To be very clear: I want you to click this link and read this article. Rishad Patel stresses the importance of a clear call to action in communication. Whenever you write something and want whoever reads it to take some action, be explicit about what action you want them to take. You don’t have to be a professional writer for this to be relevant to you. Think of the many times each day – at work and outside of it – you write someone to achieve something. The best and simplest advice from the article: «Write your call to action before you write the rest.»

If you need something to escape from all that’s current for an hour, look no further. Time Sensitive is a podcast featuring «conversations with leading minds about their life and work through the lens of time». This conversation with travel writer Pico Iyer on the many layers of time makes everything slow down.

We’re approaching day 100 of Donald Trump’s second term. Already? Only? Humour website McSweeney’s has taken on the monumental, completely earnest challenge of documenting all cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes Trump and his gang are committing – «to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten.» Last updated on April 14, it features 158 entries – in normal times each worthy of its own scandal.

«The West as we knew it no longer exists,» EU President Ursula von der Leyen says in this remarkable interview. «We need another, new European Union that is ready to go out into the big wide world and to play a very active role in shaping this new world order that is coming.» She lays out how Europe must respond in this new world order of geopolitical instability and crumbling alliances. First and foremost by building upon its strengths and core values. «Europe is more than a union. Europe is our home.»

«It’s always easier to blame the individual who made our life difficult, instead of the systems that don’t just foster but incentivize bad work.» An essay, clearly echoing David Graeber’s «Bullshit Jobs», on the failed promises of the gig economy. «Just a few clicks, and some part of your life will be easier. In reality, the business model that creates both the cheapness and the ease makes the end product significantly worse.»

This is what an emergency looks like: The US Supreme Court rules unanimously that Trump’s administration has wrongfully deported an innocent man and must bring him back – and Trump just ignores it. And once again, I find myself reading Timothy Snyder. «This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror. […] Horrible though all of this is, it is still state terror in outline, a test of how Americans will react. We can react by seeing all of this for what it is, and naming it by name: incipient state terror.»

1 billion people switch jobs every year. And for those who do so because they wanted it, many end up in jobs that aren’t better than what they left behind. Bob Moesta has some great advice on how to approach job moves strategically. In this podcast, he explains his method for a) better understanding why exactly you want to leave your current job and b) figuring out what actually makes sense as a next move.

«What we have is a compounded problem, in which people with generational wealth pull the levers on a society that they don’t understand.» This is by no means a new issue, nor one that is specific to one particular country. What this essay makes clear, though, is that it’s more pressing than ever that we confront the issue. I would push back that it partly falls into the trap of the right-wing narrative of «out-of-touch elites», but I still took away a lot to ponder.

Unlike what the subtitle says, it’s not «more complicated than you may think». However, this piece is an excellent reminder of how not too long ago, humans had wildly wrong theories about something as obvious as where babies come from. What does that teach us about our current knowledge?

Quite depressing, honestly, that five years after Covid, we once again need explainers on how contagious diseases spread – and how vaccines help contain them. Unlike with the coronavirus that overwhelmed the world, we know exactly how to deal with measles – but it only works if almost everyone does their part.