Enthusiastic Recommendations — July 18, 2025

Happy Friday!

As an update from last week, Sophia still isn’t rolling yet. I’m not stressed about this, by the way, as I know every child reaches milestones in their own time. But this has been the first milestone she’s taken noticeably longer to develop. It feels like she wants to do it but can’t yet put together the final step. She often curves her body into a banana-like shape, which seems like she wants to roll but hasn’t quite figured the rest out yet. In the past few days — inspired by Donkey Kong Bananza — I now say ‘OOH BANANA’ whenever she does this. I find it hilarious, though I’m confident this will eventually frustrate my wife. 🍌

It was a big content week for me, as I published the second episode of the State of the Workflow series on Cortex. Publishing this show takes a tonne of time, so any week that it happens gets much busier. I’ve been really happy with the response to the episode so far. As I mentioned, I think it’s one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and some listeners seem to agree! I found this post from Tucker particularly sweet.

Here are my recommendations for you this week:

• If you spend any time talking to new parents, you’ll eventually get the recommendation of ‘The Happy Song’ by Imogen Heap as a solution to calm an upset baby. I’m here to confirm that this works for us. We use this song as our ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment. When introduced to this song, people often mention it was scientifically engineered to be calming and pleasing to children. I wanted to look into the story behind it, which turns out to be more complicated than it seems. Every account I found tells a slightly different story, but the best I could piece together is this: formula-maker Cow and Gate were working with their ad agency BETC on a new campaign when someone proposed creating a song to make children happy. BETC then collaborated with Imogen Heap and Goldsmiths University, who had conducted studies on sounds pleasing to children. Heap developed a selection of music, Goldsmiths conducted trials, and ultimately they landed on the piece that became the foundation for ‘The Happy Song.’ Heap then refined the music and had family members — including her own child — provide vocals. It’s a fun song with an intriguing backstory. I’d love a definitive account, but this is the best retelling I could piece together. Nevertheless, I also just really enjoy it as a piece of music.
• Donkey Kong Bananza came out this week. It’s the second Switch 2 exclusive game, and it’s been reviewing incredibly well—and for good reason! I’ve put a few hours into this game so far, and it’s exceptionally good. I didn’t anticipate it being such a huge open-world game, but it truly is like ‘Breath of the Wild’ for Donkey Kong. Between this and Mario Kart World, the Switch 2 is absolutely a console worth buying. I look forward to reporting back after spending more time with Bananza.
• I really enjoyed this article by Casey Newton, where he reports on Substack’s recent $1B valuation and speculates on how the company will evolve to meet investor expectations. This is a paid article, but I highly recommend Platformer. Casey’s reporting is as excellent as it is entertaining.

That’s it for this week. I’m really looking forward to seeing Fantastic Four next week—it looks like it’s going to be a really good time.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!