Pixar must be one of the world’s greatest creative businesses.

If you can think of any other company that is as nuts about sweating the small stuff to make sure that the story emerges, please let us know.

In this a16z podcast, former Pixar CFO Lawrence Levy tells the story of the business behind Pixar.

The business of creativity is all about culture

Although the whole thing is tremendous, what’s most interesting for us is that he touches on the culture of Pixar and how this is really the magic glue… or the super sauce if you will…which creates the brilliance that is the Pixar that we all know and love.

All too often business wrongly believes that the secret of their success lies is some kind of analytical formula. A step-by-step recipe – devoid of any kind of humanity or story telling – which is implemented much the same as feeding code to a machine.

Don’t get us wrong though, business without some kind of analytical framework is the same a running a Sunday School, but numbers and targets without culture and imagination is clearly not ideal.

Building a great internal culture as well as a desirable external brand is about people – and unless you capture and nurture the imaginations of people, no amount of analytical number crunching is ever going to get you to where you want to go.

If you want people to follow you, don’t show them a PowerPoint presentation with 10 forgettable bullet points. Rather tell them a plausible story of a land of milk and honey and they’ll do so, under extreme conditions, for 40 years.

99% Invisible is a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.  Each episode is a sound-rich deep dive into a single topic. The podcast gets more than 3 million downloads per month, routinely ranked in the top 10 arts podcasts and top 20 podcasts overall in iTunes.

It’s hosted by Roman Mars.

Our podcast pick of the week this week is the show’s latest episode about Rajneeshpuram.

Indian philosopher and mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a vision: he would build a Utopian city from the ground up, starting with 64,000 acres of muddy ranchland in rural Oregon.

Purchased in 1981, this expanse was to become both a fully-functional urban center and a spiritual mecca for his followers from around the world.

For this plan to work Rajneesh and his red-clad devotees (known as “sannyasins”) needed autonomous authority with which to construct their paradise.

Circumventing local land use restrictions was not a problem so long as their city of Rajneeshpuram was incorporated, which would allow them to issue their own building permits. Fortunately for them, the main requirement for incorporation at the time was a population of 150 people, which they met easily by importing more followers.

Funding flowed in to support construction from a global network of lucrative communes, as well as sannyasins who sold their earthly possessions and donated the proceeds toward the effort. These devotees were also taught that labor was a form of meditation, and willingly worked long hours to make Rajneeshpuram a reality.

99% Invisible is really well-produced and presents itself as a super interesting deep dive into random topics which are seemingly obscure.

Screen Time – just how addicted have we become to reality fed to us through a screen? How is this modern behaviour affecting us as a species? What will life look like in the future as we normalise this behaviour?

This week’s podcast pick of the week is a two part episode from the TED Radio Hour with Guy Raz, which goes deeply into the various questions posed here. It’s a fascinating nugget of knowledge with insights from some of the world’s leading researchers on the topic.

Screen Time is something that touches us all, it’s hellava useful to do some research as to what the psychological consequences could be.

The podcast is in two parts:

Listen to Screen Time Part 1 here.

Listen to Screen Time Part 2 here.

How interesting is the story of the world’s largest laundromat?

Surprisingly it’s pretty compelling. The laundromat has over 300 washing machines, a play area for kids and even al avery complete with finches and miniature doves.

A laundromat of some kind has occupied this corner of Berwyn, Ill., for more than half of the Chicago suburb’s 108 years. But it was only in the 1980s that it took on its superlative name — the result of winning a contest, sponsored by an industry trade group, to find the world’s biggest laundromat by square footage. (The selection process wasn’t exactly scientific, but the World’s Largest Laundromat also hasn’t faced any significant challenge to its title.) And it wasn’t until 1999, when Benson, a business broker who had been hired to sell the laundromat, ended up buying the store himself and reshaping it into a family-friendly community center. via

This week’s Podcast Pick Of The Week is from The Distance and is the interesting business story behind the world’s largest laundromat.

An interview with AND UNION co-founder and legendary South African entrepreneur Rui Esteves is our ‘Podcast Pick of the Week’ today.

Just to start off with a full disclaimer – we helped out with the production of the clip so perhaps we’re a bit biased here, but in all honesty, if there was one guy that we would take considered time out to listen to and endeavour to learn something new from it would be Rui Esteves.

In this podcast Rob Heyns (a legend in his own right) from League of Beers meets Rui at The House of Machines over a couple of beers and they chat about everything from his enterprising beginnings in South Africa to his future plans for world domination.

It’s a beer podcast, but the insightful value it holds is relevant for everyone.

Have a listen to it here – Beer chats:Rui Esteves of AND UNION

We’ve really been getting into podcasts lately.

With at least 4 hours of ‘in-car commute’ to fill per week, we’ve been scanning the exciting and growing world of podcasts for some productive inspiration to add to our driving mix.

This week, our pick of the best podcast that we’ve found is from Tim Ferriss [yes, ironically that guy that does everything in 4 hours a week] and his interview with legendary music producer Rick Rubin.

Rick Rubin has produced albums for some of the world biggest music superstars.

From Aerosmith, Slayer and Metallica to Johnny Cash and Lady Gaga – Rick Rubin has worked with them all.

He was a vegan who suffered terribly with obesity and miraculously changed his life with a LCHF diet and meditation. He hangs out with big wave surfer and iconic waterman Laird Hamilton and what you’ll learn from this podcast is how to handle success in life and ultimately ‘what is happiness’.

The show was recorded in a ridiculously hot sauna [presumably pictured here].

This podcast is 1 hour and 20 minutes long and even if you are not the biggest Tim Ferris fan, he’s actually very good as the host of this show.

Listen to it via this link here.

Get it on iTunes here.