This week on Thinking Is Cool 🏘️

Stop what you’re doing right now and turn on one of these three songs: “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra, “Miami” by Will Smith, or “All My Ex's Live in Texas” by George Strait. Today, we’re talking about the cities that’ll own the future. The mood has to be right.

Welcome aboard another edition of the Thinking Is Cool newsletter. I’m your captain, Kinsey, and I’m going to drive this airplane metaphor into the ground by the time we make it to the bottom of this email.

There are three things of which I’m 100% sure: 1) ginger ale tastes better when you drink it on a plane 2) there’s a very good new episode of Thinking Is Cool out today and 3) you have options.

Option 1: Listen to that new episode right now on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else without reading more about the topic, then come back to this email for some deeper insights once you finish. Recommended for people who like to get to the airport when their flight is boarding.

Option 2: Read this newsletter first and then listen to the new episode on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else with a little extra context and background. Recommended for people who like to get to the airport at least an hour and a half before takeoff.

Let’s do it.

This Week on Thinking Is Cool: Your move (and what it says about you)

Cosplaying as a pilot (Delta fam where u at) up there at the top feels fitting because today we’re talking about the ways that people move around. More specifically, we’re talking about the impacts of our collective and recent bent towards uprooting our lives and moving to new places in this post-Covid, remote-enabled world.

It’s one of the trends you probably read about early in the pandemic—New York Is Dead, San Francisco Loses Top Tech Talent, Elon Musk Is Moving to the Middle of Nowhere, etc etc etc. 

But the pandemic-accelerated mass migration in the US is more than just a Covid trend that’ll be nothing but a March 2020 memory someday. Signing a 30-year mortgage tends to have a little more fallout than poorly executing the Renegade dance.

When half the Bay Area’s tech bros settle in Miami, there will inevitably be turbulence (alright I’m done with the plane stuff now). Moving around means taking more than just the Ikea dresser that’s been in your room since the first year out of college. You also take your money, your potential, and your resources—things that significantly impact the physical places we decide to call our own.

So this week on Thinking Is Cool, I’m exploring how we make those decisions. How do you decide where to root yourself and potentially your family? Who gets to make those decisions? And what do they mean for the future social and economic tapestries of this country?

In this week’s episode, you can expect answers to all that, plus some of this:

• A look at the big four cities that appear to be owning the future—or grappling to hold onto that ownership. We’re talking Miami, Austin, New York City, and San Francisco.

• Me literally crying mic’d up.

• Some amazing thought-starters about the ways our physical place impacts who we are as people.

I’ve struggled a lot over the last year to decide where I want to settle. I eventually decided to stay in New York, likely for the long term (unless there is a generationally wealthy British man looking for a career-minded partner to build a life with in London out there). But it took me weeks to make that decision—weeks that made me feel significantly unsettled, both physically and emotionally.

Where we live says a lot about who we are...and vice versa. This week on Thinking Is Cool, we’re going to talk about it.

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Now, the details of this week’s episode of Thinking Is Cool…

Who: You’ll hear from a bunch of really smart, really cool people this episode. Side note, if you ever do see me in Miami please forgive me for what I’ve said. I want to get invited on your boat.

• Alex Cohen, an entrepreneur and investor who works at Carbon Health and lives in San Francisco

• Jim DeCicco, the cofounder and CEO of Super Coffee who just moved from New York to Austin

• Maya Bakhai, who works at 35 Ventures and decided to move to Miami after an influential Florida quarantine

• Anna Mason, the managing partner of Rise of the Rest’s seed fund and expert in all things non-NYC/Boston/SF

What: Kinda explained that one already, but yeah it’s a podcast. The title of the episode is “Your move (and what it says about you).”

Where: Anywhere you get your podcasts, like Apple or Spotify

When: Might I suggest now?

Why: Because it’ll make you think and thinking is cool

In fact, thinking is so cool that I’d like to suggest we start doing it right now. Here’s a conversation starter that Josh shared with me yesterday—it fits really well with today’s new episode. Read it, stew on it, and let me know what you think. 

See you Friday for another edition of the Thinking Is Cool blog. Have the best week ever.

Love,

Kinsey