Yuja Wang recently performed the musical equivalent of a back-to-back triathlon: a 97,000-note "Rachmaninoff marathon" at Carnegie Hall. Tackling all four piano concertos and a rhapsody in a single sitting is a feat of stamina that would leave most pianists needing a cold compress and a career change. But this performance came with a tech twist: Wang, the conductor, and the audience were all wired up with heart rate monitors. The data revealed that during the infamously finger-breaking Third Concerto, Wang’s heart rate sat at a cool 85 bpm, roughly the same effort as a casual stroll. Meanwhile, the finale of the Fourth Concerto sent her spiking to 149 bpm, the physiological equivalent of belting out a Bonnie Tyler power ballad at full volume.

The results suggest that for a virtuoso, "hard" isn’t always about technical proficiency; Wang’s heart stayed calmest during the most complex pieces simply because she’d played them enough to find them "calming." However, the most poetic takeaway wasn't just how hard Wang was working, but how the room reacted. At key emotional peaks, the heartbeats of the soloist, the conductor, and the audience began to sync up in real-time. It turns out that "being on the same wavelength" isn't just a metaphor. It’s a measurable biological phenomenon.

What do you get when you cross a Swedish apothecary bottle with a 150-year-old Louisiana pepper mash? Apparently, a literal booze volcano. Absolut has teamed up with Tabasco to launch a vodka infused with the same fermented red pepper mash used in the world’s most famous hot sauce. To celebrate the collaboration, they skipped the slo-mo product shots, and headed to Iceland to film a volcano erupting with spicy Bloody Marys. It’s a beautifully absurd visual that taps into our current cultural obsession with "swicy" flavors: the kind of heat that makes you question your life choices while reaching for a second sip.

Beyond the spicy marketing, this is a strategic return to the "smile-in-the-mind" wit that made Absolut a cultural icon in the first place. For decades, their iconic print ads, which turned everything from NYC city blocks to Andy Warhol paintings into the silhouette of their bottle, were the gold standard of visual storytelling. By partnering with another heritage label like Tabasco, they’re trying to reclaim their status as a cultural curator in an era of six-second attention spans.

When Steve Parker’s 65-year-old oak tree was killed by a fungus, he didn't just turn it into mulch or a rustic coffee table. He turned it into a playlist. In a project titled "Funeral for a Tree," Parker sliced the trunk into thin discs and etched bird songs directly into the wood grain, creating functional "records" out of the timber. When you drop a needle onto these wooden platters, they play the chirps and calls of the very birds that used to live in the tree’s canopy. It’s a haunting, scratchy ghost of the forest’s former inhabitants.

But there’s a deeper, slightly more clinical layer to this forest dirge. Parker paired the records with a sprawling sculpture of brass pipes, CPAP machines, and medical ventilators, drawing a line between the "breathing" of the tree and his father’s own struggle with lung disease. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi hospital, but the result is a beautiful, slightly eerie meditation on loss and preservation. There’s something profoundly moving about the idea that a tree's entire history can be played back through its own physical scars.

Dawn just hit the two-year mark, which feels both surreal and very real. I shared a short reflection on LinkedIn about what’s changed, what’s clicked, and what I’m carrying into year three, plus a hint at what’s coming next. If you’re curious about the journey so far, the full post is up on LinkedIn.