Howard Gray

You're tuned in to Groove Theory - a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? Subscribe.I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of Wavetable.Currently: making a 90s plat

"I look at you these days, String, you know what I see? I see a man without a country. Not hard enough for this right here and maybe, just maybe, not smart enough for them out there."That's Avon Barksdale talking to his partner-in-crime Stringer Bell in T

"Teaching is the best way to learn something." I believed that for a while. Now I'm not so sure.When we think of teaching we think of the delivery - showing up and, well, teaching.The delivery isn't much of it at all.The design is where the learning is.Th

If you could add one subject to every curriculum - five-year-olds through to chief executives - what would it be?Prompting LLMs? Climate science? Nutrition?Mine would be questions.It takes empathy and precision. The microscope to see the detail, the teles

There are two people on a nightclub door and neither is on your side. The picker decides whether you get in. The bouncer decides whether you stay.As a combination, it's terrifying.Which is why the guy on the gate in Ridgewood, Queens threw me completely.A

If your feedback would fit anyone, it's a fortune cookie."You showed good judgement here" fits everybody.That's one of six rules. Fer, our Experience Design lead, spent a few weeks in the research on feedback - what changes behaviour, what just makes peop

Run-DMC's road manager used to leave the arena when they played Walk This Way. Walked out, every night, while the record was climbing the charts.The group weren't much keener. When Rick Rubin played them the Aerosmith track in 1986 and suggested a hip-hop

You're tuned in to Groove Theory - a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? Subscribe.I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of Wavetable.Currently: in a village in n

I've been asking people a question that reliably makes them uncomfortable.When someone introduces me to a new contact, I ask them why they thought of me.It sounds like fishing for a compliment, and I'll admit there's a tiny bit of that in it. But it isn't

A professor told me her students weren't bringing evidence to their arguments. When they did bring it, they hadn't looked properly. And when they had looked, they hadn't checked whether what they'd found held up.Three separate problems. We've built a game