"Business Explains The World" is here, and you can watch it now!

(Just make sure you watch the whole thing because retention is important to the algorithm ok?)

Hello friends, collaborators, and viewers…(dare I say, Dynamos?)…!

This is an email from a company, but do you mind if I switch to the first person for a minute?

As you might have guessed, the person who writes this note for now is me, Nicholas (Nich? Nick? Nic?) – Dynamo’s CEO, editor-in-chief, and very first production assistant. And I have something personal to say, which is: thank you!

You see, this week, we finally launched our first show on YouTube, “Business Explains The World.” We did this 9 months and 5 days after I incorporated this company, and I couldn’t have gotten to today without the help, support, and encouragement of whole a lot of people, many of whom were the earliest subscribers to this list. Just accepting this note into your email is a little act of kindness that boosted us along. I just want to look right at you in the eyes and say thank you. Thank you!

Now on to the show!

Our first episode is about Stradivarius violins. They can cost more than $20 million — a 46,000% markup over a high-end modern instrument. But research shows that it’s very difficult to tell when one is being played. And professional musicians don’t always prefer them.

So why are they so valuable? One of our hosts, Nora Ali, decided to find out and pitched a story. The story mattered a lot to Nora because she herself is a violinist — a talented one, even. And she wondered: If Stradivarius violins are so costly, how much is her own 200-year-old violin worth?

Our second episode is about how America, and it's trucking industry, is being held back by a regulation keeping our semi-trucks so…small.

If you're ever a highway driver who's gotten nervous passing or being passed by one of these things, that may surprise you.

But over in Finland, they've managed to make their trucks twice as long – and safer in the process. The extra size makes the trucking more efficient, which is good for driving down the price of goods and better for the environment.

I know all this because of the genius work our host in this episode, Christopher Clarke. His research and sense-making is only surpassed by his incredible communication skills. He's one hell of a performer and we are so thrilled he's such a big part of this show.

(Oops I switched back to first person.)

We also made short videos this week…

• Would you use a gold ATM?

• Every year, about 15,000 bikes are fished out of Amsterdam’s canals. Why so many? And where do they all go?

• The next time you're flying over South Florida, you might look down and see something eerie—roads leading nowhere, empty plots marking the ghostly remnants of a town that never materialized. What gives?

That’s it for this week. More episodes and shorts are coming next week, and we simply cannot wait to tell you about them. But we have to. So bye for now!