I’m in Detroit for my Quarterly planning this week.

Which is a nice way of saying I had to drive all the way across Ohio today.

Ohio is really the Ohio of states, am I right?

If I were some kind of omnipotent god-king for a day, I would make the Ohio river into a worm hole. Crossing the bridge in Louisville? Boom, you’re in Michigan (or maybe Chicago?). Crossing the bridge in Cinci? Boom, you’re in Pennsylvania.

Either way, it’s good to be back in the mitten.

Know someone who might like New Nouns? Share it with them here.

⭐️ The Nouns of May 16, 2025 ⭐️

Have a link to share? Don’t be stingy. Hit reply.

Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.

Overwhelmed by biased news? Cut through the clutter and get straight facts with your daily 1440 digest. From politics to sports, join millions who start their day informed.

Sign up now!

The Three Coolest Places I’ve Been

We worship travel.

I don’t know if it is the novelty that comes with being somewhere else.

Or some ethnocentric idea of leaving our castle on the hill to go see how the other people live.

Or just an escape from routine.

But we love it.

There are magazines and books and photo albums and a TV channel.

“Have any travel coming up?” is about as common a question as “How are the kids?”

I have been fortunate to do quite a bit of it in my life, and give a lot of credit for who I am today to the simple quantity of perspectives I was exposed to growing up.

As of today I’ve been to 46 states and 11 countries.

Not setting any records here, but it’s something.

If you’re wondering: I am missing Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Rhode Island. I’ve been to the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Thailand.

In those travels, I have found that there are two kinds of travel:

1. Visiting places that are designed to be visited.

2. Visiting places that are just home to someone who isn’t you.

I prefer the latter.

There is just something about wandering around old Edinburgh on a rainy day that fills me with joy in a way that a guided tour of the big old castle never will.

The best is finding yourself somewhere no one is really supposed to visit.

Here are three of the coolest places I’ve found myself.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN

At the end of college, I spent a few weeks in Geneva in a study abroad program focused on nonprofits and NGOs. Among a handful of very cool organizations, the standout was the LHC.

If you are unfamiliar, there is a 17 mile particle accelerator 575 feet below ground in Switzerland and France. Inside the giant circular tube, the world’s most brilliant engineers and physicists are smashing tiny things together to understand how the universe works.

It’s very cool, and I’m thankful to have been able to take a very long elevator ride down to see it.

The Jack Daniel’s spring cave at night

Jack Daniel’s has famously been distilled with water from the same cave spring for as long as it has been around. If you take a tour of the distillery down in Lynchburg (and I would recommend you do), you can take a tour of the cave and see where it all comes from.

I have been fortunate to sit on the board of Dendrifund for the last four years, which is a nonprofit that works on sustainability issues in the whiskey ecosystem, and have had the opportunity to see things a bit more up close.

A few years ago, we hosted a stakeholder gathering at Jack Daniel’s and stayed the night in a bunch of airstreams on the grounds.

That night, after dark, we took a little private tour of the cave.

See, this is why you do nonprofit work. Sometimes you get to do cool stuff.

Angel’s Landing

As a kid we took a lot of trips around the country (hence the 46 states above).

We would drag a pop up camper behind our Honda Odyssey for weeks, and were able to visit some of the most incredible parts of this country.

Among them all, Zion is a special place.

More specifically, this one hike I can remember like it was yesterday.

It’s called Angel’s Landing.

And it’s not safe.

Here’s how it goes.

You start out on a pretty typical hike. A little uphill but nothing too bad.

The first stop is refrigerator canyon, which is almost always in shade and naturally cooler than everything else around.

The break from the Utah heat is a nice reprieve, as you walk along a trail carved in the wall of a canyon.

Then you look at the wall and realize it is covered in spider webs.

Which, upon closer inspection, have spiders in them.

Which, upon closer inspection, have little red hourglasses on their ass.

So you walk a little closer to the edge of the trail, figuring a little height is less to worry about than a black widow bite.

When you leave the canyon, you come upon a corner that is inexplicably windy, then progress to Walter’s Wiggles, a series of 21 steep switchbacks.

Now, panting from the climb, you face Angel’s Landing.

A narrow ridge. Guided by a chain anchored into the ground. A thousand feet down on either side. Stretching out as the only natural bridge to the bluff overlooking Zion.

You climb, slowly to the top, and sit down to take in the view.

A collection of overly friendly squirrels come to say congratulations and steal your gorp.

The funny thing about all these places is that, while they were absolutely astonishing to me, they aren’t to everyone.

Hundreds of people work at CERN.

Hundreds of people work at Jack Daniel’s.

For the people who live and work there, going to those amazing places is just part of life.

Okay, no one but the squirrels live on Angel’s Landing, but still, you get the point.

There are amazing places all around us.

Take a second and think about your own life.

Your own job.

I bet it’s cooler than you think.

Where’s the coolest place you’ve been? Reply and let me know. I’d genuinely love to hear about it.

Share New Nouns

You know there is someone who you thought of while reading this.

Forward it to them.

Do it for the children.

❤️ 

be good

z

Did a friend forward this to you? Sign up here to get it yourself.