Creativity

Tuesday

Bryan Appleyard

Why spiders deserve our respect, not fear or disgust

I had not thought much about spiders until I read Maria Tatar’s Arachnomania; now I can think of little else. I even watched a film mentioned in the book – Eight-Legged Freaks. It was awful, though it did bring home how very scared people can be of spiders, especially large ones. But, as Tatar shows, spiders are also part of human history and culture; and they really are different. I use fly sprays to get rid of insect intruders. I would never now use them against arachnids as well. Tatar was first drawn to spiders by the Covid pandemic which locked us all down. It was then she discovered that the eight-legged freaks offered the possibility of ‘finding a model for survival and creativity in times of seclusion, darkness and gloom’. They are, as we shall see, paragons of survival.

Friday

Rory Sutherland

Variety is the spice of evolutionary life

I would have enjoyed mathematics more at school if I’d known what the real value was. The benefit of studying math isn’t numeracy at all: it’s creativity – a kind of benign neurodiversity. A new set of eyes through which to see the world, and the priceless lesson that the best way to solve a problem is to redefine it. Many of the most interesting people I’ve met have been mathematicians. Nassim Taleb taught me a whole new way to look at statistical variance. And, in a chance meeting with Stephen Wolfram, I heard something which at first surprised me, but which has needled me ever since.

evolution

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Why the restaurant world hates beer drinkers

I’ve always thought working in hospitality is like getting a free MBA – but one rooted in the real world rather than theory. So it didn’t surprise me to discover a brilliant business idea in a book about the restaurant trade. In Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, star restaurateur Will Guidara describes his quest to take Manhattan’s Eleven Madison Park from number 50 in the San Pellegrino restaurant rankings in 2010 to the number one spot in 2017. To check out the competition, Guidara takes a group of employees to the top restaurant on the list. Unsurprisingly, the experience is superb, and his team busily spot ideas they could copy. But Guidara isn’t interested in these.

Thursday

Rory Sutherland and Rick Rubin

‘Judgment is the price of being creative’

Rick Rubin is a legendary American record producer who co-founded Def Jam records, which helped popularise hip hop. He has worked with everyone from Johnny Cash (whose career he is credited with reviving) to Paul McCartney and Kanye West. He sat down with The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland to discuss creativity, Bach, Sherlock Holmes, JFK assassination theories and more. RORY SUTHERLAND: It’s a huge pleasure to see you again. Just for the benefit of older Spectator readers, it’s probably worth defining what a music producer does because it’s ambiguous. People might imagine someone sitting there, adjusting the levels on one of those enormous mixing decks. In fact you never touch any of that stuff. You don’t really play an instrument. And you don’t read music. (No shame in that.