My Daily Media Diet

Douglas Sorocco, Dunlap Codding senior director and shareholder, talks about his love of vinyl, Reddit subthreads and why he wants to show you pictures of a skunk on a kayak going over a waterfall.

What newsletter always gets clicked open?

The first newsletter I read daily is TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read). TLDR comprises several newsletters, each providing summaries and links to unique articles and news items dealing with technology, startup and founder issues. I'm also a crusading do-gooder, so the Stanford Social Innovation Review is always a great starting point for expanding my mind. The Atlantic Magazine Daily newsletter always has important nuggets of commentary and insight about our world, with writers that consistently challenge my biases and truisms. My favorite all-around "interesting reads" newsletter would be British commentator Andrew Sullivan. I am addicted to his weekly "View from Your Window" contest, where a reader submits a view out their window, and the challenge is to figure out where the picture was taken. I'm always amazed at my fellow readers' ability to find answers using algorithms, visual clues and pure luck.

Is there any other media you consume that we’ve missed?

I'm absorbing everything I can on AI and Large Language Models like ChatGPT. As all attest, the technology is revolutionary, and as a subscriber to ChatGPT, I view it as the cheapest expert I will ever have. Understanding how to use this technology appropriately within my legal practice will likely be the overarching technology issue I will face before I retire. The technology can democratize the law and broaden our community's access to justice. I hope to see the technology developed equitably, understanding its power to change lives in all communities. I highly encourage everyone to check out the AI image generator "Midjourney" – the imagery you can create simply by requesting it to "provide me an image of a skunk on a kayak going over a waterfall" is entirely mesmerizing.

What podcast do we need to be listening to?

Where do you get your news first?

I turn to the Washington Post and New York Times for national news and The Oklahoman when local information breaks, especially Steve Lackemeyer for stories dealing with downtown Oklahoma City.

What app do you open first in the morning?

I'm a political junky, and my guilty pleasure first thing in the morning is the r/politics subreddit on Reddit. Redditors post articles from various diverse sources, and I can sort by "new" and catch up on what's happening politically very quickly. I also venture out to other subreddits like r/vinyl or r/vintageaudio to feed my vinyl record and vintage audio-collecting obsession.

I catch up on my political news by replaying Nicole Wallace's "Deadline White House" show from the previous day on MSNBC. Keeping with the political theme, I attempt to listen to the Pod Save America podcast consistently. For a bit of fun, I'm currently working my way through Behind the Bastards to catch up on the back stories of our more infamous fellow citizens. I love a good exposé! And for a laugh, I listen in on comedians Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer's podcast 2 Bears, 1 Cave

What books are making you think? One of my all-time favorite books is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The book's point is that our decisions are generally irrational – do I really need to buy my 10,000th vinyl album? (Yes!) But this irrationality is predictable. Ariely recently released a new book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things, which is making me rethink my views on the current state of affairs in the United States. We have an enormous genie that needs to be put back in its bottle.