Hi Reader,

Every week I read articles, watch videos, discover ideas, and stumble across stories that never quite fit into Monday's or Wednesday's newsletter.

So every Friday, I'm going to share a handful of the ones I think are worth your time.

Here are a few from this week.

This week, we established a foundation upon which to explore the radical cultural differences among companies.

Next week, we'll explore the common traits they share that help to explain their success and why those universal attributes should be embedded in the culture you want build in your organization.

In the meantime, here's a reminder of what we covered this week:

• ​Can You Build a Successful Company in a Toxic Environment? explores one company with a very toxic culture,
• ​Can Radically Different Cultures Produce Equally Great Results?, shifts gears to a welcome and respectful culture.

While we're talking about the importance of culture and the wide range of those options, the introductory episode of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares debuted this week – and if you want to witness first hand a cultural cesspool, check out the Freddy's Steak House episode.

I think we'll see repeated versions of this as the season moves on, but this one is a doozy.

One of the hardest leadership jobs in the world is parenting — and it spawns as many theories as there are children.

I laughed at this one.

Apparently, Matt Damon was talking to Sean Penn about one of his four daughter's first date and Penn told him that when a guy came over to date his daughter, here's what he told him:

I know us March Madness fans are very familiar with bracketology, at least when it refers to college basketball.

How about with American Inventions That Changed Daily Life?

Give that quiz a try.

As a follow-up to last Friday's mention of a classic tale of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo, this article, Why Revenge Feels So Good—and Why It Hurts Us, offers some interesting observations about how revenge can become a powerful habit – and not in a good way.

Goals have an ingenious way of changing what we believe is possible.

I can remember when the 4-Minute mile was the standard for that race – and no one thought it would ever be broken.

It was finally broken in 1954 by Roger Bannister, an Englishman – barely – with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

The latest to set a NEW Mile Record is Josh Kerr, a Scotsman who last week ran it in 3:42:66, which broke a 27 year old record.

I love his mission mantra to do it.

He called it the *Project 222 Quest*, named for the number of seconds required to break the record of 3:43:13.

I could have done it but I've retired from racing.

The sales clerk’s response isn’t exactly one I’d recommend… but if you’ve ever gone shoe shopping with my girls, you’d understand the sentiment

During peak hot dog season – from Memorial Day until Labor Day – Americans consume some 7 billion hot dogs or 818 hot dogs every second. (National Hot Dog and Sausage Council)

I'm still putting together a grid of 10 books in the Mystery-Thriller-Suspense genre that will give you a toehold for a lot of summer reading.

In the meantime, there's no better way to start than with the Dean of American crime fiction, Robert Parker. He died in 2010 but wrote the first 40 books of his Spenser series featuring his most famous private detective.

Since then, authorized continuations of his works have been written by others, with the latest being by Mike Lupica, the famed newspaper columnist and sports writer, who better than anyone IMHO, captures the wit, sarcasm and tough-guy approach of Spenser.

I just finished the latest – the 53rd book in this series, Showdown. A lot of fun, an intricate plot, but mostly a hoot as Spenser and Hawk, his enigmatic and lethal sidekick, get up in the grill of one of the biggest and loudest podcasters in the nation.

I think you'll love the wickedly sharp wit of Spenser, the take no prisoners approach of Hawk along with Spenser's undying and faithful commitment to his long-time girlfriend, Susan Silverman, a Harvard-trained psychlogist.

I always suggest starting with the first book in a series as the best way to get acquainted with the characters, but you can start anywhere you like. The first book is The Godwulf Manuscript. The most current one – #5 – is Showdown.

And, yes, I've read them all.

BTW: Don't watch the Spenser TV series. It's a misguided interpretation of the character. After you read even one book in the series and watch the first few minutes of a TV episode, you'll see what I mean.

You can get a quick overview of Parker's writing, focusing on the Spenser character, in this video, The Works of Robert B. Parker on PBS.