Episoder
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Rob Henderson is one of my favorite up-and-coming writers. I like him because he's one of those people who doesn't fit into a category. He's a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, but I met him in a book club about technological stagnation. He's spent years in the academy, first at Yale and now at Cambridge, but most of his influence comes from his online writing.
Most of all, he's interested in human nature. In particular, psychology, status, and social class. Those interests come from his background. During his childhood, he bounced around between foster homes in California. After working as a busboy, a dishwasher, and a supermarket bagger, he joined the Air Force at the age of 17. After his enlistment, he ended up at Yale and now, Cambridge. Please enjoy my conversation with Rob Henderson.
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This week, I have two guests. Both are affiliated with Synthesis, a new kind of online school where kids learn through games and simulations. One is Chrisman Frank, the CEO of Synthesis. The other is Ana Lorena Fabrega, who is their Chief Evangelist.
Here's the backstory: A few years ago, Elon Musk asked the co-founder to start an experimental school with him at Space X. The goal was to develop students who are enthralled by complexity and solving for the unknown. Synthesis was the most innovative learning experience from that school and spun off into its own company. In full transparency, I'm an investor.
This episode presents a vision for the future of childhood education, enabled by the Internet. Please enjoy my conversation with Ana Lorena Fabrega and Chrisman Frank.
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Mangler du episoder?
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Ash Fontana is an entrepreneur, investor, and author. As an entrepreneur, he was only of the early employees at an online investing platform called AngelList. From there, he became the Managing Director at Zetta, the first investment fund focused on artificial intelligence. Now, he's the author of the AI-First Company.
This conversation is about that book. Ash says that AI-First companies are the only trillion-dollar companies, and soon they will dominate even more industries, more definitively than ever before. But we don't just talk about the book. We also talk about health, continental philosophy, and Ash's obsession with bicycling. Please enjoy my conversation with Ash Fontana.
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My guest today is Li Jin, the founder and managing partner at an early-stage venture capital firm called Atelier.
She's known for her extensive writings about the Passion Economy.
Her essays explore how people can make a living from their passions and creative skills.
All of her writing is filtered through the lens of consumer startups and the technology industry.
In this episode, we explore Li's perspective on the future of the creator economy.
We talk about what it'll take to build a middle class for creators and how platforms should enable creator monetization.
But then we venture beyond the world of work and discuss the novels of Jane Austen, what Li learned by growing up in Pittsburgh, and why she thinks social media and content creation are valuable pursuits.
Please enjoy my conversation with Li Jin.
Show Notes:
2:37 - How do content creators get users to migrate platforms and engage in unfamiliar apps?5:44 - Why is some digital content more consumable than others?
13:07 - What is the driving force behind Li’s background in English literature?
17:34 - Why Jane Austen is so incredibly important to the world of modern creatives
21:56 - What has contributed to the alienation of gig workers in modern economy?
24:57 - Where does Li Jin’s technological optimism stem from?
28:32 - What is an “Angel Investor”, and how do they influence the modern world of content creation?
32:55 - What is the difference between an artist and a creator?
37:44 - How has the modern market created space for content creators?
42:19 - What causes creative burnout in the world of content creators?
50:01 - What are the implications of viral fame in the modern world of content creators?
57:46 - Which aspects of traditional and non-traditional education were most impactful on Li Jin?
1:08:55 - What are some things that both successful and aspiring content creators often misunderstand about the industry
1:14:20 - What are some of the parallels between the worlds of writing and investing?
1:18:08 - How Li Jin embodies the spirit of a malleable fate
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My guest today is Zena Hitz, a tutor at St John’s and the author of an excellent book called Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Her book explores the meaning and the value of learning for its own sake, through images and stories of bookworms, philosophers, scientists, and other learners, both fictional and historical.
That’s the jumping-off point for this episode. We also talked about the relationship between religion and the Liberal Arts, why studying the Liberal Arts has become so unfashionable among average people, and how an essay about Oedipus Rex inspired her to become an intellectual.
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Show Notes
1:37 - What about Oedipus Rex grabbed Zena's attention and inspired her to pursue intellectualism.
7:05 - What Zena sees as a "good" question in an intellectual frame, and why good materials can get you to them more easily.
9:55 - Why the most profound questions won't show up at the beginning of your inquiry, and how the common person's depth of inquiry has seemed to dwindle since the past.
13:19 - How Zena maintains her attention reading books when it is so easy to be distracted.
17:00 - Why it is decadent, complacent, and undermining to ourselves and our community to pursue education only in what will get us work.
23:53 - How people pursued lifelong learning in the past and why it's even more viable of an option today.
28:07 - What Zena hopes to give to the world at large through her work.
33:51 - How the monumental shifts in wealth and inequality have hindered people's ability to contemplate ideas they deem important.
36:20 - The differences in solitary and communal efforts to contemplate intellectual topics.
39:40 - Why we shouldn't be consuming books, but rather engaging directly with them.
44:03 - Why Zena believes that the idea of a patriarchal or caucasian canon is a myth.
49:02 - How education is a means of training your mind while simultaneously freeing it.
53:04 - The affinity between the liberal arts and religion.
55:11 - Where Zena learned how to write and why she has trouble writing if she doesn't have an audience.
58:42 - How to use writing to improve your thinking.
1:01:30 - Why St. John's has deliberately set itself apart from research universities.
1:05:33 - The crisis in Zena's life that kicked off her political thinking and essays, and why she believes that our current institutions are becoming increasingly disconnected from our humanity.
1:13:23 - What brought Zena to religion when there is a historic amount of people leaving it.
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I have two guests today: Tiago Forte and Will Mannon.
Tiago is my business partner and the creator of an online course called Building a Second Brain. The two of us record a podcast like this every year to reflect on what we’ve learned about the online education industry. And this time, we invited our Director of Student Experience: Will Mannon.
Will oversees all aspects of the student experience with the exception of curriculum design. He’s at the frontier of thinking about live online learning, from how assignments should be delivered to how live sessions should be structured.
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Show Notes
3:21 - Why hiring your first employee is one of the most important steps you'll take in your business.
5:38 - How sharing a workforce and resources with another business or entrepreneur can help fast-track personal and professional growth.
11:00 - How running an online course is like organizing a music tour.
13:30 - The role of the alumni mentors in Tiago's courses, and how they have changed from his first to his most recent cohort.
17:16 - What different mentors can bring to the table and why the differences between them all brings strength to the program.
21:03 - Why giving as many people as possible the ability to lead allows much more effective learning for everyone.
25:04 - The nature of burnout and why creatives are so prone to experiencing it.
31:04 - Discovering the right size for a cohort and how to scale effectively.
37:13 - How to help students find each other and make meaningful and lifelong connections with each other.
40:28 - The "beer mode" and "coffee mode" of productivity.
44:32 - How to increase your focus by never giving yourself enough time.
51:02 - Why David and Will organize Write of Passage to have attendees "come for the ideas and stay for the people".
56:23 - Why running a course should be about empowering leadership in students, not in building dependence on the teacher.
1:02:33 - Why the element of shock is so fundamental to deep learning.
1:06:43 - How friendship can come so readily out of hardship and pain.
1:11:33 - The unusual growth of David and Tiago's online brand this year and what sparked it.
1:14:45 - Why writing a book summary for Tiago is so integral in internalizing the information and the message contained within it.
1:24:22 - What hands-on education and perseverance in the face of extreme difficulty can teach us that traditional education never can.
1:32:30 - What we can learn about education from businesses and markets outside of the educational sphere.
1:36:33 - Why success in a new business should not be focusing on competition, but on radical differentiation.
1:39:23 - The importance of finding your community online and curating it to inspire and inform you.
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My guest today is Gagan Biyani, the current CEO of an education startup (where I’m both an investor and an advisor) that helps teachers run Cohort-Based Courses on the Internet and has students from around the world. Gagan also founded a multi-billion dollar online education platform called Udemy. Afterward, he founded Sprig, a food delivery platform that grew to a nine-digit valuation but eventually failed. So today, he has the distinct pleasure of being both the founder of a unicorn and the founder of a massive failure.
In this conversation, we talk about what he’s learned playing the Silicon Valley startup game. Then, we talk about our visions for the future of the online education industry, and how he's learned so much about cooking and restaurant operations. Please enjoy my conversation with Gagan Biyani.
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Show Notes
2:11 - How Gagan comes up with and develops his startup ideas.
7:38 - Why Gagan believes that the market is the best thing we have, but that it is still deeply random and flawed.
10:14 - The lessons we should be learning from Silicon Valley and what people in Silicon Valley need to learn themselves.
14:51 - The dogma and necessities of startups that Gagan has seen in Silicon Valley that are proven to be untrue.
21:17 - How the duality of total rationalization and going with your guy fits together.
25:18 - How the "soul" plays into optimizing our lives and why Gagan sees the future of human connection.
30:50 - What inspired Gagan to become fascinated and so knowledgeable about food.
35:58 - What changes when making food at scale and why recipes don't multiply easily.
43:01 - What Gagan looks for in determining whether a restaurant is worth going to.
47:41 - How lifelong learning changes the way you see the world.
52:22 - Why the way a company does one thing will show you how it does everything.
56:17 - Why knowledge should be something that is shared, not something that pushes people away.
1:02:54 - How the classical cohort-based learning model has evolved on the internet.
1:09:35 - How colleges and traditional institutions are adapting to the new learning paradigm.
1:11:03 - What Gagan envisions in an ideal future-thinking educational company.
1:22:45 - How cohort-based courses can be improved and where Gagan saw these flaws in his own and in other courses.
1:26:17 - What in Gagan's early life made him so driven and motivated to do what he wanted to do.
1:36:51 - Gagan's trip to the Amazon, and what he learned from the indigenous tribes that he visited.
1:43:01 - The infantilization of different ways of life, and why it is a more ethically dense topic than people realize.
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My guest today is Trevor Bauer, who is arguably the very best pitcher in Major League Baseball. In 2020, he had the lowest Earned Run Average of any pitcher and won the National League Cy Young Award, which goes to the top pitcher in the game. I wanted to interview Trevor not only because he's an excellent pitcher, but because he takes a radical approach to the game. He's a physicist and a scientist. A scholar and an entrepreneur. And you don't find that combination very often. Furthermore, he might be the most polarizing figure in baseball. Some people love him; some people hate him. But every fan has an opinion on him. Off the field, he's the founder of Momentum, athlete-driven media company that uses storytelling to connect athletes and fans. To build it, he started a podcast and a YouTube vlog where he talks about pitching mechanics and what it's like to play professional baseball.
Personally, this was one of the coolest episodes I've ever recorded. I grew up as an avid San Francisco Giants fan, and I still remember getting to the field early to get autographs and catch baseballs during batting practice. This interview would have made little 8-year old David proud, and I'm lucky to share it with you today. Please enjoy my conversation with Trevor Bauer.
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Show Notes
2:18 - How Trevor would change the way baseball is marketed and to whom it should be pitched.
5:45 - Why updating the game for a modern audience would be difficult, despite what Trevor believes would be a successful move.
11:23 - Why there aren't many unique fields like in San Francisco or Boston.
15:10 - How baseball is not being evangelized well by the people who could be doing it most easily.
19:51 - How general scientific literacy can and should be improved through sports.
23:28 - What it takes for Trevor to scientifically design his pitches and then implement them in a game.
31:00 - The business of baseball, and how Trevor has learned to maneuver its quirks and difficulties.
37:13 - If could choose anybody, who else in the sports world and beyond Trevor would want to talk to.
42:15 - How Trevor looks into the future to superpower his game.
48:07 - The dangers of getting too in-depth in analyzing your game, and how it can hurt you.
54:43 - Why you should practice analytically and perform intuitively.
56:13 - What breathing techniques Trevor employs in his game.
58:18 - The different aspects of building a business and how Trevor is handling each element differently.
1:07:30 - Why Trevor's actual goals in his work and his game aren't covered by the media.
1:10:44 - How his father helped Trevor succeed in baseball by giving him the tools he needed to work hard.
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My guest today is Nik Sharma, the founder of Sharma Brands and an advisor to companies like Judy and Cha Cha Matcha. Nik is one of my very best friends and my go-to person for all things commerce. Since we first met, we've spent hours exploring the future of marketing and commerce together and recorded this podcast to give you a window into what our conversations are like.
We started with Nik's philosophy of launching Direct-to-Consumer brands. I particularly liked Nik's idea of "The Brag Bar" on landing pages, where you can use social proof to sell your products. We also spoke about managing relationships with influencers and finding the supply and demand equilibrium at launch. Towards the end, Nik and I talked about our process for turning conversations into articles, and the time he cold emailed Mark Cuban. Please enjoy my conversation with Nik Sharma.
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Show Notes
2:21 - Why Nik has the "world's craziest fridge" and how it helps keep him in the know on DTC brands.
6:29 - What marketing strategies Nik has found most successful for DTC brands.
13:31 - How brands can differentiate themselves in a world of emerging brands in already burgeoning markets.
19:25 - Nik's approach to launching a successful DTC brand and when to concentrate your advertising versus diversify.
30:19 - The role of A/B testing in building a brand.
35:43 - How influencers play into the big picture of marketing and why the "shaky video" effect is so successful.
42:12 - The selection and audition process of influencers in Nik's campaigns and how he chooses those he sees as the best for his brands.
45:52 - The costs and benefits of starting your brand through heavy promotion via influencers.
49:56 - How the process of rebranding Hint Water's bottle was performed and the qualitative process that got them to the bottle you see today.
57:27 - The metrics and methods Nik uses in his development of marketing strategies with his brands.
1:05:19 - What Nik looks for in a great landing page, and why all landing pages should be easy to read for everybody from a 12-year-old to a drunk person.
1:10:07 - What UGC is and why Nik thinks it is so underrated by marketing teams.
1:13:31 - The different marketing funnels and when you should use each one.
1:17:09 - Why Nik creates landing pages for fake products and makes them live on the internet.
1:22:56 - The importance of having great merch for your brand.
1:26:22 - What about internet culture makes collaborations so successful and popular.
1:34:05 - How somebody can convert a large personal following into sponsorships and meaningful collaborations.
1:35:46 - How new brands should position themselves when huge players like Amazon are in the same space.
1:44:01 - What happened when Nik cold emailed Mark Cuban and how he got an almost instant response.
1:50:46 - How David and Nik collaborate to develop, write, and publish the articles they make.
1:56:14 - Why Nik doesn't sweat the details of his personal brand that much.
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My guest today is Kevin Kelly, who co-founded Wired Magazine in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for the first seven years. As one of the most important futurists of our generation, he's published a number of books including The Inevitable, What Technology Wants, and New Rules for the New Economy which is my favorite one. Coolest of all, he's also a founding member of the board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit devoted to encouraging long-term thinking.
We discussed the Long Now Foundation at the end of this episode in a conversation about what it means to be a good ancestor for future generations. A couple of things stood out from this conversation. First, I like how Kevin focuses on clarity above all else whenever he writes. He sees himself as a great editor, and writing is the process by which he discovers what he's thinking. Second, we build off the ideas of Marshall McLuhan who was the founding saint of Wired Magazine. Through McLuhan, we explored Kevin's Christianity, how screens are shaping consciousness, and how our technologies have a gravitational life of their own. Please enjoy my conversation with Kevin Kelly.
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Show Notes
2:22 - Exotropic energy and how Kevin uses it to explain the negative entropy we see throughout the universe.
6:24 - Why California has become the world hub of extropy.
10:33 - The transition from the written word to text and screens and how it affects our psyche.
15:27 - What made Marshall McLuhan's writing so paradoxical and engaging.
18:34 - How science fiction has usurped religious teachings as the modern leader of theological thought.
24:06 - Why our limitation as seeing the future only "through the rearview mirror" is driven by a disease Kevin calls "thinkism".
31:25 - How the Amish have utilized an evidence-based method in their adoption of new technologies.
44:46 - Why technology that we create will always be weaponized in the end.
49:01 - Why Kevin believes that the evidence shows the increase of accessibility of and power in technology has not correlated with our ability to harm.
53:15 - How moral progress is a natural byproduct of technological progress.
57:26 - Why Kevin sees a fundamental transformation in how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is thought about and utilized in people's lives.
1:05:25 - Why Kevin's futurology is much closer to simply noticing the present that it is divination.
1:15:20 - How moving away from improving everything's efficiency is against the very things we desire as humans.
1:23:35 - Why writing for Kevin is nothing but a means to an end to discovering his thoughts.
1:29:43 - How thinking with 'the long now' can help us become better ancestors and leave a better world for the future.
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Will Ahmed is the Founder and CEO of WHOOP, which has developed next-generation wearable technology for optimizing human performance and health. I found him through an excellent interview he hosted with Rory McIlroy, a winner of four major championships who was once the #1 golfer in the world. Then, once we started talking, he told me about the group chats he shares with other top golfers like Justin Thomas.
The man is obsessed with health technology like nobody I’ve ever come across, so conversation topics range from the business of wearables, to the challenges of tracking accurate data. Then, he shared his philosophy for why sleep and recovery are a more important data point for an athlete than exercise and stress. My favorite part of the interview was hearing about Will’s philosophy of management, and why he tries to hire people who have high intensity and high humility. Please enjoy my conversation with WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed.
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Show Notes
2:15 - What data Will wishes he could magically track for his users and why it could drastically improve their health.
6:30 - How breathing exercises, mindfulness, and meditations help your heart rate.
11:05 - Why WHOOP has found so much success in helping golfers and baseball players over other sports.
13:20 - What Will remembers as his favorite conversations with athletes.
16:24 - Why it's so hard to capture accurate sleep cycle data.
20:43 - Why teams on average get less sleep at an away game than at a home game.
23:38 - The limits of what can or can't and what should or shouldn't be tracked.
26:38 - How WHOOP separates itself from the larger players in the health market.
31:08 - Why Will believes strongly that the branding of WHOOP products aids in developing a person's own brand.
34:30 - Why not developing your own hardware to go with your software can be detrimental to your overall design.
41:41 - The future of informed coaching using WHOOP and their membership services team.
43:19 - Why WHOOP started out as a brand-focused company, and why it was so important to go about it this way.
45:38 - What it was like playing Augusta National.
49:00 - How to know when to operate analytically versus intuitively.
56:43 - The key to being different, and why you should always be asking your customers what their problems are, not what their solutions are.
1:01:16 - What piece of advice that Will would give his younger self in the past.
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My guest today is Seth Godin, the author of nineteen international bestsellers that have been translated into more than 35 languages. My all-time favorite is Purple Cow, which I discovered in college and became my nickname. This is my second interview with Seth, who has published an article every day now for more than a decade. If you want to be a prolific creator, Seth is one of the best teachers you can possibly find.
This interview is all about his writing practice. Seth calls himself a “professional noticer” so we talked about how he finds and validates new ideas. On the topic of shipping creative work, we spoke about the root of imposter syndrome and why Seth likes writing on airplanes, and how his book The Practice was inspired by one of his workshops. We also discussed his tactics for effective public speaking, how to improve the education system, and what we've learned by running online schools — his AltMBA and my Write of Passage.
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Show Notes
2:32 - What inspired Seth to start his now 20+ year daily writing streak.
6:00 - The root of impostor syndrome and why Seth thinks it's not only normal but just true.
8:14 - The evolution of an idea or a blog post into a full book.
10:50 - Why it is important to ship as a creative worker and what it means to ship your content.
13:50 - Why certain conditions make it easier for people to create than others.
16:59 - What Seth learned about creating inspiration from hard science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.
20:22 - How Seth developed his unique video style and the unique way he utilizes his slides.
23:25 - What the best future of education looks like to Seth and why he believes in the dream of public schooling.
29:48 - Why the standard lecture model of the current education system is missing the point of education.
33:53 - The difference between online education and online learning and why Seth sees them as almost polar opposites.
39:35 - Why there must be space for surprises in online learning.
41:31 - How capitalism has caused certain schools to flourish less through their educational prowess and more as a pipeline to various jobs.
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My guest today is Dave Nemetz, the Founder of Bleacher Report, which was one of my favorite media companies as a kid. During his time there, Dave oversaw video, business development, and business operations. He helped grow the audience to more than 40 million monthly unique visitors before selling the company to Turner Broadcasting in 2012. Today, he is the Founder of Inverse and the Executive Vice President of Bustle Digital Group where he leads growth and business strategy for Inverse, Input, and Mic.
The conversation topics in this episode fall into three buckets: personal principles, business principles, and the state of the world. We spoke about what it's like to lead your company through a merger, why you can think of media businesses like a supply & demand equation, and one of Dave's favorite quotes from Hunter S. Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” My favorite part of the interview was hearing about a band called Phish, which Dave has seen in concert more than 200 times. That section kickstarted a whole conversation about the brand-building tradeoff between being welcoming to new fans and serving die-hard fans.
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Show Notes
2:31 - What inspired David to get started on the Bleacher Report and why he was drawn to it as a project.
6:24 - Why the desire for a different kind of sports coverage took so long to take off and why other companies didn't get into it earlier.
9:06 - Why sites like Bleacher Report find their niche, even with an abundance of content being created all of the time.
12:46 - The implicit versus the explicit side of finding your niche and exploiting it in the market.
15:14 - What David has learned about building a brand and serving your customers from his favorite band, Phish.
20:12 - How businesses can both serve their die-hard fans and not neglect their newcomers.
27:05 - The arrival fallacy and why selling Bleacher Report to Turner wasn't as exciting as it may have looked on the outside.
31:36 - Why David believes that a fervent drive and passion to achieve goals is a double-edged sword.
34:26 - What most people don't know about managing a business during a buyout or a merger and why it was so difficult for David to handle.
42:54 - How the world of advertising in the early 2000s hadn't seemed to change much from the era of "Mad Men".
52:38 - Why the "the geeks won" and why David is super happy about it.
57:13 - How David has oriented his recruitment and retention strategy in his media brands.
1:05:43 - What the "career elevator" is and why David was determined to create it for himself.
1:10:29 - Some of David's favorite quotes, and why one of his core philosophies is to "enjoy your sandwich".
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Newsweek Magazine once called Rabbi Wolpe the most influential rabbi in America. He is the Senior Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and he's the author of eight books including one about King David and another gem called Why Be Jewish? I don't remember the last time I enjoyed preparing for an interview so much. I'm named after King David, but until this interview, I hadn't explored the history of my name in more than a decade.
This interview touches on various parts of Judaism including how rabbis should interpret the Bible, what we can learn from King David, and how Judaism anchors us when a loved one dies. There were two parts that I'll always remember. The first was a discussion about the concept of aloneness in Judaism. On one hand, the book of Deuteronomy says: “It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that I have set my heart upon you and treasured you—indeed, you are the fewest.” On the other, community is everywhere in Jewish life and the first thing God called not good in the Bible is loneliness — “It is not good for the man to be alone (Gen 2:18).” Secondly, I enjoyed our conversation about repentance in the Jewish faith and how you must repent after a loved one dies but also have to stop after 11 months. If this conversation interests you, I recommend his sermons on YouTube and the book I mentioned before called: Why Be Jewish?
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Show Notes
3:15 - How Jews have uniquely struggled with their identity and the way they present themselves.
5:56 - How the heroes of the Jewish culture have changed over time and what makes them heroic.
8:26 - What makes Judaism different from Christianity.
11:39 - The interpretation of the Bible and how Judaism reconciles its eternal nature with the changing interpretations over time.
14:43 - The most meaningful traditions in Jewish people's lives and why Rabbi Wolpe sees the Jewish mourning rituals as some of the most powerful.
19:24 - Why many Jewish people converted to Buddhism in the Modern era.
22:11 - Why the decline of religious people throughout the world may indicate a decline in art being created.
25:52 - The power of a culture of togetherness and why Rabbi Wolpe believes that Judaism was unique in being welcomed to America with open arms.
29:02 - Yom Kippur and why Judaism uniquely holds a ritual of confession not only for each person's sin but also from the sins of the Jewish people.
31:01 - One of the biggest differences between classical Christianity and Judaism.
34:35 - What separated Maimonides from other prominent Jewish philosophers.
36:39 - What Heschel meant in that the collapsing of space is seen as the collapsing of time.
38:45 - Why we should always take care of our "big rocks" first before anything else.
44:56 - Why modern life and technology can cause people to lose touch with the transcendent and the world around us.
49:09 - Why Rabbi Wolpe feels that introducing children to religion at an early age is important to their understanding of it.
54:20 - The origin of the Jewish style of dry humor.
1:00:05 - What about King David drew Rabbi Wolpe to study him so deeply.
1:04:34 - Why it's impossible to change the age of a boy's transition into a man through a bar mitzvah.
1:07:01 - What it means to Rabbi Wolpe to be a Rabbi.
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My guest today is Joseph Henrich, a professor at Harvard and an expert on the evolution of human cooperation and culture. I am a big fan of his book, "The Secret of Our Success" and he just published a new one called the Weirdest People in the World about people who fall under the acronym WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Through his research, he explains culture's role in evolution. He shows how evolutionary theory can help us learn, innovate, and share knowledge.
We begin this episode by talking about the role big Gods play in cultural evolution. Then we talk about the time Joe spent living with small-scale societies in rural Peru and Fiji. He talks about how he learns the language, plans the trips, and assimilates into societies so he can study them. Towards the end of the podcast, we talk about what economists can learn from anthropologists and the evolution of attraction. My favorite part of the conversation was learning about the tradeoffs between having an open or closed society, and how those factors contribute to innovation. Please enjoy my conversation with Joseph Henrich.
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Show Notes
2:06 - How the role of God has evolved over time and why bigger and bigger Gods have become the norm.
4:50 - Why acting as a third party for people made Gods culturally and socially so much more important.
8:36 - Marriage across cultures and religions and why they diverge sometimes wildly from what Western culture considers "normal".
13:44 - Why many religious restrictions that created the Western norm of a nuclear family also set up the stage for heightened individualism.
16:58 - How and why social safety nets transitioned from kin-based institutions to the states and governments.
18:46 - What surprising similarities and differences Joe saw between Americans and the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon.
22:22 - The role of humor in enforcing social norms, why Joe thinks it is absolutely universal, and the other universal ways trust is built-in communities.
28:35 - How narcotics and psychedelics are utilized in different cultures and the way their roles differ.
31:20 - Why cultural imitation does not always yield positive outcomes.
33:11 - How the introduction of agriculture changed family relationships and culture.
39:36 - The biggest takeaways Joe got from Guns, Germs, and Steel.
43:28 - Why Joe believes that religion is innate in human beings.
50:31 - The possible implications of losing rituals that for millennia have brought families and clans closer together.
52:24 - What the clock and a universal time have done to human psychology.
1:01:16 - What the collective brain is and why it is so prevalent throughout creative booms in history.
1:04:55 - How the proliferation of information helps and hurts creativity, and why the internet hasn't had the impact people thought it would.
1:08:26 - How information is affected by biases and manipulation and why humans are so susceptible to them.
1:11:39 - How the technology, institutions, and tools we use affect the way that we think.
1:15:12 - Why learning disabilities should not be looked at as purely negative and the benefits that cognitive diversity brings to humanity.
1:19:00 - The way gossip in a society helps define the collective philosophy of its people.
1:21:07 - How imitative education is currently at its peak and what doors it opens for people around the world.
1:24:36 - Why rituals and multiple gods were so common in the past and are so uncommon now.
1:28:40 - How Jon would alter the current research practices in the social sciences on "WEIRD" people and why.
1:31:39 - Why certain assumptions about humans are actually specific to a region or population, and why they don't represent humanity as a whole.
1:35:10 - Why the top-down lecture model is not serving education as well as it should, and why it shouldn't be replaced completely by Youtube.
1:39:20 - The selective physical and cultural evolution of certain populations and why it happens the way it does.
1:42:12 - What Jon finds to be the most interesting elements of culture to study and why.
1:45:33 - Why Jon's aerospace engineering degree is so valuable in his anthropology career.
1:47:41 - The problem with focusing solely on models in research and studies.
1:53:20 - Why humanity seems to be stagnating in intelligence but rocketing upward in cultural development.
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My guest today is Grant Sanderson, the man behind one of the world's largest math-focused YouTube channels: 3blue1brown. He has more than 3 million subscribers and his videos have been watched more than 150 million times.
Before making videos he studied math and computer science at Stanford before working at Kahn academy. On YouTube, he brings a visuals-first approach to math. Every video starts with a narrative or storyline. Then it revolves around imagery that illuminates the beauty of mathematics. Topics for his videos include linear algebra, neural networks, calculus, the math of Bitcoin, and quantum mechanics.
This episode begins with a conversation about the culture of mathematics. We talk about ideas like prime numbers, the Twin Primes conjecture, and pop culture's role in advancing mathematics. Later in the episode, we talk about mathematical constants and the rate of progress in mathematics. Then, we close by talking about Grant's process for writing scripts, note-taking, and researching ideas for each episode.
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Show Notes
2:14 - Why everybody loves prime numbers so much and what makes them so special.
4:56 - What was initially so interesting about math for Grant and why he didn't end up going into a more formal researching role.
8:23 - Why Grant is getting increasingly more fed up with math that doesn't even try to be associated to reality.
11:36 - The usefulness of "useless" knowledge and why spending an afternoon solving a math puzzle is so satisfying.
18:42 - What is driving the accelerating progress of the entire field of math.
22:19 - How Gödel's famous theorem attacked the fundamental structure of math and changed the way mathematicians think about it.
27:31 - The unappreciated universality of math and why knowledge and interest in math by the public is higher than ever before.
31:49 - Why Grant believes that attention spans aren't getting shorter and why the evidence is so strong.
35:43 - The importance of the principles of symmetry and creating meaningful names in math.
40:58 - Why Grant believes that distraction is key to creative work.
44:33 - Brand-building and why Grant believes it is important for anybody looking to build trust in their products.
47:40 - What videos are the hardest for Grant to produce and why.
49:31 - Building the intuition of teaching through a non-interactive medium.
54:42 - What was most unexpected to Grant about working in the field of mathematics.
1:00:19 - Where Grant gets his video ideas and how his script-writing differs from video to video.
1:05:31 - How an idea evolves from sketches and drawings into a logical coherent video.
1:07:35 - How college education in math can be improved and why it can be unnecessarily hard for students in that program.
1:11:42 - The possible implications of the collision of mathematics and computing in pure math research.
1:14:32 - The story behind some of David's favorite quotes in Grant's videos.
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My guest today is Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness. The book collects and curates Naval's wisdom from Twitter, podcasts, and essays over the past decade. Naval is the founder of Angel List, an angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter and Uber, and the man behind one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world. He's known for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness.
This is a conversation about that book. We began the conversation talking about Multiply by Zero Effects, which comes from a short e-book Eric wrote called Career Advice for Uniquely Ambitious People. Then, we moved onto the Almanac. We talked about the differences between Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant, building specific knowledge, and how operating companies influenced Naval's philosophy of life. At the end, we also jammed on what Naval would say to the owners of Joe's Bar-B-Que, Eric's favorite restaurant in Kansas City.
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Show Notes
2:28 - Why Eric wrote his new book, and what he regrets not putting in it.
6:15 - What Eric thinks Charlie Munger and Naval Ravikant would disagree on most.
9:34 - Why people like Naval and Munger often give advice as the "Iron Prescription" to solve a problem or learn in a field.
12:13 - Why so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were on track to be an academic but then split off.
13:20 - What entrepreneurs can learn from how comedians develop their voice and leverage their following.
15:57 - What knowledge Naval has that is unique only to him in his field.
19:36 - How to maximize leverage and value as an entrepreneur and in your career.
23:26 - What defines a startup, and what Eric has learned from Nivi through his writings on VentureHacks.
25:37 - How Naval uses Twitter as a repository for his ideas and findings and as a forge to test them out.
31:22 - Naval's view of hard work and how it has changed over time.
34:40 - Why it took multiple rereadings of his book and years of observation and experience for Eric to start fully understanding Naval's idea of "productize yourself".
36:11 - What about Eric's own book did he start to resent by the end of creating it.
40:01 - How the message of the book changed as Eric was compressing and cutting the source material down.
43:10 - Why Eric could not have done this book without loving Naval's work as much as he does.
46:19 - What advice Naval would give to Eric's favorite restaurant, Joe's Barbecue.
48:45 - Why David has never forgotten Eric's comment on how "owning a home is a never-ending battle against water" and what he means when he says that.
50:20 - How writing this book gave Eric "more clarity, confidence, and peace through all aspects of life."
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Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. He's the author of The Psychology of Money, where he shares 19 stories about the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to manage it.
I revere Morgan's writing, and this episode was my chance to finally ask him about how he writes so well. We talk about why listening to loud music helps Morgan think, lessons from his favorite non-fiction writer, and why you should start stories at the moment when you're being eaten by a bear. We also talk about the rise of intangible assets in the economy, why the American economy shifted in the 1970s, and how investment strategies have changed over time.
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Show Notes
2:00 - How the economy is changing, and why the edge in technology is going up while the edge in finance is going down.
6:38 - How the rise of intangible assets is distorting our view of the economy.
9:58 - The benefit of being slightly underemployed and why perceived "leisure" is so important in Morgan's career.
14:12 - What differed between what Morgan thought he would do as a parent and what he actually does.
15:35 - How the 1970s and 1980s fundamentally shifted the economy and culture of America.
20:22 - The three most important factors in really understanding the economy and whether truth or coherence is more important for social stability.
24:35 - How Morgan gets away with almost no collection or organization in creating his work.
29:58 - Why writing for yourself as a way to better understand your gut feelings will always pay off.
31:46 - How and why Morgan searches for the obvious things nobody pays attention to.
34:00 - Why some colleges are here to stay and others are not going to last according to Morgan.
40:11 - The most important things about writing that Morgan has learned from former and current workplaces.
42:24 - The two articles that Morgan is most proud of writing.
45:46 - What it means that people spend more money on the lottery than movies, music, video games, sporting events, and books combined.
49:06 - Why there aren't enough good books about how to write well.
52:15 - A writer that Morgan wishes more people would read their work.
54:32 - How the Ben Affleck speech in Boiler Room inspired Morgan to work in finance.
56:10 - The most difficult part about writing his most recent book.
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My guest today is Claire Lehmann, the founder and editor-in-chief of Quillette, a for-profit online magazine that publishes essays on topics like politics, science, and academia. We started our conversation talking about Quilette's business model and the niche it occupies on the Internet. Then, we moved on to societal topics like the longevity of bureaucracies, the pros and cons of standardized tests, and what Claire would change about childhood education.
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Show Notes
1:31 - Why Claire believes being a for-profit instead of a non-profit gives her and her company more freedom.
5:32 - What Quillette has learned through publishing so many submitted articles over the years.
10:15 - The relationship between free speech and innovation.
13:12 - What we can learn from how Russia handled scientific experimentation and their lack of freedom to critique it.
15:08 - Why one of the biggest flaws Claire sees with higher education is that it seems necessary for people to go.
20:17 - How higher education is only creating academics and not lifelong students.
23:32 - Why organizations may have a lifecycle and how it plays into the problems that come with their extended growth.
29:45 - Why Claire believes literacy in subjects like psychology and statistics is massively underrated.
34:55 - What Enlightenment-era values are justly held in high regard, and which we may need to reconsider in the modern age.
40:54 - The historical reasons why intellectualism is not a strong value in Australia.
43:46 - What Claire has learned about childhood education through her time at Quillette, and why she believes younger children need to spend most of their time learning facts.
51:04 - Why standardized testing is beneficial for children from underprivileged families.
55:37 - What Claire believes to be her strengths in both her personal and business life.
58:12 - What about the book "The Custom And The Country" makes Claire love it so much.
1:01:42 - What it may mean for our brains as we possibly move into a "post-literate" society.
1:05:03 - Claire's favorite articles she's ever hosted on Quillette.
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My guest today is Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor and entrepreneur. When it comes to the future, he's the single most creative person I know because he's so technical, innovative, and polymathic. Talking to him is an experience unlike talking to anybody else, which I tried to replicate in this conversation.
A little bit about Balaji. He's worked as the Chief Technology Officer at Coinbase and a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. In the world of academia, he holds a BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering, all from Stanford University. He's also taught at Stanford, where his online course has reached 250,000 students worldwide.
This episode is a whirlwind through Balaji's interests. We started by talking about his production function. We talked about what holding all those degrees from Stanford taught him about learning, how he identifies talent, and what building and selling two companies for more than $100 million taught him about management. We also talked about his interests in genomics, how to reverse aging, and why living forever is the ultimate goal of technology. At the end, we built off the ideas I talk about in my online writing school called Write of Passage to talk about his plan to fund online writers with a project called MediaFund.
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Show Notes
2:42 - What Balaji learned about how to learn from his extended time in academia and why he doesn't read the instructions until he has to.
4:21 - Why knowing philosophy and history is so integral to starting a successful company.
6:54 - Why Balaji thinks we are severely underutilizing the collaborative potential of the internet.
12:45 - How remembering references to knowledge instead of the knowledge itself gives Balaji a better way to argue his points.
13:47 - Why searching for people who are "hungry and can teach us something" serves everybody who is involved very well.
19:39 - The "tour of duty" and how to create a great strategy for developing and managing yourself and your team.
24:25 - The movement from a centralized century to a decentralized century and why Balaji feels the future is moving more towards his lifestyle.
31:19 - How technology hyper-deflates the market of everything it touches.
38:23 - How the past is wrapping back around to the future and how the evolution of education is leading the way.
44:49 - Why abstraction means progress as a culture up to a certain point and can become harmful beyond that.
48:57 - How to optimize your information diet to make you smarter, more effective, and more honest about where you spend your energy.
54:07 - The future of online education and why it doesn't end with Wikipedia.
59:32 - New ways to look at incentive structures for writing and how it inspires technological and social growth.
1:04:27 - How to bridge the gap between Hollywood, big data, and education.
1:12:43 - The future of the internet and why the pseudonymous economy seems likely to Balaji.
1:15:04 - How we can use a "crypto oracle" to create an unfalsifiable history of our digital information.
1:21:31 - Why a worldwide ledger of record is the future we need in an information-driven world.
1:26:59 - Why Balaji believes that the pinnacle and goal of technology is to help humans live forever.
1:32:50 - How to build a digital country through writing.
1:39:34 - Why genomics needs more attention from the general population and technology.
1:44:42 - Why writers will be the future of millionaires and billionaires.
- Se mer
