gaping holes that have already been exploited by the ill-intentioned. We’ve run out of options, and there is nowhere to hide. It’s time to stop grieving over an imaginary golden age that never existed.”
The more scientists argue among each other for attribution or funding or reproducibility, the more of a void builds that can be filled with whomever shouts their own theory the loudest. After all, the easiest theory to prove is one where you can make up the proof yourself or selectively pick the most convenient data to showcase. So what’s the solution? It seems to start with scientists banding together to find more unity against the forces that aim to discredit them.
How To Get Excited About the 2026 Winter Olympics
Anyone who knows me already knows that I’m a big fan of the Olympics. There’s nothing else in our modern world that aims higher to bring the world together as one. Usually, though, my excitement is reserved for the Summer Olympics. The Winter Olympics have always felt a bit harder to get excited about. For one thing, these Olympics don’t really represent the world because many snow-less countries don’t compete. Also, the competing athletes remain mostly white and most sports still require some level of wealth in order to grow up doing. Despite these shortcomings, I am excited for these Games and there were a few stories I read this week that helped.
One of the longstanding problems with the Winter Olympics is that it requires the host city to build all sorts of venues (like a Luge course) that have no usage beyond the Games so they often end up as abandoned wastelands. This year, Milan is pioneering a more spread out model for the Games where they are hosting in many different places across Italy. In theory, this should allow them to minimize the wastage and optimize venues for later reuse. The upcoming FIFA World Cup hosted across the North American continent is using a similar concept. If this works, the idea of diversifying large global sporting events across multiple cities and countries may become commonplace.
It was also fun to read about previous sports that did not make it into this year’s games (such as sled dog racing and ski ballet) along with some of this year’s new exhibition sports (like dual moguls and ski mountaineering), Vogue’s picks for the best and worst Olympic uniforms (note - Mongolia’s uniform is winning the most admirers so far), as well as the story behind the design of the Olympic medals. For a bigger picture context there were several stories this week about how climate change is threatening the Winter Olympics themselves. And finally of course, there are also several athlete stories to watch including the Bobsled team from Trinidad and Tobago that’s aiming modestly with their Olympic dream of “not coming in last.”
The Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony will be broadcast live in the US on Peacock at 2pm EST on Friday.
Friction and the Power of Tokyo’s Popular New Cassette Cafe
After ordering your coffee at a Shibuya district cafe in the middle of Tokyo, you can browse a collection of cassette tapes to pick the one you like best and cozy up with a Sony Walkman in a chair. No, it’s not the nineties—this is a retro concept cafe that is gaining popularity in Japan and turning heads around the world. There’s a similar cafe devoted to vinyl lovers with actual record players available for use too. Aside from bringing back musical formats of the past, the interesting insight here is around the friction that is built into the experience.
You need to go and browse a bunch of music, and pick something and insert it to play and then (most crucially) live with your choice. You can’t just skip to the next song or pick a new artist easily. As a result, you have to commit to your choice, live in the moment and make yourself happy with the situation you’ve put yourself in. For a world where it seems like there’s an ever-present cancel button where people literally decline Uber rides for “taking too long” because the driver is more than 1 minute away ... this forced acceptance of a moment can feel almost joyful. I suspect that’s why the concept is so popular. What do you think? Would you enjoy a visit to the cassette cafe? Hit reply and let me know what you think.
The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week
Psychology Today
The first time I really became a student of psychology was in my early days of advertising, when I was part of a group that was pioneering new ways to use behavioral science to create compelling marketing and advertising campaigns. Since then, tracking news on the latest psychology studies has been a part of my media diet and Psychology Today is one of the most consumer-friendly sites for repackaging new insights from academic studies into understandable insights. The topics in articles on the site range from dealing with anxiety to parenting advice and it’s one of those rare sites where you can start browsing the vast collection of stories and take away some new learnings even from content published months or even years ago. This is definitely one to add to your reading list.
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week
Enshittification
Every tech platform that we use frequently today has gone through the same progression. They start off user focused and great. We love them because of the need they fill. Then they get popular and start bringing in corporate dollars (usually through ads) and start serving the companies rather than the users. Then they opt for scaling at all costs and start screwing the companies too. That’s the final stage of what author Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification.” When I read this several months ago, I had to rack my brain to find an example of a tech platform that might prove his theory wrong. I could only come up with one: eBay (video on this coming soon). Otherwise, his premise felt immediately and sadly true.
Beyond diagnosing this problem, the book does offer some prescriptions for how to solve this challenge. The real problem is the incentive model that causes the enshittification in the first place. The path to profitability in tech is no longer having a good business model or serving your customers or even providing great value. It’s creating the illusion that you’re worth a vast multiple of your (sometimes non-existent) revenue to private equity or another acquiring entity and then waiting for your big payday. Until that changes, enshittification will continue to happen all around us.
About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:
Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.
Even More Non-Obvious Stories …
Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:
The cassette cafe insight about friction being a feature is brilliant. The idea that being stuck with a choice forces mindfulness feels counterintuitive given how much tech optimizes for frictionless experiences. But there's something to it. I've noticed in my own life that too much optionality can be paralyzing, and commiting to a decision (even a small one like music) creates a weird kind of peace. The Uber example really nails the absurdity we've normalized.
Hey Rohit, it's always a pleasure reading you.
I am responding to your call for long reading fans of yours.
I have been one at least from as early as 2006 (20 years) as this article, originally published that year, fully testifies: https://masternewmedia.com/the-social-media-optimization-manifesto-key-social-marketing-principles-to-increase-the-visibility-dbbfa08366cd
You have been a key inspiration point for my key professional obsession: curation. You crystallized and gave a precise name to something I had been sensing and writing about since 2004. I am still thankful you did. https://masternewmedia.com/content-curation-why-is-the-content-curator-the-key-emerging-online-editorial-role-of-the-future-d3107148d4d
You earned my attention and trust in such a way, by highlighting the non-obvious and demonstrating great ability to see far into the future, that I will not ever stop following you.