2021 Year In Review

Here are the 12 favorite things we shared in 2021 in The Volume, our monthly collection of things worth reading.

Not-so-serious facts

01
Watch this totally amazing 60-second riff on the em dash. (Also: when you definitely understand NFTs).

02
Mr. Goxx is a cryptocurrency-trading hamster was, at one point, doing better than Warren Buffett and the S&P 500.

03
Scientists infected five million mosquito eggs with a bacteria and released their eggs in a city in Indonesia. This led to a 77% reduction in cases of dengue fever.

04
Whales can eat the equivalent of 80,000 Big Macs per day, 20 to 50 million calories, and, yes this does relate to impact measurement.

05
Lettuce misters at the supermarket don’t just make salad look pretty, they’re costing you a pretty penny by increasing weight (and price)!

06
Type P-R-I-D-E (one letter per cell, horizontally) in a Google Sheet and see what magic happens.

For the more serious folks, we got you too

07
Would the world be better off without ESG investingA 2020 study by Barclays makes that seem pretty compelling.

08
Only one-third of Kenyan farmers increased their use of digital tools during COVID-19, while one-third reduced their use. Maybe ag tech isn’t a silver bullet—yet.

09
20 Underrated Qualities to look for in job applicants, and how to spot them (from First Round Review). Plus, Sasha’s take on what this means for building great teams.

10
Why the design and rollout of $734 billion in PPP loans in the U.S. hurt Black- and minority-owned businesses and how CDFIs helped mitigate this risk.

11
The difference between problems and dilemmas, and why looking for ‘solutions’ only works for one of them.

12
Female economists are treated differently than their male colleagues when they present their research: on average, they receive 3.3 more questions than men.

What we wrote

In This is Not an Impact Performance, we called for much higher standards for “impact performance” reports.

In Listening During COVID-19: A Year in Review, we shared insights about the lived experience of the pandemic from over 50,000 people across 32 countries.

In 8 Things We Learned From Kenyan Farmers During COVID-19, we heard from 500 Kenyan farmers each month over the course of 12 months, and we shared how supply chain disruptions and government lockdowns affected livelihoods.

Our Network of Researchers

60 Decibels Research Assistants make it possible for us to listen to end-customers anywhere. These individuals are at the heart of our methodology. To learn more about how you can benefit from this network, check out 60dB Research Services.

Thank you!
Thank you to our clients, companies, respondents, board members, investors, researchers and all the thought partners in between for being a part of our 2021. You make us better!

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