This is a weekly newsletter about the art and science of building and investing in tech companies. To receive Investing 101 in your inbox each week, subscribe here: I often feel there are some movies that don't have enough cultural impact on society. I remember watching Big Hero 6 in 2016 and thinking its portrayal of passion around STEM education should be shown to every kid. I remember watching In Time in 2011, and feeling like there should be a bigger conversation about what happens when we cure all diseases?

Today in Unseen St. Louis I’m going to talk about a shopping mall. Now hold up, don’t click away. The rise and fall — and hopefully, rebirth — of Crestwood Plaza in St. Louis County tells a fascinating story repeated over and over across America. Before the 1950s, people didn’t go to shopping centers or malls. Depending on where they lived, they headed downtown or to the town square, shopping at what we might call small boutique stores and later, department stores.

Happy “Love and Thunder” eve to you and yours. Wanted to send a season’s greetings this week even though things are rather insane here at Beard Missives HQ, AKA the world headquarters of Golgonooza Inc. (my S-corp named for William Blake’s city of art and imagination, because that’s how much of a nerd I am), AKA my home full of comics and toy hammers in the wilds of Kansas. I feel like for weeks now every time I’ve looked at any sort of flat surface, I’ve seen an add for THOR LOVE AND THUNDER plastered across it.

tw: discussion of toxic relationships immediately after i turned eighteen, i started going on a lot of dates with men in their early-to-mid-twenties. this is one of those things that doesn't seem like a big deal when you're eighteen but the second you become not-eighteen you’re like what the fuck!!! the distance between eighteen and everything else is perilous and insurmountable, but nobody tells you that until you’re twenty.

[WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD.] Last year the trailer for Alex Garland’s Civil War was so disturbing that it inspired the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World to write about it: I saw Civil War last weekend, and you can hear some of my thoughts about it on this episode of Space the Nation with Ana Marie Cox (who loved the film so much she has started her own Substack about it).