Strands of Genuis: September 30th

Curated by @rosiesiman + @faris.
- This American Life this week tells the story of Carmen Segarra, who was fired from being a bank regulator for trying to regulate banks. She secretly recorded 46 hours of the banks and colleagues, and they make harrowing listening, for example when the head of Goldman Sachs' conflict and compliance department tells her they have no internal definition of a 'conflict of interest' or when another GS employee explains how "once clients are wealthy enough certain laws don't apply to them".
- Hashtagmyass is an interactive music video for Super Discount 3 that pulls in your Instagram pictures in a slick and satisfying way, and then let's you push the video to Youtube. It could be considered NSFW, depending on the conservative nature of where you work.
- Youtuber Sam Pepper makes unpleasant prank videos where he harasses women under the banner of comedy. Youtuber Laci Green finally spoke out about this only to find a large number of girls contact her saying he sexually assaulted them. One has now publicly accused him of rape.
- India put a probe into orbit around Mars... for $26M LESS than the cost of the film Gravity. So, yeah. Um...
- We went to see the guys from Cinema Sins be funny on Wednesday. If you've never seen their hilarious videos pointing out what's wrong with movies, start with the Hunger Games and then The Dark Knight.
- If you've been feeling like people are less religious, you're not imagining it: 1/3 of American adults under 30, and 1/5 of all Americans don't identify with any religion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, leaving a negative religious experience tends to boost health, while the end of a positive religious experience can lead to a decrease in health.
- The article Faris wrote about Why Banners Are Broken is now one of the most viewed pieces on Digiday and has been shared nearly 2000 times. If you missed our interruptive email on Thursday, join the conversation and share some love!
- Hitchhiker is this year's "Gangam Style" style breakout Korean pop video except it's way more psychedelic.
- Peter Levitan featured an interview with Faris in his new book BUY THIS BOOK WIN MORE PITCHES, which you might like, if you want to win more new business pitches.
- Where's Kim-Jong Un? And, more importantly, can you really overdose on cheese?