Celebration of Voices 2-12-2025

Some of My Favorite Substacks

Welcome to my friends hird edition of Celebration of Voices where bi-monthly present a three well curated Substack publications. If you missed my first edition, you can catch up here: Celebration of Voices

In the heart of our pages here on Substack, stories unfold! So here in my journal, where voices are bold!

Every other week I gather writers, for their worlds to be explored. Both emerging talents and familiar seasoned names I embrace, whose tales enchant us and thoughts unlock a doorway to the treasures of possibilities. Literature’s magic is found everywhere, and I’m proud and honored to present to you this week Conspiracy Sarah, Amrita Roy and Uttam Dey, and Christopher Cook

Grab a cozy spot, a cup of your favorite drink, and get ready to dive into the literary treasures I present for you this week! I can’t wait to share their incredible voices with you. Let’s explore the magic of words together

Conspiracy Sarah

“I guess I’m still just Conspiracy Sarah…despite copious evidence that my tin foil hat was actually a super hot, undiscovered fashion icon. This substack is my personal tribute to the dying art of thinking…” Conspiracy Sarah

Originating from a family of doctors and other health professionals, Sarah took a detour from a career in medicine to follow her creative side and study dance. I relate to her because I majored in dance and we have that in common. Mostly what I admire about reading Sarah’s work is her authenticity and passion for truth, and love for humanity knowing what’s true. Because in her words, “And I am feeling all done with keeping my mouth shut.” Her obsession with authenticity has inspired her to research through reading, observing, noting and organizing that information. Conspiracy Sarah thinks. and encourages her followers to use their minds. Think critically, and don’t believe mainstream media without question.

Amrita Roy and Uttam Dey

We are Amrita and Uttam (yes, we are married💍), the authors behind The Pragmatic Optimist.

Both of us come from a technology background, where we worked for several years in San Francisco, Bay Area. While Uttam worked in product roles at Big Tech companies such as Apple and Google, I worked in go-to-market strategy roles at enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service) startups such as Tradeshift and Taulia (bought over by SAP).

Both of us took a deep interest in stocks and investing during those years (cough: Robinhood generation😉), but it was not until 2021 that we made a hard career pivot.

Ray Dalio was responsible for it. Well, not directly. But his book, “The Principles of Dealing with a Changing World Order” was.

It was at that moment that we decided to embark on a quest to study and disentangle how the world’s financial markets and economies work and use the insights to discover and invest in companies that sit at the intersection of key technological and cultural waves.

Less than two years later, The Pragmatic Optimist was born. In 2024, we also started actively contributing to Seeking Alpha (as individual authors), where both of us were featured in the Top Analysts in Technology, Software, and Internet.

Therefore, as we solidify our credibility in the world of finance and investments, we believe that it makes the most sense to build a tight synergy between our work on both platforms, which is where The Pragmatic Optimist 2.0 comes in.

Christopher Cook

My early adult life was punctuated by a series of revelations of just how monstrously wrong the ideology of the left is.

The first time it happened, I was 17 years old. I was wearing a t-shirt with a beautiful pen-and-ink drawing of a rattlesnake on it, which my older brother had sent from his home near the Grand Canyon. Not a Gadsden Flag—just a normal snake in its natural habitat.

Riding the bus on my way to work (at a left-wing canvassing organization), I noticed two different people looking at the shirt and scowling. When I arrived, I related this strange experience to my co-workers. Their explanation boiled down to this:

Well of course—your shirt is phallocentric and misogynistic.

There had been hints before, but this was the first time I knew something was wrong. My shirt wasn’t an attack on women or a symbol of the patriarchy. It was just a snake.

That was just the first of a lifetime of revelations.

After I left the left, I traveled to some strange places during a short deconstructive phase. Then, while writing my book The Freedom Scale, I took a deep dive into the classical-liberal principlesundergirding the ideology of the right. This undertaking wrought a profound change in me. Ultimately, through reasoning and research, I realized that all governments are a moral problem. I know “anarchism” is a scary word, but if you stick around, I believe I can convince you to consider some new ideas.