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Inside Spirit's April 2014 Issue

JayHeinrichs
Adventurer B
SpiritThe coolest thing about working with the inflight magazine for Southwest, believe it or not, isn’t the travel. Well, okay, it’s the travel.  But the second coolest thing, for me, is getting to meet smart, curious people and to collaborate on meaningful stories.  One of those people is Warren Burger. A mutual friend introduced us a while back, because Warren was working on a really interesting book titled A More Beautiful Question.  He had spent a couple interviewing some of the most creative, successful people, asking them not what they knew…but what they asked. Warren found that the people who come up with the greatest innovations basically ask the same three questions: Why? What if? How? This month’s cover story came out of a conversation Warren and I had about that book. Van Phillips lost his leg in a freak waterskiing accident, and he went on to invent the curved foot you see amputees use for running.  Van Phillips asked those three big questions. And you can, too. As for the travel, this month’s Adventure is in Santa Fe, a town I once lived in, so I’m prejudiced.  But if you haven’t been there, put it on your bucket list.  Right now. For this month’s Numbers I’ll give you just one because it’s more than enough. Shakespeare invented more than 1,600 English words, including bandit, laughable, and zany.  I dare you to invent one or two of your own: ask why there isn’t a single word for some phenomenon—like, say, taking a picture out of an airplane window.  Then ask, what if you could combine two words to make one?  How would you do that?  I would combine, um, selfie and plane and get planie. Hey, try and do better.