Books read:
🎧 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
📕 The Art & Business Of Ghostwriting by Nicolas Cole
📖 The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
📖 The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li
Posts published:
March 31
📰 Studio Ghibli AI, Classified Leaks, and the Context Shift by kyla scanlon
Miyazaki’s discomfort with AI-generated art underscores a larger trend: AI doesn’t just replicate tasks - it reshapes how meaning (and thus value) is made.
📰 GPT-4o and the Art of AI Adoption by Every
While large language models are among the fastest-adopted technologies in history, about half of all U.S. adults still haven't tried them. Globally, that number might be closer to 90 percent.
📰 Creatures of Temperament by Simon Sarris
Many pleasures of life come from contemplation that improves with age. Every smaller pleasure is compounded by wisdom. Pleasures begin with the senses, but they dwell the longest in contemplation.
📰 Indulgences by Patricia
what i’ve picked up from growing up catholic is that we have to suffer every time all the time.
📰 Our $400k/Year Newsletter Strategy in 2025 by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush
We’re at $400K ARR and we just bumped up to the #2 most popular education newsletter on Substack. Looks like these strategies are working! Here they are:
Quarterly Digital Product Drops
Added a Founding Member Offer (+$25K in 2mo)
Created a Master Prompt Library (find what you need fast)
Added a “Value” Welcome Email Sequence + Incentives
Ramped Substack Notes (+1K new subs / wk)
We created it because because we kept hearing the same question over and over again: *“Dickie… Cole… I love your prompts, but how can I learn to create my OWN?”* So, how do we answer this question *at scale* AND unlock more revenue? By creating a digital product! It’s so simple people make it complicated.
Now, you might be wondering, *“Cole? Won’t you run out of digital product ideas?”* Yes, we will run out of ideas as soon as our readers run out of problems. And after a decade of being an entrepreneur, let me tell you… *people never run out of problems.*
he flywheel goes like this:
Create a more expensive Founding Member tier—we priced ours at $350.
Make the core benefit you get free access to all future digital product drops.
And then every time you drop a digital product and pitch your list, remind them: “You can either buy this product OR for essentially the same price you can become a Founding Member and get this PLUS all our digital products for free.”
what we did was take every single Write With AI issue & prompt and organized it by topic.
If you want to grow your audience with AI, read these.
If you want to monetize your content with AI, read these.
If you want to build your digital library of content with AI, read these.
If you want to improve your writing & publishing process with AI, read these.
Inside Substack’s settings, they allow you to tweak 4 different types of Welcome emails:
Welcome email to paid subscribers
Welcome email to free subscribers
Welcome email to imported subscribers
Welcome email to founding members. So the big change we made was to the welcome email to free subscribers.
Inside the email, we give them a free gift—an AI prompt that creates 101 proven social content templates. And in order to unlock the gift, they have to fill out a short survey—which we host on Typeform.
the fourth strategy we executed:
Add a welcome email
Which sends people to a short survey
To unlock a free gift
That then upsells them on a low-ticket digital product
I would strongly recommend writing up a really great welcome email and at least sending people to a short survey in exchange for a free gift.
Those are the 5 big growth strategies we’re using in 2025 to grow Write With AI to $400,000+ in annual recurring revenue, but also build out our AI writing vertical and do over a million dollars in revenue by upselling other digital products & resources.
March 30
📰 The Philosophy of Straight Lines by Tommy Dixon
More and more, I only want to do things that last forever. I only want to invest in things that compound. I only want to love what will grow. I’m less interested in what can be done in five minutes of work, and more interested in what can be done over five years of effort.
The fastest way to get somewhere is a straight line. And if it's the wrong thing, a straight line is the fastest way to figure that out and not hold onto dreams steeped in delusion.
📰 How the Science of 'Shared Reality' Helped You Like Donny From Baby Reindeer... by Will Storr
how, then, do we create a character that a reader cares about, and is motivated to follow for the length of a novel, play or screenplay, without making them in all ways lovely?
The goal should be to write a character with whom our audience can somehow *identify* with. There are many ways of creating an identifiable character. But one of the simplest and most effective involves writing moments of what psychologists call ‘shared reality’. Technically, shared reality is defined as “the subjective experience of sharing a set of feelings, beliefs or concerns (i.e. inner states) in common with a particular interaction partner about the world in general.” So, we experience shared reality when we detect that another person – real or fictional – sees a facet of external reality in the same way that we do. Moments of shared reality are pleasurable. They trigger feelings of joy, reassurance and closeness.
📰 4 Insights I've Learned From Running a Full-Time Six-Figure Business for the Past Six Years by Ayodeji
I realize there was never much at 'risk.' Starting a business is cheap. Worst-case scenario = you fall back on your job.
To avoiding the straightline paths I could've taken like signing high-ticket freelance writing clients instead of writing free content to grow.
You need a niche. You need a real product or service to sell. You need to build an actual business.
March 29
🎧 Democrats Divided, Market Roller Coaster, and Southwest Airlines - Pivot Pod
Brand building is like working out—it's tough, requires discipline and consistent investment. But the payoff is worth it: things get easier, you get stronger, and people want to hang out with you.
Transcript: Scott Galloway Branding is like working out. The next day it hurts. It sucks. It requires discipline. But if you're disciplined about it and willing to make the consistent investments in working out, everything gets a little bit easier. You get a little bit stronger. It's easier to go up the stairs. People want to hang out with you. You're less likely to have bouts of depression. Brand building, and this is brand building, the free bags, is working out every day.
Scott Galloway explains that Gulf states like Singapore and the UAE strategically invested in creating world-class airlines (e.g., Emirates, Qatar) as a 'halo' for their nations. They realized that people's impressions of a country are heavily influenced by their airline experience. These airlines offer exceptional service, effectively giving customers more value than the ticket price, which makes it difficult for other airlines to compete.
Transcript: Scott Galloway Well, the bottom line is the airline industry is a terrible industry because for investors, because about 30 years ago, the Gulf, who are very smart and have a tremendous amount of capital, Said, we need a coming out party. And instead of having the Olympics, they built and overfunded the world's best airlines in the world because they did the math and they said, people's brand impression of you is based On, first and foremost, the airline that brought you there and back and to the airports. And so Singapore and then UAE basically said the best investment we could make as a halo for our entire nation would be to build these extraordinary airlines. And essentially, Singapore and then Emirates Airlines and then Qatar built by far the best
Of the big three US airlines, Delta is by far the best. Domestically, JetBlue is a good option, especially their Mint seats with pods in aisles two and four.
Transcript: Scott Galloway Domestically, I think I want to say of the big three, Delta does the best job by far the best, the best operator in the domestic market is JetBlue Mint seats two, aisles two and four, where You get your own pod, obviously fly a lot. But everything else is a distant second to the Gulf Airlines and quite frankly, to JetBlue domestically. It is a shitty airline.
Scott shares his opinions on airlines, citing KLM as the worst in Europe. He also praises Lufthansa's new first-class and Singapore Airlines' 'apartment' as the best.
Transcript: Scott Galloway I can break down almost every airline, good and bad. Worst airline in Europe, KLM, by the way. There's just such a range of good to bad. By the way, the best new first class is Lufthansa's first class and also the apartment, the apartment from Singapore Airlines.
📰 This Was Always the Plan by raymond
That’s the magic of building in your 20s. There is so much in this world that excites you, it feels like everyday you stumble across something—a skill, an obsession, a weird idea you can’t stop thinking about—and it grabs you by the collar, seductively whispering that *you are the one meant to bring it to life*. And when that moment hits, it’s hard not to feel totally, stupidly, beautifully consumed.
📰 Why Generalists Own the Future by Every’s Dan Shipper
Generalists are usually curious people who like to hop around from domain to domain. They enjoy figuring things out, especially in areas that are uncertain or new. They’re good at solving problems that domain experts struggle with, because they’re able to bring bits of knowledge from diverse fields together.
Being a generalist gives us something that language models don’t have: the capacity to learn quickly, and to see and solve novel problems in new domains. In an allocation economy, the person who wins isn’t the expert who knows the exact answer to a question. It’s the one who knows which questions to ask in the first place.
📰 Your Job vs Your Calling by Ines Lee
I’ve definitely fallen for the belief that for my career to be meaningful, it has to coincide perfectly with a passion or calling.
Recognizing that jobs can be broken down into tasks and roles frees you from the binary thinking that your work must either be your calling/passion or “just a job”.
Also, when your livelihood doesn’t depend on your calling, you have more freedom to explore and play without financial and reputational concerns.
Wallace Stevens was one of America's greatest poets, but he worked in an insurance firm for most of his life. His poetry remained unburdened by commercial demands.
Progress may be slower. But slow doesn't mean less meaningful.
📰 A Little Catch Up by Michelle Elisabeth Varghese
March 28
📰 Analyzing the Fastest-Growing Software Category I’ve Ever Seen by Evan Armstrong
The very people inventing the technology that may put many knowledge workers out of a job have been among the first to experience disruption, with software engineering job postings at a five-year low.
These startups have grown faster than I have ever seen in my career in the tech industry. There are individual companies in tech history that have grown at somewhat similar rates, but I’ve never seen it happen to so many organizations in the same category:
Cursor went from $1 million to $100 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in less than 12 months.
Coding agent startup Lovable grew to $10 million in ARR two months after launch.
Anthropic’s Claude series of models are best in class at coding and have seen explosive growth—growing 40 percent this year alone by hitting $1.4 billion in annualized revenue.
One engineer I talked to has changed his AI code editor every month for the last four months, just because he can. From the perspective of the companies behind these tools, that makes acquiring new customers extremely easy.
However, they will usually say “ARR,” but I spelled it out earlier for a reason: Most readers are likely to assume that ARR refers to “annual recurring revenue,” but sometimes it’s actually “annual*ized* recurring revenue.” Companies multiply their current monthly revenue by 12 and hope we don’t notice the difference. In the case of products that have long sales cycles and complex integrations, this practice is justifiable—churn is very low in traditional enterprise software, for example. However, AI coding tools often cost 20 bucks a month, and as I mentioned before, switching costs are near zero. They’re easy as pie to churn. I talked with venture capital investors about the AI coding startups they were seeing and all of them expressed some form of hesitation about churn. To some, it was a deal killer, to others, no big deal, but the sector’s investors are keeping a close eye on this metric.
🎧 The Ultimate Guide to Writing With AI by David Perell - How I Write
David was initially skeptical of AI's writing capabilities, citing hallucinations and lack of improvement over humans. However, someone advised him to observe AI's rapid growth, leading a company to dedicate thousands of employees to AI and implement a hiring freeze to prioritize AI-driven efficiency.
Transcript: David Perell And I was like, dude, I don't know. I don't know. I'm kind of a skeptic. Like, if you actually use these things, they're not that good. They hallucinate all the time. I don't know. It's just no better than what a human can do. It's not even close. He's like, you got to watch the rate of growth. And I really believe that this technology is going to start growing really fast. So I'm going to have thousands of my employees to start really focusing on AI. He put in a hiring freeze so that the companies, they couldn't even grow. They had to get more efficient with AI.
Sci-fi author William Gibson's idea: the future already exists, it's just not evenly spread out among us.
Transcript: David Perell William Gibson, the science fiction writer, has this line that I think about all the time where he says, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed.
Ethan Mollick, from the University of Pennsylvania, says the last 18 months have seen the fastest change in written communication ever. As of September 24th, LLMs are showing up in all kinds of writing, from financial complaints to press releases. Official stats show LLM usage in 18% of financial consumer complaints, 24% of press releases, 15% of job postings, and 14% of UN press releases. But, tons of people likely use LLMs without leaving detectable traces, so actual usage is probably higher.
Transcript: David Perell Ethan Mollick, who is a writer, I think he's at the University of Pennsylvania. He said that the past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever. As of September 24th, 18% of financial consumer complaints, 24% of press releases, 15% of job postings, and 14% of UN press releases showed signs of LLM writing. These are just the official stats, right? Because that's showed signs of LLM writing. Like the number of people who are probably using LLMs, but then you don't see it showing up in their writing is probably even higher.
David Perell uses Deep Research to enhance his walks around Lady Bird Lake. He prompts the AI to generate a report on the local flora and fauna, specifically how they change during springtime in Austin. It delivers a tailored, detailed report within minutes, enriching his experience without generic web searches.
Transcript: David Perell Is I live on Lady Bird Lake in Austin. So there's this lake in the center of the city and it's March now. So the weather's getting nicer. The leaves are beginning to come back. And you can sort of feel the world changing as we move into springtime. And I have this 20, 25-minute walk between my apartment and my office where I work. And I want to enjoy that walk more. So what I did was I said, hey, Deep Research, I want you to basically make me a report on the flora and the fauna in this area. And I'm particularly interested in how the nature around me begins to change as we move into springtime in Austin, Texas. Super specific. And what it does is it'll go off and it'll take a bunch of really good pieces of information and it'll come back and it'll deliver me a full report that say two or three thousand words that I can read that's really tailored for my interests, my curiosities at the moment, exactly where I live. And took me, what, 20 seconds to produce the prompt, five minutes to basically wait for an answer. And now I feel like I know. You know what I mean? It's like, it's right there. And I don't have to go scan through a bunch of Google reports or read something that's generic. It's really, really tailored to my interests. And look, this is the first version of the software. Deep Research came out only a few months ago, and it's already at that level.
Focus on writing from personal experience. AI can't replicate the human connection we crave in biographies, memoirs, and other deeply personal narratives. Readers want to feel connected to the author, and that's something AI can't offer.
Transcript: David Perell Here's my heuristic for what kind of nonfiction writing will last. Like if you're focused on that, what should you do? The more that a piece of writing comes from personal experience, the less likely it is to be overtaken by AI. So that's personal writing. That's things like biographies. That's things like memoirs. They ain't going to go away anytime soon. And there's a few reasons why. One major thing that we get from writing is connection. It's connection. Like writing is a kind of antidote to loneliness and connection, human to human connection. Like love is one of those things that just has this infinite ceiling. Like if you can really connect with somebody and people feel like they're there with you, they're in your mind as they're reading your stuff, man, you got such a bright future as a writer. That's not going to go away. Like David Foster Wallace said that a major reason why we read is to countenance loneliness, to have the thought that, wow, there's somebody else who feels this way like I do. I thought I was the only one. We really want to hear personal narratives. So if an AI, and I'm going to talk about this more later, but if an AI can help you write your personal narrative, great. I'm totally a fan of that. That sounds cool. I, I personally have no issues with that. I have no issues with that, but no one wants to hear a personal narrative from a computer. Like that is a completely hollow thing. And if you're like a personal narrative from a computer, like why would you ever want to read that? I don't care how good it is.
Write about things you know about the world. LLMs can't replicate your lived experience. For example, after living in Austin for five years, I've developed an understanding of the city's vibe, culture, and people that an LLM couldn't grasp. I can speak to these specifics because of my personal experiences and conversations.
Transcript: David Perell What about things that you know about the world, right? Because there's a lot of stuff in that dimension too. So I'll give you some examples from my life. For example, like I've lived in Austin for almost five years now. So there's things that I know about the vibe of Austin that an LLM isn't going to be able to replicate. I just know those things because I live here and I'm always talking to people and I have this general sense of the culture of Austin, the people who live here, how the vibe is changing. And I can speak to that with a lot of specifics in a way that an LLM, there's no way they can.
Experience and up-to-date info are advantages over LLMs. Perell's experience running hundreds of live sessions is something an LLM can't replicate. Cutting-edge info, like how the YouTube algorithm works, is often shared in small circles and through whispers before reaching books or LLMs, giving those 'in the know' an edge.
Transcript: David Perell Another thing is like, like I was saying earlier, right? I ran right of passage for, for six years and we ran almost 200 live sessions. Like I know how to run a zoom, a live session with a few hundred people very well in a way that there's just no way that an LLM is going to be able to have an answer on that that I have. There's just no way I have that experience. And then the other thing is just things that are more cutting edge and up to date. You know, what happens with information is it gets shared in small, tight, tightly connected social circles, and it gets shared through sort of whispers and voice. And then it ends up getting shared in conferences through sort of more formal settings and maybe podcasts. And then later on, it kind of ends up in books. And it's only later that the LLMs would end up actually having that information. And to get really concrete here, there are things like I'm really interested in the YouTube algorithm because that's what we're focused on with how I write. And there's things right now of how to grow on YouTube and how the YouTube algorithm works that I'm just talking to friends about at dinner. And I know those things in ways that the LLM just is not going to know.
To set your nonfiction writing apart from large language models (LLMs), focus on experience and expertise. If you write knowledgeably about something you have deep experience in, you'll be successful.
Transcript: David Perell All of those examples, Austin, the intricacies of a Zoom live session, talking to friends about the YouTube algorithm, they come down to two E's. The two E's of being differentiated from LLMs in your nonfiction writing, which are experience and expertise. If you have a lot of experience in a particular domain, if you have a lot of expertise, you just know a lot about something, and you write that, you put that onto the page, and you do it well, You're going to be all right.
To make your writing stand out in the age of AI, focus on personal experiences, strong opinions, and bold work. Share your unique stories and perspectives, like the co-founder of Wikipedia's testimony or David's story about becoming a Christian. These are the kinds of deeply personal and emotional narratives that AI can't replicate.
Transcript: David Perell David, you're talking about what I should do. How is your writing going to change? And I'll tell you this, I'm definitely going to focus on experience and expertise, but also my writing is going to become more personal. It's going to become more opinionated. I want to just do bolder work. And the piece that I'm writing right now, it's a long piece right now, it's probably at about 11,000 words, is the story of how I became a Christian. And one thing, actually, just to go back, I read that testimony from the co-founder of Wikipedia, and I said, if I'm feeling this about that, well, then I can definitely do the same thing In my own writing, and I can trust that it's gonna stand the test of time, and I encourage you to do the same thing. Just start thinking, okay, as I'm reading a piece of writing, do I think that this is going to continue to last or will become obsolete? Am I really moved by this style of writing? And if so, well, hey, maybe consider doing that kind of writing yourself. And for me, what I like about the story of how I became a Christian is it's that personal story. It's deeply emotional. And it has a super spiky point of view, which is how in the world did I go from being raised Jewish, basically being an atheist, living in New York City, which is like the Mecca of materialism, How did I go from there to then believing that Jesus Christ is the literal son of God, believing in the historicity and truth of that story, and then thinking that he's my Lord and Savior, That to me was probably the biggest change of mind I've had my entire life. And how in the world did I get to a place where I thought this guy, God became flesh, died on a cross, and was resurrected three days later? I mean, that idea seemed absolutely crazy to me 10 years ago, and now I actually believe it. Like, that is a story worth telling, and it's the kind of thing, like, AI's not going to make that obsolete, that story, if I do a good job. There's just no way. There's no way. There's no way. This piece, right, it's deeply personal. It's deeply opinionated. It's a story about what I've been through, how I've changed my mind, extreme sorrow and pain, and how I think the world works, how I think, what do I think the story of reality is. And it's just about the greatest and most intimate story that I have to tell.
There're two types of quality in writing. One is objective quality (e.g., good writing style, research). The other, often overlooked, is how well the writing aligns with the reader's current interests. A book can be objectively well-written, but if it's not relevant to what you're curious about at the moment, you may not find it as good.
Transcript: David Perell There's really two kinds of quality when you sit down to read something, okay? So there is the objective quality of a book. That's the first one. And this is what everybody thinks about. So we'll take a book like Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, okay? People tell me, amazing book. They'll say the writing is really strong. It's been super influential. Sure, you know, maybe you got some facts wrong, but David, you got to read this book. Or they'll talk about The Power Broker. That's one of my favorites. The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It is 1,344 pages, but David, I know it's long, but I'll tell you, Robert Caro is such a good writer. He does insane research, all that sort of stuff. And look, I get it. The writing quality is great, but actually that kind of objective quality is only half of the equation. The other half of the equation is how tailored is a piece of writing to your interests. Like I read the power broker when I was living in New York because I was living there to kind of help me understand my environment. But if I was living in Austin, Texas, there's just no way that I would read that book. It's not tailored enough to like what I'm focused on right now. And with the Gibbons example, I haven't read the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Cause I'm just not that interested in the Roman empire. You know, it's like, I get that the writing is good, but like how much the writing aligns with like what I'm curious about right now, that is the other half of quality. So quality is one half the objective quality of a piece of writing, but the other half is how tailored is it to your interest.
Don't sweat AI; core writing skills remain the same. Cultivate taste to discern worthy content from junk, whether AI-generated or your own. Develop a spiky point of view, a unique perspective on the world that AI struggles to replicate. This bold, personal conviction is key to standing out, evidenced by the example of a friend with a radical approach to education and his successful AI-integrated school, Alpha School. These principles hold true across past, present, and future writing.
Transcript: David Perell Whether you're writing with AI or you're writing without AI, the core skills that you need to succeed as a writer are exactly the same. They're exactly the same. What are those core skills? Taste, the ability to discern what's worth keeping and what's not worth keeping. Look, whether you're writing on your own and you're generating a bunch of words with your own fingertips or you're working with AI and the AI is generating sentences and paragraphs, Whatever. The vast majority of what ends up being generated, you actually end up removing. It's just that AI is going to end up generating more stuff and you're just going to end up cutting way, way, way, way, way more. It's true that you're going to cut the majority of what you write, whether you're writing yourself or whether the AI is doing it. And a lot of what writing is, it's just putting a bunch of words on the page and you sort of have it there. You sort of have the marble and then you begin to sculpt. And Michelangelo said that what you need to do to make a great statue is just remove everything that isn't what that final statue should be. And that's true whether AI is writing or you're writing. So much of it is just taste and discernment. That's the first thing. And that'll continue to be true. So much of what AI will produce will be not quite right. It'll be junk. And guess what? It's the same thing with me. So much of what I produce is just absolute junk and nonsense and clutter. And I just, I get rid of that stuff. So that's the first thing. Taste is the first core skill. And that'll continue to be important. And the second thing is a spiky point of view. That is a unique insight, a unique belief about what you believe to be true about the world. And man, if you can have that, something that is like, this is my bold take, you know, like my take on Austin is that Austin is a mediocre city, but a good place to live. Or this is the famous Peter Thiel interview question, right? What do you believe about the world that's true that very few people would agree with you on? Those sort of secrets, he calls them, those will continue to be valuable in an AI future because AI isn't going to be able to produce those nearly as well as human beings, at least for a Long time. So just like in the past, the past 20, 30 years, just like in the present, just like in the future, if you have a distinct, an idiosyncratic take about how the world works, where the world Is going, you're going to be completely fine. But that was true. It is true. And it will be true. You know what I mean? Past, present, future. And I'll give you a concrete example. So I have a friend who thinks that the future of education is going to be school and there's not going to be teachers. Instead of teachers, you're going to work with coaches. And instead of those teachers who would basically lecture you with information, those coaches are basically going to motivate you. And since you're not going to be sitting in lectures, what you're going to do is you're going to be learning through AI and you're going to be learning through apps. And he believes that because of that, because it's so much more effective, because it's so much more efficient, that the kids are going to be able to learn everything they need to know, Everything from K through eight in two hours of learning per day. And then his model of schools, then you can spend the rest of the day learning life skills, public speaking, making friends, all that sort of stuff, riding bicycles, whatever it is. Kids can learn to ride a bike in second grade. They learn to swim and they can do that with the rest of their day. And this is a crazy idea. I've seen him pitch it and people are like, that is the most insane thing I've ever heard. There's no way I'm going to send my kids there. But for him, it's not some like pie in the sky theory that he just like made up someday. He's been thinking about this for 25 years. He runs a school. He already has data to show that it works. They got the school. It's called Alpha School in Austin. And most people think it's insane, but I think he makes a lot of good points. And he thinks that he's right. He's like, this is the conviction that I have on the world. And look, if you have that kind of conviction in anything, there's nothing to worry about. That is what great writing has always had. And AI is just not going to be able to do that because AI is, at least right now and for the time being, very trained on the consensus. So this is a major white pill for writers, that if you have good taste, if you have that spiky point of view, you're going to be just fine.
Sampling in music used to be taboo, seen as not 'real' music. Artists like the Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, and especially Kanye West, popularized sampling. Now it's a standard practice where artists incorporate parts of older songs into new tracks.
Transcript: David Perell I was thinking about this and I learned that sampling in the past used to be kind of taboo. People are like, oh, this is Steph. This isn't real music. And then what happened was you had the Beastie Boys and you had Dr. Dre. And then I remember Kanye West was the guy who used a bunch of samples. And now sampling is like completely normal. You're taking songs that were made in the past. You're sort of taking that beat or a section from that song, bringing it into your song. And it's like completely fine, right? There's actually a bunch of songs, old songs that I've found through samples of new ones.
Slop is when simply publishing or getting something done is more important than the quality of what you publish. A lot of online writing in the past 10 years has been slop.
Transcript: David Perell Here's how I define slop. I define slop as when simply publishing or getting something done is more important than the quality of what you publish. And I would say that so much of the online writing going back the last 10 years was slop under the definition I just gave.
David Perell uses AI as a writing partner by first verbally outlining and recording his ideas. Then, he has AI generate an outline or prose, identify interesting points and areas needing improvement. He leverages AI to give feedback, improve argument, spot boring parts, strengthen transitions, and enhance character development through AI-driven interviews.
Transcript: David Perell When it comes to writing with chat GPT, here's what I do. A lot of the way that I start, like I love just speaking out ideas. I love doing it. So what I'll do is I don't really like typing. It hurts my fingers and I feel like I'm gonna get early onset arthritis or something like that. And what I'll do is I'll just go on walks and I'll just speak out my ideas. And what I do is I have a prompt and I can share it in the description. I have a prompt where what I'll do is I'll say, Hey, I've just spoken something out. Can you turn that to an outline? Or what I'll do is I'll say, Hey, can you turn that into prose? And I'll create the ideas, and then I'll have AI kind of help me out. But then it's not just that. I'll say, hey, what ideas that I just shared were particularly interesting? What stories do you need more information on? What transitions were unclear? And I'm sort of instantly getting feedback so that I've just finished my version one, and then I can get the things that are unclear, the things that I need to share more about, and then I can just do a V2 and the AI, the transcription is just so good, is a thousand times better than Siri. And then what I'll do is I'll ask the AI based on what I've shared. I'll say, what are the weakest points of my argument? What are the most boring parts? What are the best parts that I should double down on? What transitions weren't clear? And what more would you need for a story to really work? So it might say, hey, you know, you told that story about your mom. Tell me about your mom. What does she look like? What was she wearing? How old was she at the time? What was the night like? It was really foggy. Okay, interesting. The fog is like a really good motif for that. And maybe I wouldn't think about that. AI is really good for that. Not because it's like the best editor in the world, but because it's going to be instant. It's going to be fast. It's going to be free to work with, you know? And I can just start being in dialogue. And then what I'll do is I'll start to actually sit down, I'll begin to write the piece with AI. So I've been doing this for the piece, that piece I've been writing about Christianity, really thinking through character development. That's something I want to get better at. And I'll say, okay, what do I need to know for what makes a good character? So tell me from like the theory of writing of Hollywood and movies and literature, what makes for good characters? And so I might get, okay, these are the four things. And then I'll say, okay, based on these four things, I want you to interview me about these characters from the piece I'm writing, Brent and Brian. And through that interview, it'll kind of get my brain going and get words on the page. And I find that the back and forth is so much more generative than me trying to do it all on my own. So now I have AI as a thinking partner.
During the Renaissance, new tech like the camera obscura and perspective grids changed art. Artists could trace projected images and use grids to show perspective, changing how they saw and created art. This shift, like the one from flat medieval paintings to those with depth, might happen with AI and writing, changing how we write and what we produce.
Transcript: David Perell And I credit my friend, Justin Murphy with this idea, but we were talking about the Renaissance and how new technologies that had come out at the time actually led to the change in art. So like you ever go to a museum and you're in the medieval painting section and like everything looks super flat, like there's no depth and perspective. And those are like 13th century paintings. And then you look at like a 15th century Renaissance painting that was made in Florence. And you all of a sudden you see that perspective shift and clearly something happened to change how people view the world and at least were able to paint? Well, what happened is there were a few technological innovations that actually led to that. So the first was the camera obscura. And that allowed artists to basically trace images that they would project. And then they were tracing. And then that led to what they created. So that was the first one. And then the second was the perspective grids. So there was a guy named Leon Alberti. And what he figured out, he was an architect who's sort of this polymathic guy, but he figured out that you could use these perspective grids and you could use them to draw. And then you could show perspective in the painting. And now you could ask, man, you know, is this guy cheating? Like we used to paint all by ourselves. Dude, you are completely cheating. But like now we look at a painting, we're like, I'm just happy to have perspective. I'm really glad that we had technology that allowed us to make that development. And I think that something similar is gonna happen with AI. We're right now, we're gonna end up having these technologies that change how we think about writing, how we see writing, and it might even lead to changes in the kinds of writing that We produce. I don't know what those are going to be, but I think there's going to be some interesting things.
To develop a custom AI writing style, create a project folder with two sections. First, define your desired writing style with clear examples of what you do and don't want. Analyze your best writing, using AI to identify key characteristics, and refine those descriptions for clarity. Second, compile training data reflecting your preferences. Include examples of interesting paragraphs and explain why they resonate with you. Use this data to train AI to provide targeted feedback aligned with your goals. Training data will be more and more important.
Transcript: David Perell What I'm working on when it comes to writing with ChatGPT is I'm working on a custom project folder for my writing style. And I'm basically trying to say, here's how it's structured. The first section is sort of at the top. It's what do I want my writing to be like? And what don't I want my writing to be like? Let's just really describe it super clearly. That's the first section layout, say 10 bullet points for each, right? And what I've done is I haven't just thought about this, but what I've done is I've taken my best writing and I've said, hey, I want you to actually analyze this for me, AI, and tell me what Are the things that are going on in the writing. And I want you to describe it. And then I'll take the best descriptions that it gives me and feed that back into it. And I'll use AI and work with it to really compress it so that I have the clearest, most succinct descriptions of what I am and I'm not going for. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is from there, training data on all the things that I do and don't want. So say that I want my writing to be interesting, right? We use a very cliche and bland example. Well, I'm going to put in a lot of paragraphs that I think are particularly interesting. And then I'm going to actually describe why I think that paragraph is interesting and say, hey, I want your help getting me to write like that as you give me feedback. That's exactly what I'm going for. And training data is going to be more and more important.
David Perell's note-taking strategy has shifted from writing for himself to writing for AI. Instead of many small notes, he now prefers fewer, longer notes. This is because AI can handle the searching and scrolling, and benefits from larger context windows. As these windows expand, AI can process more data, making longer notes more efficient for providing context.
Transcript: David Perell The way that I'm taking notes is beginning to change because of AI. Right now, it used to be that I would take notes for me to read. Now I'm increasingly taking notes for AI to read. And what that means is that when I just had my own notes, I wanted a bunch of different small notes. And then I could search and I didn't have to spend a bunch of time scrolling. With AI, it's very different. Rather than having a bunch of pages with a little bit of information, I want a few pages with a lot of information on them. And here's why. AI can do the searching. It can do the scrolling, no problem. And the context windows for AI are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And here's what I mean by that. So if you say, hey, I want your help with my writing, I might now be able to put in 30, 40,000 words of training data. In two years, I think I'll be able to put in 2 million words worth of training data, and then 10 million words worth of training data. And it'll easily be able to parse that. So I'm just gonna have these giant documents for different parts of my life that I'll just be able to plug into the AI and it'll be able to read the whole thing for me. And if I have a bunch of different documents, then I always have to copy and paste that. So the way that I'm taking notes is beginning to change. And I'm starting to think about how do I write for LLMs as much as my future self when it comes to taking notes so that I can really begin to work with these LLMs and give them context on how I want to write, what's going on in my life, meeting notes. Like another thing is maybe I put all my emails that I've really thought were good into a single document, and then I say, hey, I want your help writing emails. Do it in the style that I've shared. It's 100,000 words worth of emails that I've written. That leads me into how I think with LLMs.
AI could consolidate power at the top. By scanning emails, AI can give CEOs instant feedback on what everyone's thinking and writing.
Transcript: David Perell AI is going to consolidate power for people at the top. And here's why. So AI is going to be able to basically scan every single email and see exactly what's going on and give instant feedback on what people are thinking, what they're writing from the perspective Of the CEO.
David Perell uses OpenAI's ChatGPT 4.5 as his core writing model. He finds it good for niche humor and writing with voice, rating it a 6.5 or 7 out of 10, a significant improvement over ChatGPT 4. However, he dislikes its corporate, sterile tone.
Transcript: David Perell Now I want to talk about what models do I use for what, and I'm going to get super concrete and specific. And I'll start off with OpenAI and ChatGPT. Their 4.5 model is the core model that I make things with, okay? So it's pretty funny with niche humor. It'll make me laugh every now and then. And then also, it's pretty good at writing with voice. It's like a six and a half, seven out of 10, but it's way better than chat GPT four was about a year and a half, like way better. But also it's kind of annoyingly corporate and sterile in its output. And that's my least favorite thing about writing with AI, the way it sort of like sucks up to you and just that annoying voice that it uses. Ah, tactically, what I'll do is I'll talk into my phone. I'll ask GPT 4.5 to clean it up as pros. I'll do a review on what it's written and then I'll send it.
Use ChatGPT 4.5 for creating content because it's fast and good at organizing info. Use O1 Pro or Deep Research for consuming content because even though they're slower, they produce higher-quality output worth reading.
Transcript: David Perell I use ChatGPT 4.5 whenever I need to create something. And then whenever I need to consume something, I'll use O1 Pro or Deep Research. And that's because ChatGPT 4.5, it's pretty fast and it's relatively good at writing and organizing information when I'm creating something. But whenever I need to consume something, I'm fine with it being slower. An O1 Pro will take, you know, two or three minutes to give me an output. Deep research will sometimes take 20 minutes to give me an output, but I'm happy to wait some time for something that's really worth reading. You know, when I'm making something, I want it to be the feedback cycles to be fast. But if I'm reading something, I'm happy to put in a prompt, go make some dinner, come back, and I have something to read while I eat.
Claude 3.5 and 3.7 are great for writing with a human-like voice. ChatGPT excels at creating tables, while Claude is better at charts. Try using Claude by inputting data and letting it generate charts for your arguments.
Transcript: David Perell And then there's Claude 3.5 and 3.7. So these are really good for writing with voice. They sound the most human. Now, people tell me that's really good for coding, and I don't really use it for that. But what's funny is that I really like the tables that chat GPT produces. And then I like the charts that Claude produces. So what I want to figure out how to do is how do I get really good data into Claude and then have it produce charts for me? And if you're trying to make an argument in a piece that you're working on, a lot of times a chart will be super useful. And like, I guess you could kind of do it in Excel, but you can't really use natural language in the same way. You can do that in Claude and have Claude make the chart for you. And it's really worth playing around with because a chart can just in the snap of a finger, make your argument for you. And you can show something really clearly. So that's something to think about as you're writing and working on pieces.
David Perell had an "iPhone moment" using AI for deep research. He asked for a comprehensive explanation of Austin's I-35 traffic and received a personalized, clear answer in 12 minutes. While the writing quality wasn't perfect, the tailored information and time saved made it worthwhile.
Transcript: David Perell And then there's deep research. Like I said, this was the iPhone moment for me with AI. Whenever I want an in-depth explanation of something. So I was talking about the flora and the fauna in Austin at the beginning of spring between my office and where I live. And then the other day, you know, I was driving on I-35, which is the highway that goes through Austin. Here's exactly what I prompted it with. I said, it seems like there's traffic every time I drive I-35 through downtown Austin. Why is there so much traffic? I want a comprehensive social and technological history of this road, and I want to know why the traffic jams are so uniquely bad according to data and theories of engineering and road Design. Now, I do wait 12 minutes and 32 seconds for an answer. But look, the writing, remember I was talking about the quality? The absolute writing quality was probably like a 7 out of 10, but it was just 10 out of 10 personalized. The answer that it gave me was super clear, super specific. And in a situation like that, I'm a lot happier just reading pretty good writing about a topic that's then tailored to my exact interests in that moment, the exact question I had at that Time. I bet there's a legit incredible book about like Texas highway design, but I don't need that. It's complete overkill. You know, I just want the exact answer. And also I'd have to do a bunch of searching for information. So I'm happy to wait 12 minutes because it's 10 out of 10 with being tailored to exactly what I want.
Use Grok, a large language model with personality, to understand complex topics. Ask it for funny analogies or simple explanations. Argue with Grok in voice mode about your high-conviction ideas, and get a transcript of the conversation. Don't forget to ask for a summary of the best ideas at the end.
Transcript: David Perell And then there's Grok. Grok has the most personality. Grok is your crazy friend. I mean, look, it's like Elon Musk in a box, right? It's like, it's not as bland as the other LLMs. You can, that's what I use to explain things to me. So if I'll read something, there's like a technical thing that I don't quite understand. I'll ask it to give me a funny analogy or a simple explanation. Just, hey, help me understand this. And then like I was talking about earlier, I love to argue about it in voice mode. It's so fun to do. You have high conviction on something. Hey, let's just start arguing with each other. And it'll just give me a transcript of the entire conversation. And then right at the end, this is the thing you got to remember. At the end, ask for that summary of the best ideas from the conversation.
Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, uses Grok in voice mode while reading. When he encounters something he doesn't understand, he asks Grok, which acts like a tutor providing immediate context and preventing distractions.
Transcript: David Perell Patrick Hallson, the CEO of Stripe, what he does is he uses Grok while he reads. So he'll turn on the voice mode and say that he's reading about 18th century England, and there's context that he doesn't really understand, rather than like opening your phone and Then you get distracted, you can just ask Grok the question. It'll give you the answer. And then you sort of have a tutor by your side whenever you read. I really want to give that a try. And the thing is to keep it open while you're reading. Grok is really good in the background.
Use Perplexity for quick factual answers with clear sources. It's great for that, but its deep research tool isn't the best. For deep research, ChatGPT is the best option so far, even though Grok has a 'deep think' mode.
Transcript: David Perell Now, I was talking about hallucinations with LLMs earlier, and that's a problem, but there's a solution. And the solution is perplexity. Like if you want facts and you want a quick answer and then really clear and concrete sources for what you're looking for, then use perplexity. It's good. But their deep research tool isn't really that good. ChatGPT's is the best by far. Grok has a deep think model, but it's only okay. Use ChatGPT for the deep research.
David Perell uses 11 Labs in two ways:
1. Speech-to-text: To generate high-quality transcripts from MP3s, much better and faster than services like Descript or Rev.
2. Voice Cloning: To edit videos by typing in changes he wants, which 11 Labs converts to audio that sounds like him. This is predicted to impact audiobooks too.
Transcript: David Perell Then there's 11 Labs. So we've done two things with 11 Labs. The first thing is their speech to text model is great. So what I'll do is I'll even take an MP3 file like this podcast, and I will put it in and I'll instantly get a transcript of the entire thing. And it's really good. So that's how I'm getting my transcripts now. And they're way better than the kinds of transcripts that I'd get from like a Descript or a Rev computer generated going a year and a half ago. I mean, it used to cost me something like this. It cost me 150 bucks for a transcript and 24 hour turnaround. Now it's free and it's a 10 minute turnaround. Like serious advancement there. And then the other thing is we clone my voice. We clone my voice. So what we did is we put in a bunch of training data. And if we ever need to, we're working on a video or something, we ever need to change a few things in the video. We now have cloned my voice so that we can type what it is that we want to say. And then 11 labs will just make it sound like me. And that's going to end up changing audio books. You know, if you want to change a fact, you got something wrong in an audio book on page 320, you're not going to have to go back to the studio. You're just going to be able to make a small insertion.
Try Granola, an AI-powered meeting note-taker. It's unintrusive, auto-generates notes based on conversations, provides full transcripts, and offers searchable summaries, making it easy to recall specific discussion points.
Transcript: David Perell And then there's granola. I was talking about granola for meeting notes. It's the first AI note taker to just absolutely nail it. It's super unintrusive in meetings. It auto generates meeting notes based on the conversation that you had. It has a transcript of the entire conversation. And my favorite thing is that you can search that transcript. And so it's not just telling you what you said, but it's almost giving you quick summaries of what you said. So if you're like, hey, we were talking about some plans that we wanted to do in Austin, it would basically summarize those plans and turn it into an output for you.
March 27
📰 How I Prompted My Way to Publish-Ready Content by Every
Prior to the shoot, Lucas sat them down and had them watch four films that embodied his desired vibe for *Star Wars*: *2001*, *Silent Running*, *Once Upon a Time In the West*, and *Satyricon*.
how the world’s greatest creatives are obsessed with using examples to communicate. And while I wouldn’t go quite as far as describing myself as the modern-day George Lucas, I did manage to use his technique to write this tweet for Every CEO Dan Shipper that got 200,000 impressions:
As someone who writes for a living, having a library of few-shot prompts has saved me hours of time every week. Take the above tweet as an example. It would have taken me at least 10 times longer if I had tried explaining to ChatGPT what I wanted and even longer if I tried writing it myself from scratch.
There is one problem I’ve noticed with example-based prompting: Most creators and businesses aren’t using it. I think this is because you have to overcome three major inconveniences before you start to take advantage of few-shot prompting on a consistent basis:
1. Upfront effort: A few-shot prompt is only as good as the examples you provide. Cultivating a set of high-quality examples can take a lot of initial time and effort.
2. Organizational disarray: Once you have your few-shot prompts, you have to save them somewhere, remember where you saved them, remember to use them, and then copy and paste them into an LLM each time you want to use one.
3. Skill issue: Examples are effective but insufficient. If you want “production-ready” content like the tweet I shared above, you need to combine your examples with a little bit of prompt engineering (more on that in a second).
my first of four observations about getting great outputs from LLMs:
#1—Less is often more when it comes to instructions
#3—Be methodical about the examples you provide
I had strict screening criteria for the examples that were added to my contrarian, punchy, tweet Spiral. The only tweets that were allowed were those that:
did not exceed the single-tweet word count (i.e., were not a thread or long post)
had over 100,000 impressions (ideally 1 million-plus)
#4—Prompting is a finicky art, but a worthy investment
📰 Use "But" Strategically by Wes Kao
We can use “but” strategically by *inverting*:
Before: “The positive thing, but the negative thing.”
After: “The negative thing, but the positive thing.”
📰 Do We Need to Fail a Lot in Order to Succeed? by James Gurney
The way I would describe my mindset is: Visualize the goal and start out with a playful, experimental attitude. Keep the investment low enough in any preliminary idea to allow yourself to let it go if it’s not working. That way you can find a better idea. Many ideas that turn out to be successful start off looking weak and unlikely at first.
Unsuccessful efforts are not failures. They’re only a real failure if you don’t learn anything from them.
To boil that down: “Generate lots of ideas, test them, and then build on what works, always with an eye toward success.”
📰 Why I Haven’t Filmed This Video Yet… by Ali Abdaal
I got this idea from Austin Kleon’s book *Show Your Work,* which I first read back in 2016. Austin says that if your work has the potential to help someone, you pretty much have an obligation to share it.
📰 BTS of Will Smith’s Creator Car Wash by The Publish Press
Deloitte released its annual digital media trends survey, which found approximately 50% of Gen Z and Millennial respondents feel stronger connections to content creators than actors.
It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
It’s a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.
The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.
three takeaways here:
1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.
3) Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.
🎧 Are We Headed for a Recession? + How Tariffs Hurt Housing - Prof G Pod
The stock market, originally intended for company financing, has become primarily a speculative market. While about $300 billion annually goes to IPOs and secondary offerings, $3 trillion is traded, suggesting 90% of market activity is driven by speculation on stock valuations.
Transcript: \"Scott Galloway\" If you look at the overall stock market, we don't like to admit this, the stock market was initially meant to be a source of financing for companies. And about $300 billion of it, traditionally a year, is for IPOs and secondary offerings. It's a place to access capital for growth. But the number of trades each year is $3 trillion. So 90% of the stock market is me thinking, I'm smarter than you, and I'm going to bet against you because you're selling me a stock at a price that I think is under or overvalued. So we are becoming effectively, if you look at the economy, the most valuable companies in the world, the way we design public policy, our economy is really based on addiction.
Instead of a traditional mortgage, consider a "mortgage" on low-cost ETFs. Adopt the forced savings principle of a mortgage but direct it towards investments like diversified stock ETFs. This strategy offers potentially higher returns (9-11%) compared to housing (4-6%). Live modestly, prioritize experiences over expensive housing, and leverage tax-advantaged investment vehicles when possible.
Transcript: \"Scott Galloway\" What I would suggest is that you adopt the forced savings of a mortgage, but you create a mortgage around another investment class, and that is stocks across the U.S. Low-cost ETF funds and non-U markets, because I think the U.S. Is going to underperform international markets over the next 10 years. But try and figure out a forced savings plan that is tax-advantaged, commit with your partner, and rather than making a mortgage payment. So rent in Austin is about $1,500. The average cost of a home is about $3,000. I think a reasonable way to economic security is to say to your partner, all right, we're going to have a fairly modest home. We're going to try and spend as much time with friends, with family, outside of the house. And we're going to take that incremental $1,500 a month in housing savings, and we're going to force a mortgage on ourselves, hopefully through some sort of tax advantage vehicle through Our employer or through the state or through the federal government. And we're going to create a mortgage. And every month we're going to pay our mortgage, but our mortgage is going to be low-cost ETFs. Because over the medium and the long-term, those return 9% to 11% versus 4% to 6% in housing. So buy into the notion of economic security and a forced savings plan, but create a mortgage that forces you to invest in the markets. And realize you're not failing if you just have a modest place to live and try and spend more time outside of the house. Create a mortgage, but instead of putting it into housing, put it into the markets.
March 26
📰 Are Long-Games Real? I Suspect Mostly No by Paul Millerd
long-term games are a series of connected short-term games toward a long-term objective, and you play short-term games NOT to win them but to increase the odds of success
By 27 he landed on a startup that was working. At 34, mission accomplished. He sold his company Braintree for millions. He could have made more he claims but sold because, “if I had waited longer, the opportunity to make a lasting impact might have passed.”
He saw what other people were doing around him and decided not to do any of those things: > “I held about 12 dinners across the U.S. with some of my closest friends and my smartest people. … After 12 dinners, I like, ‘Okay, now I have my map of what not to do. Now I need a map of what to do.’”
If we dare to live and succeed on our own unique long-term game, we must avoid comparison, especially with those currently experiencing short-term success: > “If we act upon the desire to emulate those growing faster than us, we are more likely to imitate short-term optimization than competence.”
a long-term game must be unique to the individual. This is because to maximize the odds of success and design against failure, you must design a strategy around your unique advantages and disadvantages.
I would describe my “game” as follows
Continue to buy the time to do creative work, like this, for fun, and for “free”
Connect with others around these ideas, engage in a broader “conversation” of ideas with people, other books, articles, and so on
Put out things that can be sold and fund my journey but don’t require enormous or fixed time commitments
Repeat
🎥 Johnny Harris: Master Storytelling on YouTube - How I Write by David Perell
Johnny Harris' video production takes about four months. It involves story pitching and idea generation, a green light process on Slack, a reporting brief for research, 3-4 weeks of in-depth research by a researcher, compiling a research digest, processing and outlining by Harris, additional research and expert interviews, a scripting week, gathering visuals and fact-checking, post-production, a production kickoff, filming and editing, review and feedback, and finally, the video goes live.
Transcript: David Perell What does it take to make a video? Like from A to Z, how does this get done? How long does it take? And what are the core pillars? Johnny Harris It's about a four-month process. Wow. For each video. It starts with, sometimes it's a story day. Is and I will like roll our sleeves up and kind of like look at story pitches and ideas that we've been taking notes on for a long time. And then it goes into a green light. I green light it on a channel in Slack. I say, it's green lit. And often I deliver a reporting brief. This is what I want to know about this thing. I did this last night on an airplane, a reporting brief about El Chapo's prison escape. Like, I want to know everything about this, tunnels and all of it. And I did a tiny, like a little Google to be like, what's interesting about this? And then ask a million questions. And then that goes to a researcher. Researcher spends three to four weeks becoming an expert in that topic, surfacing visuals, building out what we call an info doc, which is like a 60 to 80 page digest of research. That comes to me. Process it in my brain. I wrestle with it. And I start to curate and outline and think about it as a story. Sometimes that comes with some additional research and reporting, whatever, an expert interview or two with me. And then scripting week happens. And And scripting week is usually three to four dedicated days of hardcore writing. And it is me in a room completely engrossed in the story, writing and visually directing and art directing, doing all that stuff that we've been looking at. And after those three to four days, there is a lot of visual assets that need to be gathered. There's a lot of fact checking that needs to happen. Sometimes there's some additional reporting that needs to happen. But then it goes off into post-production. There's a production kickoff where I translate the vision to a leader in our post-production team. They grab that vision and they carry it through. I film it. The footage goes off, and then they start to build out, the post-production team starts to build out everything that was put on that piece of paper. And then cuts start to come in. It starts with a shame cut, which is just a radio edit, an assembly with some very crude visuals. And then it goes into a rough cut, it goes into a fine cut, It goes into a fine two. It goes into an audio lock, a picture lock. And each of those, we're leaving 150 notes or whatever, you know, little micro this and that. David Perell Google Docs frame. Johnny Harris Frame.io. Yep. Thumbnail starts to get developed within that at some point. And a sponsorship, we do an ad read, and that gets slotted in. Again, that's a well-oiled machine that just works, and it's all slotted in and plotted six months in advance. And then the video goes live, and people hopefully watch it.
Johnny Harris captures his thoughts by talking to his phone for minutes at a time, using transcription. He often forgets to press the microphone button and has to repeat himself. This talking-to-the-phone method replaces traditional note-taking. When dealing with complex human stories, every interview shifts his perspective, creating a constant need to adapt his understanding. This 'whiplash' of changing perspectives is less prevalent during desk research. Field interviews introduce chaos, and storytelling becomes an act of organizing that chaos into meaning.
Transcript: David Perell How are you taking notes and basically capturing all of your thoughts? Johnny Harris I'm talking to my phone. Really? I'm talking to my phone for minutes and minutes and I'm talking to transcription. And there are so many times when I'm thinking and I'm kind of looking up and I'm talking to my phone and I realized that like it didn't I didn't press the microphone button um and so I do it Again but that is my like way of communicating instead of doing this I am transcribing on like a note on like an apple notes app and I am reflecting I am especially with like complicated Human stories every interview I have changes my mind and so it's this it's this whiplash of like I think this is the story but then I have this interview and that muddies the water and I Have to change it That doesn't happen as much when I'm writing and researching for my computer, you know, but like when you're in the field talking to humans everything is chaos and to Story tell is to somehow orchestrate that chaos into something meaningful, which always leaves so much complexity on the ground. And so my notes are often just a sort of like chaotic like wrestling with like what do I want to say about this?
Even if you're unsure about your video's ultimate direction, define the marketing early. Determine why someone would click. Think about the packaging, the billboard that promises the viewer something specific. This doesn't define the entire video but determines one key aspect you'll deliver on.
Transcript: David Perell With Saudi Arabia, that was a thumbnail you designed in advance, right? Yes. So this was – That was a headline you designed in advance, right? Yep. Johnny Harris And I still do this. Even when I'm open-minded about what the story is going to be, the marketing, which is what this is, this is why should you click, is defined early on. Because on YouTube and in any sort of market for attention, which is everything, you have to decide like, okay, I want to make this piece, but like why is someone going to click it? I can figure out why they should watch 30 minutes of it, but why are they going to click it? And that's what this is. I knew that what would bring them in is why is Saudi Arabia building a futuristic city in the desert? David Perell That's a straight line. Johnny Harris That is a straight line. Look at it. And it's like that, that I knew that that was the promise. That was a clear promise. The storytelling is a complicated thing. This is not a complicated thing. This is like a, this is the billboard. This is the packaging. I usually will do two or three different packagings when I'm deciding what story to do and be like, does this have legs for us to be clickable? But that doesn't define the story. It just defines kind of one thing that I know I'm going to answer, a promise I know I'm going to answer.
When your thumbnail poses a question, you've got two ways to approach it.
1. Broaden Curiosity: Use the initial question as a hook to explore broader, related topics the viewer might not have realized they're interested in. Think of it as 'folding in the vegetables.'
2. Satisfyingly Answer: Don't give the answer away immediately. Reinforce the promise of answering the question within the first minute and deliver a satisfying answer by the video's end.
Transcript: David Perell How do you think about if this is a promise to answer the question, how do you think about the payoff of that question? Johnny Harris There's two answers to that. One is the more controversial answer, and the other is the more straightforward one. That I can convince them to broaden their curiosity to a billion other things that they didn't even realize they were curious about. And that this is just the entry point. This is just the click in because it's big and sensational and accessible. But really, you're going to start to learn about resource countries and the resource curse and frontier states and all these economics and future-proofing your city and the history Of oil. And that, yes, you will get this answer, but you will have forgotten that that's why you clicked it in the first place, because you will be let into this much bigger world. So that's kind of the like, I'm folding in the vegetables. And that's a major goal for me, is like making people feel enthusiasm and curiosity about something they didn't know that they were curious about. The other one is I still do need to satisfyingly answer the question for those who don't have that first experience. And I don't answer it in the first 10 seconds or the first minute. But by the end of the video, I have to. What I do have to do is promise that I'm going to answer it. And I have to reinforce the promise of the thumbnail within the first minute, I would say.
When filming a story, focus on reacting to and experiencing your environment rather than rigidly following a script. Prioritize character interactions and experiences. Save the detailed writing and narration for after you return and reflect, allowing yourself to elegantly construct the explanation later.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I'm moving really strongly away from the over-engineered script when I'm on the ground and moving more towards when I'm on the ground, it's about reacting and experiencing. It's experiential storytelling, character interactions, experiences. And then when I get back and I've really let it settle and I've wrestled, then I write the prose word for word and I go into the VO booth and I say the words to stitch the things together, to Construct the explanation in an elegant way, to not have the pressure to do that when I'm on the ground. Because what ended up happening when I'm on the ground is I'm thinking more about where am I going to go do a stand-up, meaning like I'm going to set the camera up and say my lines. And how am I going to get the lines? I'm going to do lots of takes. And it ends up taking away from my ability to just be there, which is incredibly valuable, I'm realizing more and more.
When writing for video, coordinate visuals alongside the text. Treat them as one, with each sentence corresponding to a visual direction. This approach is key for effective screen storytelling.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I am writing words and then I'm immediately going over to the right column and I am coordinating, choreographing visuals that will play, that will dance with the prose. That is the only way to know to do it. I've never been a text writer. I've always been someone who writes for motion on a screen. And so those to me, they're one in the same. So every sentence or two has a new row in the script, and it gets its own specific direction.
Start videos with surprising visuals and actions that immediately engage viewers' senses. Use opening lines like "Look at this..." to draw viewers in and encourage interaction.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I like first lines that drop you into action that enliven the viewers kind of senses with a surprising, usually a surprising action or visual. And oftentimes that starts with, look at this. It's like, look at this map or whatever. And it immediately engages the viewer to say, like, do something.
Johnny Harris champions 'classic style' writing—prioritizing active, visual language. Focus on clear actions (who did what to whom). For example, use 'they fled' instead of 'the migration of'. This plain, simple style is more effective because it creates a visual impact.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I'm a big believer in what Steven Pinker, who is this Harvard cognitive linguist who I love, has surfaced as classical style, classic style, which is an obsessive focus on active language, Visual active language. We can get so caught up in ideas and concepts when we write. And for me, the way that people actually want to be communicated to is with very clear who did what to whom, what happened, what is the, who is acting and what are they acting towards? What are they doing? And so I'll often say things like, they fled, instead of leading to the migration of 6,000 Mormons to the Western United States. Like the migration of is a concept. They fled is an action. It is people doing a thing. And our brains can see that. They can see people fleeing. David Perell Yeah. Johnny Harris You know, it's a totally different way of writing. And it's often more plain and simple, but it hits. It hits our visual brain. Steven Pinker's got this great book, Sense of Style, where he unpacks this. And it is my entire Bible of writing
Johnny Harris's team is primarily a production company, composed of editors, animators, and a visual producer bridging pre- and post-production. A few researchers help with pre-production. A business operation handles production coordination and business growth. The team consists of self-taught, adaptable individuals rather than traditional TV professionals.
Transcript: Johnny Harris How's the team structured? It's mostly a production company. It's editors, animators, and then we have a visual producer who kind of helps bridge the gap between pre-production and post-production, and then we have a few pre-pro people, researchers, Who help surface information. And then there's a business side, a business operation, which is production coordination, but also is then overseas the business side, which we're trying to grow a little bit better. But it's mostly a production company with technicians, who are a lot of people like me, they're self-taught, kind of scrappy resourceful. Like, I don't hire from traditional TV.'s people who can who are up for anything but now what I have to do is articulate and communicate what has always been in my head I've done that now
Johnny Harris designates a 'sacred' writing block from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., 3-4 days a week. During this time, he eliminates all distractions like meetings, Slack, email, to maximize focus and productivity. He considers these blocks essential to his creative process.
Transcript: Johnny Harris My entire world is framed around a writing block from 9 to 2 p.m. Or 9 a.m. To 2 p.m. That is my entire life. There's no meetings. There's no Slack. There's no email. There's no nothing between 9 and 2 p.m. Usually three days a week, sometimes four. That is where it all gets done. And those are sacred. Like, no one, like, that is where it all happens. And so my entire world is just these writing blocks. And they're very disciplined and they're very urgent. And the whole system works if I can hit those blocks.
To create tension, 'load up the icon with motives.' Introduce a character or group ('icon') and explain their motivations, intentions, and worries. Then, introduce another entity with their own set of motivations. This creates tension and allows the viewer to anticipate conflict or interaction.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I call this loading up the icon with motives. Wait, what does that mean? We see this little icon called the Mormons, and it represents this community. And I'm going to load them up with motivation and intentions and worry. I'm basically going to tell the viewer, this is their agenda. This is what they need. And then I'm going to load up the federal government with intention and motivation and motion. And now the stage is set. The viewer can say, OK, the Mormons are scared of the federal government and they want to make sure they don't shut down their spiritual vision. The federal government is set on expanding. There's tension here. And over time, this process unfolds where the big federal government slowly starts to move west. And we know that the Mormons are scared. And we can feel that now because we've loaded each of these up with motivation. Nice. And connections.
Create a 'shame draft' by translating your script onto a timeline. Include the complete voiceover or on-camera audio and screenshots corresponding to the visuals. Add music to watch the draft and give feedback on flow and length. This allows for efficient editing and refinement.
Transcript: Johnny Harris The shame draft is where we translate this script onto a timeline. It is all the voice. So it's the left column completely articulated with on camera or voiceover. And then it is screenshots of the right column happening in time. So I say the word and I can now watch it. And I can see what I directed as it plays. And there's music. And so I can actually watch it and we can actually give feedback on the flow of the video and the length and we can cut it down and it's one step.
When critiquing something, weave in unexpected praise to show you're not on a one-sided rant. People are tired of rants. Instead of condemning, acknowledge positive aspects alongside criticisms. This nuanced approach adds complexity and authenticity, reflecting how life truly is.
Transcript: Johnny Harris One thing I like to do is weave in unexpected praise to things that I'm criticizing. To show that I'm not just purely on a one-sided rant to condemn something. That's just too easy. And people are, I mean, they're kind of tired of it. So I could have easily just been like the Mormons and they brainwashed me and da-da Instead, I say in a beautiful valley surrounded by these massive mountains. And that's authentic. I loved that experience being in that beautiful valley. And yet, in the same sentence, the next clause is feeling close to the specific sugar-coated version of this history that I was taught. That's a juxtaposition in one sentence. Beautiful valley, I was brainwashed. Life is complicated.
Match the art direction of your video to the story it's telling. Consider how you'll use archival materials, photos, and other visual elements to enhance the narrative. Keep a separate tab for 'art ingredients' and jot down notes for visual elements as you write.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Every single video has its own art direction that suits the story. And so right here, what are we going to do with archive, archival videos and photos? Well, for the stills, we are going to use mysterious cryptic symbols. Going to frame our photos like this. While I'm writing the story and something pops into my head, I go over to the art ingredients that I have in another tab and I write notes.
Johnny Harris's YouTube channel intentionally avoids a fixed art direction, opting for a fresh look for every video. This approach allows for unique visual styles tailored to each video's theme. They develop a mood board with color palettes, title templates, animation styles, and set design inspirations. This helps the team establish a shared vocabulary and ensures consistent execution of the vision.
Transcript: Johnny Harris The channel doesn't have an art direction like I don't have a branding package. Because we like to do it fresh every time. We like to make a new art direction for each one. So this is an art direction for a future video the one I was just talking about, actually. Oh, this one's about why you're so bored. So you can see there's a color palette. There are some of these title templates or some of these inspiration for the signs that we're going to animate. There's a set design. There is animation style, this collage. Some of these are from previous videos we've made. David Perell Now for the set design, hold on, it says similar to So Tired, a bit moody, some scientific posters in the background, think brains, practicals, analog tech, natural history, museum-like Clutter. One of the things that I see you doing is you're really writing out the vibe as well as showing it and really trying to make that concrete. Johnny Harris Yeah. Having a vernacular and a vocabulary with the team is so important. And I didn't have that for the first few years of having a team. And so it was there was disconnect and it was bad. Meaning for me, because I didn't know how to communicate the vision. We're now a few years in and the team knows cozy, like, like moody, blah, blah, blah.
Johnny Harris's video production, initially scaled to a well-oiled machine producing four videos a month, eventually drained his passion. He realized he's the bottleneck: his obsession fuels the magic that resonates with viewers. Now, they've accepted a production ceiling, focusing on projects that ignite his passion while launching other channels using the same process.
Transcript: Johnny Harris We learned a few years ago when we were scaling the business and, you know, is built basically an organization around what I was doing and really elevated it to become a professional Organization. But it hit a limit where we tried to optimize and delegate and delegate. And we were making a video a week. We were making four videos a month. And we had 17 videos going. And it was like a well-oiled machine. And we learned that that slowly started to suck the magic out of me. I started to hate it because I was showing up and kind of manufacturing my passion to a degree. I was still deciding the stories, but it was less control. And so we dialed back and sort of embraced the fact that I'm going to be a bottleneck. Like I am a bottleneck because if I'm obsessed with it then it will have some magic to it that like will the people will like and we can do it. And that does put a ceiling on how much we can make and we've sort of accepted that. And now what we're doing is we're bottling what is this built which is this organization and we're now launching other channels under the same production process. But I have to feel it in my belly or I quickly get drained. But when I love this stuff, I have this sort of eternal energy for it. Not eternal. It wears me down, but I fucking love it.
When creating YouTube video titles, treat them as a promise to the viewer. Begin with "how" or "why" to tap into viewers' curiosity and address their desire for problem-solving content. Brainstorm seven or more titles and select the most clickable option that reflects a problem the video solves.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Title options a video has to be marketable and that is a thing that that's a constraint that I operate under which is like what are we going to call this why are people going to click it a Couple million people have to be interested in this and so I do seven titles or more you know, and this is the promise. And the wording is very important. It's a promise. Often it starts with how or why. Every one of these besides number two starts with how or why. Because we're in the business of answering questions and explaining processes, the how and the why. So that's a standard one. And people on YouTube are curious, and they click to have an answer to a problem.
Don't just refine one version of your content. Create multiple distinct versions and A/B test them to see what resonates with your audience. For example, test drastically different themes like "maps" vs. "Illuminati".
Transcript: Johnny Harris Now that there's A-B testing, we want to have very different directions so we can test. Did the people want the map or did they want the Illuminati? Whereas before we were always tinkering with just one kind of direction and like refining it. Now we try multiple different directions.
A story is a promise to the audience that something will be revealed. The content of the story should fulfill the promise made in the title or introduction, so they don't feel misled. It should deliver on the anticipation it creates.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Every story is effectively a promise. What makes someone pay attention to a story is anticipation that they are going to be, that some promise is going to be fulfilled. So how Mormons stole the West or whatever is a promise that I am going to explain how Mormons stole the West. And so I need to make sure that this somewhat fulfills that. Otherwise, the packaging could be so overly disconnected from what is fulfilled in the video that people feel betrayed.
A story is a promise to the audience that their anticipation will be fulfilled. The content needs to deliver on this promise to prevent viewers from feeling betrayed.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Every story is effectively a promise. What makes someone pay attention to a story is anticipation that they are going to be, that some promise is going to be fulfilled. So how Mormons stole the West or whatever is a promise that I am going to explain how Mormons stole the West. And so I need to make sure that this somewhat fulfills that. Otherwise, the packaging could be so overly disconnected from what is fulfilled in the video that people feel betrayed.
Technical topics should be grounded in human experience. Remind the audience that these stories are about people and not just abstract ideas. Switch between 'thinky' and 'feely' tones to make the presentation more engaging. This blend of cognitive stimulation and emotional connection helps people remember the story longer.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I deal in a lot of technical stuff, macroeconomics and international relations jargon. And one thing I really want always is that it is grounded at some point to the fact that this is about humans, this is about people, it's not just about ideas. So I will often do this pivot from like very technical history, play by play writing to a reminder that there's tension and complexity and gray area at the heart of a lot of these stories That are in the news are often reduced down into big forces and sort of nameless, faceless, soulless entities. The government did this, da da da da. And I also believe that it is a sweet and sour experience where people will get some kind of cognitive stimulation from learning, but then you can transfer to this other tone that is softer, Less precise, and people get something out of that as well. And switching between the two from like a cognitive or thinky tone to a feely tone is in music and with visuals and in language, to me, makes the presentation more engaging, more compelling. I think people remember it for longer. They remember what they felt.
Viewers want to be challenged, but also feel included. Acknowledge their intelligence while introducing them to new information. Use clear and accessible language when explaining complex topics. Avoid jargon and write for your audience, not your peers.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I think that it's how viewers want to be spoken to. I think they want to be challenged, but at the same time they want to be let in. They want to be to as like, hey, I know you're smart. You can get this, but like you may not know about this. Let me show you. It's another hallmark of the classic style that Pinker talks about, and it is let me show you, and then directing their gaze to interesting things and describing them in plain ways that Are accessible. But within that, we're discussing a lot of rigorous, deep, complex stuff. But it's in this way that invites people in instead of makes them feel like, oh, this is only for the smart people. And journalists often will use language that is meant for their peers, not for their audience. They will say, look at how much I know I'm really smart, and I need my peers at the other journalism outlets to know that I'm not speaking in plain language. And that to me is like, that is the curse of a lot of writing, but especially writing that is meant for the masses, but often turns into this sort of gatekeeper writing for peers instead Of audience.
Don't overestimate your audience's context but don't underestimate their intelligence. Assume they don't know much, but treat them as intelligent by providing context and challenging them.
Transcript: David Perell Cleo Abram has a line where she says that most people overestimate how much context the audience has and underestimates their intelligence. Yes. And you should do the opposite. Johnny Harris You should flip it. David Perell Say, most people have no idea what it is that we're talking about. They just don't have the context, but they're actually really smart. And if you talk to them like they're smart, give them the context, but then talk to them like they're smart. And that doesn't mean use big words, but actually, like you're saying, challenge them and push them to understand something that's a little bit more challenging.
Effective storytelling uses foreshadowing to give viewers a glimpse of what's to come, keeping them engaged and wanting more.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Good storytelling is always saying like foreshadowing and kind of letting you see a little bit ahead but then so that you are compelled to stick around and be engrossed in the now
David Perell recalls a 2015-2016 Vox interview with Barack Obama, set in a black room with animations, which seemed futuristic for its time. Johnny Harris adds that this interview coincided with his start in the field.
Transcript: David Perell I remember vividly, Vox did an interview with Barack Obama in like 2015, 2016. It's got this black room and then it's got these animations and it felt like five years in the future. Johnny Harris Oh my goodness. That interview was being made right as I started.
YouTube prefers straightforward, relatable, and conversational language. It rewards content that feels human and avoids overly complex or pompous language.
Transcript: Johnny Harris YouTube is the original show-and platform. And so it is already a place where it's a very warm room for let me show you this. That inviting, clear, plain language, there's not a lot of tolerance for pontificating and for, you know, like, like kind of really laborious language. And so I really believe that like, the more human you can make it, and the more relatable and conversational, the more concrete, like the more the platform will reward it.
Don't communicate with common, overused words. Instead, use surprising, plain language, even if it's harder to find. It's like climbing out of a canal to write on the bank–more challenging, but it helps people see a boring topic in a new way.
Transcript: Johnny Harris Which is like the history of some British person exploring Antarctica the technology around satellite mapping. Like you could just jargon the hell out of that. I thought, what if we put the lens of pure beauty and awe on and we looked through that and we described everything almost as if like an alien was arriving and saying like, how did they do This? Like, and then they use all this unorthodox language. The intro kind of does that. But as the piece goes on, I think the analogy here, I don't know if this will work, but like is a canal. And most of us want to communicate in the bottom of the canal. That's the path of least resistance. That's what we've heard. We've heard the words a million times in the bottom of the canal. If you want to do surprising language, you have to climb up the wall of the canal and you have to be writing on the bank of the canal. And it's harder. And it's like, you're kind of like always sort of climbing up there to find language that's fresh and new to describe the same stuff. And it's often more active and more plain. But boy, when you do it, someone can relate and see a topic that could be so boring in this totally different, surprising way.
The Economist excels at identifying interesting details that people want to know. For instance, in an interview with Syria's new rebel leader, they mentioned the echoing emptiness of his palace, five times the size of the White House, and the lack of staff to even serve coffee. These small, human details bring the geopolitical story to life and convey a stronger sense of the leader's challenges.
Transcript: David Perell How has all the time you spent reading The Economist factored into what we've spoken about? Johnny Harris So The Economist is a very good example of classic style, where they will describe things as this person did something, as opposed to like describing it in these sort of conceptual jargon Terms. And they'll usually do it in really plain, quippy terms. The economist does a really good job of identifying what is interesting about a topic and then doing the work to find the details that people actually want to know, which is a lot more Work, and surfacing those. David Perell What's an example of that? Johnny Harris The economist just did an interview, the first interview actually, with the new Syrian leader, the rebel leader who threw out Assad and is now effectively running the country. And that piece describes the context and it goes through the history and all this stuff. But then it will suddenly say, like, he's got a tough job in front of him. The palace, which is five times larger than the White House, echoes with emptiness. And there wasn't even staff to serve coffee. That was a moment, a human moment, where we're talking about the geopolitics of the Middle East. Wow. We're talking about, and then we are able to just drop into this room and see this new leader in this giant palace that is echoing because it's empty and that there's not even someone there To serve coffee. And this guy is supposed to unify Syria and start a new country. And that just, oh, like those moments, those little details, you have to be brave to include that because it might you know like that's sort of a weird thing to say but it it's the exact Kind of visual concrete example that i want to hear to understand the vibe of what's going on with this guy most people are reporting it as like he has taken power and is now trying to unify The country
Johnny Harris admires The Economist for its ability to present rigorous analysis while showing the human impact on individuals. He strives for a similar approach, but with a greater focus on peer-to-peer sharing in his work.
Transcript: Johnny Harris The way the economist is able to surface, there's a person here who actually has to do things and they're struggling is while also weaving in really rigorous analysis. I learn a lot from and then I also take inspiration from. I would say my work is much more peer-to sharing ethic than The Economist.
Good writing and storytelling can bring any topic to life, from anthropology to food. The key is to see the potential in everything and breathe life into it through infectious enthusiasm. Every subject has a story waiting to be told.
Transcript: David Perell When it comes to writing? Johnny Harris Yuval Harari in Sapiens is a fantastic way of taking the wonkiest anthropology evolutionary science and turning it into highly accessible concrete language. I love Steven Pinker and the way that he writes. I love Michael Pollan. He writes from a very strong sort of... John Green is a favorite because of the way that he takes mundane things and dresses them up. David Perell Okay. So the core thing that's happening here is there's a deep belief that you have that you can basically take anything. And that with good writing and good storytelling, you can make that thing come alive. Whether it's Harari's anthropology, whether it's Michael Pollan talking about food and plants. And that that is actually the work of what good writing is, is to see the sense of possibility in something and to breathe life into it. Johnny Harris Yes. And what is so beautiful about that is that there is endless subject matter. Because everything is interesting. Everything is interesting. Everything has a story. It just needs to have that life breathed into it. And as a storyteller, you are able to create an infectious sense of enthusiasm that can bring someone in.
It doesn't matter what the topic is as much as the approach to it. A channel's mission can be to model curiosity itself.
Transcript: Johnny Harris I don't have a beat. I do international stuff, but like I do the history of Mormons and I talk about Doritos and I talk about, you know, the psychology of boredom. Like it doesn't matter what the topic is. It matters what the approach is to thinking about it. And that to me is the great mission of the channel is modeling curiosity.
Scott was invited to be a regular guest on a CNN Sunday morning show, but he declined. His reasoning? The show's audience is too old, and the effort wouldn't be worthwhile in reaching his target demographic of young people seeking economic security.
Transcript: Scott Galloway A woman I really respect a lot who has a, I believe it's a Sunday morning show on CNN, asked me to come on every week and do this thing like, what's on your mind, where I talk for six to 10 minutes. And I said, I've done the math. No one 25 to 54 is watching CNN. And for me to do the work I would need to do because I like you and I think you're smart, it's just not worth, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And I would have killed to go on Anderson Cooper or Michael Smirconish or Stephanie Rule, by the way, all three friends, all wonderful people, or any of these guys. I occasionally go on Chris Cuomo because I like, I only go on with my friends. I know I'm name dropping right now, but it's just not worth it. The people I'm trying to reach, I'm trying to reach a young man. I'm trying to reach young people that want to develop economic security. And guess what? They're not watching fucking CNN. Get this, the average age, the average person watching MSNBC is a 70-year white woman.
📰 You Don't Need More Online Courses by Tintin Smith
there are three real value adds I think beyond more information:
Accountability
Motivation and emotional support (preventing overwhelm)
Personal guidance specific to them
If you’re considering doing 1:1 coaching for your viewers, don’t underestimate the power of those three things.
March 24
🎧 Sam Corcos Shares 3 Rules for Life via Matt D’Avella’s Three Rules
Many people have lost the true meaning of work. In physical labor like masonry, the output is tangible (e.g., a finished wall). But with knowledge work, the output can be intangible and even nonexistent ("vaporware").
Transcript:
Sam Corcos
So many people have lost even the definition of what work means. What does it mean to actually do work? So that's, it's so different in knowledge work. Because when you're a mason, when you're doing masonry, like you know what the output of your work is. When you're building a house, you expect to have a house at the end of it. In knowledge work, it can just be vaporware and nobody knows any different.
🎧 Dopamine Nation and the Age of Digital Drugs — With Dr. Anna Lembke - Prof G Pod
Experiencing a huge surge of dopamine leads to the brain down-regulating dopamine transmission below baseline levels, resulting in a dopamine deficit state—the addicted brain. In this state, more of the addictive substance is needed not to get high, but to return to baseline and feel normal. It also causes a constant craving state and universal withdrawal symptoms like anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, and craving.
Transcript: Anna Lembke, MD Try to avoid those types of situations where you would be exposed to like all of the love, because ultimately what happens with that huge surge of dopamine is that our brain compensates By down-regulating dopamine transmission, not just to tonic baseline levels, but actually below baseline. We go into a dopamine deficit state. That is the addicted brain. Now we need more of our drug in more potent forms, not to get high and feel good, but just to sort of level our balance, go back to baseline and feel normal. And we're in a constant state of craving. Plus, we're experiencing the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any addictive substance, which are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, dysphoria, and craving. Getting more of our drug temporarily relieves that, but it doesn't last very long and actually makes the problem worse.
Monetary gain activates the same reward pathways in the brain as drugs and other pleasurable stimuli. This can lead to addiction-like behaviors around money.
Transcript: Anna Lembke, MD Monetary gain lights up the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol.
Embrace the things that are painful and difficult in the short term. In the long run, this will improve your well-being and overall life.
Transcript: Anna Lembke, MD The antidote is to do the thing that's painful and difficult in the short term because in the long term, it will make us feel better and it will make our lives better.
Most people can moderate their consumption of potentially addictive things. However, 10-20% develop addictions, a severe brain disease that can lead them to sacrifice everything for their fix. It's hard to grasp this unless experienced firsthand or through a loved one.
Transcript: Anna Lembke, MD The vast majority of people who gamble will not get addicted to gambling. And that's true for any drug, right? So most people will be able to moderate their use. But as with drugs and alcohol, about 20, well, 10 to 20 percent of folks who consume will develop an addiction. An addiction is a brain disease, a very serious and potentially life-threatening one. And until you've either experienced it yourself or seen it in somebody you care about deeply, it's really hard to imagine how people could get to a place where they would sacrifice everything In pursuit of their drug. But that's exactly what happens.
Addiction risk is influenced by nature (inherent vulnerability, drug of choice), nurture (co-occurring disorders, trauma), and neighborhood (ease of access to the addictive substance).
Transcript: Anna Lembke, MD What is the vulnerability there? What is the difference? And the risks I usually classify into nature, nurture, and neighborhood. So nature, some people are inherently more vulnerable than others, but as we've talked about, drug of choice matters. If you meet your drug of choice and it's gambling, you may never get addicted to alcohol, but gambling may just be the end of you. Co-occurring psychiatric disorders put people at risk because of a kind of a self-medication myth and cycle. We know that trauma contributes to the risk of addiction. That's the nurture part of it. But also neighborhood is really key. And this is, again, the ecosystem that we live in. The easier it is to get your drug of choice, the more of it you'll use, the more you'll change your brain, and the more likely you will be to develop a very serious addiction.
March 19
📰 My AI Toolkit by Khe Hy
here’s my current toolkit.
My "Core AI" toolkitChatGPT Pro version ($200/month) I took the plunge on the expensive version to ensure that I was always using the latest features. Right now I'm pumped to try Operator and GPT 4.5, their newest model. → OpenAI
Claude Pro ($20/month) I generally like Anthropic's Claude for anything that requires emotion and a more *human touch.* Claude is the perfect companion for my coaching work and writing. → Anthropic
Perplexity (Free version) I haven't done a Google search in 6 months. Since ChatGPT and Claude have "cut off dates" (meaning their models don't get updated beyond a certain date), Perplexity is always scraping the latest web pages for the most timely data. It's great for current events and product reviews. I particularly like the Mac App which lets me do a new search using *CMD + Shift + P.* → Perplexity.ai
Cursor ($20/month) I don't know how to code, but write AI-generated code on a daily basis (also known as vibe coding). Cursor not only writes the files but helps you create the dependencies (i.e. link everything together), test and compile (i.e. build) your web apps. I'm using it mostly for web tools (like this Home Ownership Calculator) and I'm working on a networking app. → Cursor
Fireflies ($20/month) Fireflies provides transcription for Zoom calls. The transcripts are clean and I then anonymize them and add them to my various projects on Claude and ChatGPT. → Fireflies
📰 No, Everything Doesn't Have to Suck by Paul Millerd
Struggle = life is the default assumption, but it doesn’t have to be the only option I am enthusiastic about sharing this alternative perspective because I went more than 30 years without knowing it was possible. Before I quit my job, every decision I made assumed that I would have to struggle.
We are at 0% risk of people not being aware that struggle, hard work, and grinding are available as options. This is the default perspective on work, it’s the water in which we swim.
For the last 7-8 years I’ve been working at a modest pace on stuff I’ve cared about, never come close to burning out, have opted out of pushing harder at almost every opportunity, and have changed course several times when I felt I was grinding toward things that didn’t matter.
When things didn't feel right, I stopped. Now I want to keep writing books because it's satisfying.
📰 I Tried AI Coding Tools. Now I Want to Learn to Code. by Every
With AI-powered coding tools like Cursor, Replit, and my personal favorite, Lovable, anyone—even someone like me, with zero programming experience—can build functional applications just by describing what they want. In other words, based on the vibes.
So when our engineering lead Andrey Galko suggested I check out Lovable, a new AI-powered app builder that bills itself as “the last piece of software,” I figured, why not? I pulled up the site, created an account, and when the chat window opened up, I typed a single prompt: "Create a website for a writer, editor, and content strategist who specializes in thought leadership for early-stage startups, builders, and VCs."
I was juggling a comic book movie cast’s worth of tools—none of which I would have touched even a month ago:
Lovable (the AI website builder)
GitHub (where code lives)
Supabase (a backend database solution I barely understand)
OpenAI (makers of top LLMs like ChaGPT 4.5)
Resend (for sending emails, theoretically)
Zapier (for tying things into my workflow)
AI coding tools give you a shortcut to the finished product, but they don’t teach you the mechanics that keep it running.
There's a strange psychological tension that emerges when AI lets you "build" rather than buy.
Everyone will have their own answers to that question, and plenty of people won’t want to spend their one wild and precious life wallowing in code, AI-generated or otherwise. I’m not going to bother building a content repurposing tool, for example—why would I? Spiral gets the job done better than I ever could.
📰 Education Is Broken. This Might Be the Solution. by David Perell
Mastery learning simply means that you don't move onto the next level until you know the material from the previous one. It's the opposite of how schools work right now. In traditional learning, time is fixed (everyone gets exactly one school year for algebra) while learning is variable (some kids get A's, others get C's). In mastery learning, it's flipped: learning is fixed (everyone masters the material) while time is variable (some finish in three weeks, others in three months).
Learning researchers call this the Zone of Proximal Development. It’s why 1-on-1 tutoring works so well. The problem with traditional lectures is that teachers need to teach to the average, which means that most students don’t get what they need.
what does Alpha do? They’ve transformed teachers into coaches and motivators. The apps and AI handle the information delivery and customize it for each student, leaving teachers to do what they do best (and signed up for in the first place): connect, inspire, mentor, and motivate students.
Everybody will call EdTech a panacea, but it’s only part of the solution. Motivation plays a far more important role, which is why the people I know at Alpha are always asking: “How can we get kids to love school?”
📰 He Built His Own Encyclopedia. He Says Learning Everything Isn’t Everything via Every
Reading about arcane topics and meticulously taking notes is not a good strategy for getting things you want out of life. There just isn’t enough time to follow every curiosity. And to make a more subversive claim, the publishing industry is very clever about getting the attention of intelligent people, so we have to be especially vigilant of where we’re spending our intellect. Don’t be a collector of information.
The right way to think about productivity priorities should look something like this: Fifty percent of your energy should go to your physical and mental health well-being. That’s sleep, nutrition, training, stress management, chronic disease, mental disorders, relationships, etc. If any of these are not working, they can quickly become a major setback to your career even though it’s entirely divorced from your skills. ... Forty-five percent should be work. To be slightly hyperbolic, the alarming wealth inequality statistics are an indication of vast skill differences in people’s ability to create value; most of us are producing infinitesimal amounts of value for the world. ... Then, the last 5 percent can go to productivity apps and hacks. Marginally improving efficiency of your annual output is irrelevant if your total output is still a rounding error.
for knowledge workers, you’ll get a higher ROI thinking about whether you’re working on the right things then thinking about how to work on things faster.
📰 Beautiful vs. Practical Advice by Morgan Housel
The book *How Buildings Learn* writes that architects fancy themselves as artists, but people who occupy buildings do not want art; they want a building to work in: > Art must experiment to do its job. Most experiments fail. Art costs extra. How much extra are you willing to pay to live in a failed experiment? Art flouts convention. Convention became conventional because it works. Aspiring to art means aspiring to a building that almost certainly cannot work, because the old good solutions are thrown away. The roof has a dramatic new look, and it leaks dramatically. The book cites renowned architects like I.M. Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright for designing buildings admired by everyone except their occupants, whose feelings tend towards frustration and disgust. Frank Lloyd Wright once said of his infamously leaky roofs: “If the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough” – an amusing comment to everyone but those living in his homes.
📰 The Point of This World by Austin Kleon
The book *How Buildings Learn* writes that architects fancy themselves as artists, but people who occupy buildings do not want art; they want a building to work in:
Art must experiment to do its job. Most experiments fail. Art costs extra. How much extra are you willing to pay to live in a failed experiment? Art flouts convention. Convention became conventional because it works. Aspiring to art means aspiring to a building that almost certainly cannot work, because the old good solutions are thrown away. The roof has a dramatic new look, and it leaks dramatically.
The book cites renowned architects like I.M. Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright for designing buildings admired by everyone except their occupants, whose feelings tend towards frustration and disgust. Frank Lloyd Wright once said of his infamously leaky roofs: “If the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough” – an amusing comment to everyone but those living in his homes.
March 14
🎧 Trump Term Limits, TikTok Status Check, and Scott's Presidential Prospects - Pivot Pod
Scott's advice for handling jet lag:
1. Don't fly in just for one night; stay longer to adjust.
2. Avoid alcohol, especially on the plane.
3. Drink plenty of water to hydrate.
4. Exercise as soon as you arrive, even if it's just a quick workout.
5. Get some sun exposure if possible.
Transcript: \"Scott Galloway\" And I also don't fly into places just for the night any longer. I'll go somewhere and I'll stay one or two days to adjust. But I have some general go-tos that they say are what you're supposed to do. The first is I try not to drink alcohol, especially on the plane. I try to drink a ton of water and hydrate. As soon as I get to the place where I'm going, I try to work out. Even if it's just doing, I try and do 100 burpees in less than 12 or 14 minutes when I get into my hotel room if the gym's not open, but I try and immediately exercise. I find sweating really helps. And then if at all possible, even if it's just taking a walk, just going outside and putting my face in the sun for 10 to 12 months and some exercise slash sweating, hydration, and getting Your face, getting in the sun if there's sun wherever you are. But it's something I struggle with.
🎧 Lessons From Two Years of Marriage - Staying Up with Cammie and Taryn Arnold
Marriage isn't about two halves becoming one, but two whole individuals with different needs and desires, joining together. It's about acknowledging each other's individuality while working towards a unified whole.
Transcript: Cammie Scott Reminding me of part of my vows to you which was that I wanted to recognize that we are not two halves becoming one but we are two whole people joining this together and we have different Needs and wants and desires and it's like acknowledging those individuals and individual needs and making it one unity and and like how do we navigate that working like it's like a little Dance around totally the ball that is our relationship and lifting each other up for the greater good of the couple.
📰 AI Is Breaking Media. Here’s How Publishers Can Survive. by Every’s Evan Armstrong
The publishers at the very forefront will realize that *software is content*. Building and maintaining software products is much cheaper and easier than it used to be. An early version of this model is the *New York Times*, whose games section accounts for more time spent than its articles.
the new media strategy is AI-empowered creators as the face of the brand, with relatively few staff building out bundled product offerings.
📰 How to Price Your Work Without Undervaluing Your Worth by Anna Mackenzie
here are a few ways to come up with your number whether you’re quoting a day rate, fixed fee or retainer.
1. Price for your time Welcome to pricing for beginners! This is when you charge based on how much time it takes to complete a task.
2. Price for your speed This flips time-based pricing on its head and instead involves charging based on how quickly you can deliver.
I price on speed when someone needs a quick turnaround or wants to engage me for a project on an accelerated timeline. I estimate how much time it’ll take, multiply that by my day rate and add a speed premium of 50% (sometimes more depending on the circumstances). I don’t communicate this fee breakdown but justify my rate by emphasising the value of getting faster results.
3. Price for your impact The best but hardest way to price! This involves setting your fee based on the estimated value your work delivers, with value being defined as revenue generation, costs saved, risks reduction, brand building, customer acquisition…the list goes on.
I estimate the potential upside of my work (let’s say $500k over 3 years) and quote my fee as a % of that total. It’s tricky and I’m still learning, but so far overall I’m up.
🎧 Chelsea Handler on Men, Trump & Money - On with Kara Swisher
If you're a comedian who makes a living by being yourself, you have to show the good, bad, and the ugly. Honesty is key to connecting with your audience, and it's important to be authentic and truthful in your work. Be intentional about making people laugh, inspiring them, and sometimes even making them cry.
Transcript: Chelsea Handler If you're not being authentically who you are, if you're me and you make a living at being yourself, you have to be very honest. I have to show all the good, the bad, the ugly. That's what the people that respect me and are looking to consume my stuff are looking for is honesty. And that is what I base everything off of. I'm going to give you the honest truth of what's happening in my life right now. I'm going to make you laugh. I'm going to hopefully inspire you. And I'm probably going to make you cry too. And I'm going to do all of those things. And I'm going to be very intentional about it.
March 13
📰 Correspondence on Cassette by James Gurney
In the 1980s, my wife Jeanette and I kept in touch with our faraway friends by recording long-form audio cassettes and mailing them around a network of about a half dozen studios. Link to recording on YouTube.
March 12
📰 The Many Lives of Anne Frank by John Warner
I can stop telling people about Ruth Franklin’s literary biography *The Many Lives of Anne Frank.*
*The Many Lives of Anne Frank* does what the best books do, cause the reader to see the world around them through a fresh, enriched perspective. Given that I can’t stop talking *about* the book, I thought I’d try to talk *to* the author of the book.
On March 29, 1944, Anne writes in her diary about hearing a minister from the Dutch government in exile call for citizens to preserve their private documents from the war years for inclusion in a future national archive. He explicitly says that history can’t be written on the basis of official documents alone; documentation from private citizens is necessary. Anne immediately thought of her own diary, imagining a future audience who would be interested to learn “how we Jews lived and what we ate and talked about here.”
📰 Cultivating a Deep Life Mindset by Scott Young and Cal Newport
The deep life is not an ambitious one-shot goal, like completing a marathon, that you work hard at until you one day obtain it all at once. It’s a state of being with which you become increasingly comfortable.
March 10
🎧 Tyler Cowen: The Most Practical Conversation on AI Writing - How I Write
Want to understand the big questions better? Instead of passively rereading complex texts, actively experiment with AI tools. Practical use, seeing what works and what doesn't, is a more effective way to progress your thinking.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen If you want to make progress on thinking about the very big questions, simply using it, experimenting it, seeing what works and fails will get you much further than sitting on your duff And rereading Heidegger.
Tyler Cowen uses AI as secondary literature when prepping for podcasts. When researching a British historian specializing in Richard II and Henry V, instead of buying 20-30 books, he bought 2-3 and used LLMs to gain context faster. As the interviewer, minor hallucinations from the AI don't affect him, enabling him to do more podcasts.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen I use AI when I read things. So I use it as the secondary literature. So I'm preparing a podcast for a British historian. She does History of Richard II and Henry V. Now, in the old days, I would have ordered and paid for 20 to 30 books on those kings. Now, maybe I've ordered and paid for two or three on those kings, but I'll keep on interrogating the best LLMs about the topics of her books. Helen Castor is the historian and just keep on going. I acquire the context much more quickly. It's pretty accurate. Keep in mind, I'm the questioner. So if there's a modest degree of hallucination, it doesn't matter for me. I'm not giving the answers. And I can now do many more podcasts than I used to because I'm using AI for my prep. Okay.
Use large language models (LLMs) as companions while rereading Shakespeare. They've been trained on his works and the secondary literature, so they can offer valuable insights and interpretations.
Transcript: David Perell What are the puzzles? That's an interesting question. Tell me about that. Tyler Cowen Well, Shakespeare's full of puzzles, right? Camille Paglia once said, if you look at Hamlet too closely, most of it just doesn't make sense. I'm not sure that's true, but she's a very smart woman and she studied Shakespeare quite a bit. And if she says that, you know Shakespeare is very hard to read. Any major, well-known, good Shakespeare play, you can read five to 10 times and still just you're beginning to get a handle on it. So you can reread it an infinite number of times. So it's very well suited for having a guide or companion who can talk you through it. And the major large language models, they've all read Shakespeare, right? It's in the public domain. And they seem to know the secondary literature quite well. You could just ask it a question, what are three or four major readings of what Hamlet meant in this speech? And it gives you an excellent answer.
Right now, the best single model is OpenAI's O1 Pro (paid). Claude is also very good. DeepSeek is useful and fun, but not reliable due to hallucinations; still, it's worth exploring.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen At the moment, this changes a lot over time, but O1 Pro is the single best model for doing this from OpenAI. That's the one you have to pay for. Claude is very good. DeepSeek is very useful and fun, not reliable in terms of hallucinations, but it should definitely be in your repertoire, so to speak.
Don't directly use AI for writing. Instead, use AI to provide background information on unfamiliar topics, which helps ensure your writing is informed and not 'flat out wrong.' Keep the writing your own, even if AI could write better.
Transcript: David Perell So writing with AI, are you using it to frame ideas or where are you using it in the writing process? Tyler Cowen I don't directly use AI for writing typically. Now, sometimes I do in the following sense. If I'm writing on a legal issue and I'm not a lawyer, I will ask a O-1 Pro for the relevant legal background to something I'm writing on. So I just wrote a column about declassifying classified documents. I don't know that law very well. I asked the AI for a lot of background on the topic. I didn't use what it gave me, but now I feel like I'm not an idiot on the topic. And what I wanted to say, whether or not it's correct, you can debate, but it's not what you would call flat out wrong. But I don't let it write for me. I want the writing to be my own. It's like my little baby, so to speak. I don't care. Whenever it's better than I am, I'm still not going to let it write for me. Also, a lot of the sources I write for wouldn't let me. I agree with that decision on their part, but even if they would let me, I wouldn't do it. There's ways you can use AI that will smooth out your writing, on average make it easier to understand. I don't want to do that. I want to be like Tyler Cowen, this weirdo.
Use AI to critique your writing by asking it to identify potentially obnoxious parts. It can point out areas where you might be supercilious or condescending, which can be helpful even for experienced writers. While useful for softening managerial critiques, be mindful of over-reliance, especially for external-facing writing where maintaining your voice is crucial.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen There was one use where Agnes Callard a while ago suggested this. She said, run your writing through the AI and ask it, is in here that some people are likely to find obnoxious? And explain to me in great detail what that is. And I did that, and it was right on target. You may or may not need that, but there was one part of something I'm writing. It was very obnoxious. I even pondered keeping it that way, but I decided to change it. And the AI pointed it out to me and explained why it was obnoxious and why I was being supercilious and condescending. I just thought, well, if the AI says that, there is some greater wisdom at work there. David Perell Yeah, I find it to be very good at telling me when something feels like callous or cold. It's like you didn't really think about that or it's like harsh or something like that. I know a lot of managers who, let's just say they have high tempers. And one of the ways that they're using AI is they'll give sharp critiques for people. They'll put in the AI, they'll say, hey, make it warm, clean it up. They'll copy and paste it. And they said that it's reduced conflict for them. Tyler Cowen Yeah. But again, I don't want to do that too much. And most of my writing, it's not managerial. If I wrote memos, I think I would do that a lot. I think it's extremely useful for many people. But for me, I'm mostly writing for just external audiences. And it still has to sound like me and sound like my thinking.
Start your AI prompt with a super long context-setting question. Use voice dictation to make this easier and more substantial. Shorter follow-up questions are okay. Treat AI as a decentralized system of interacting agents. Use multiple AIs to refine your prompts and create a dialogue.
Transcript: David Perell Part of the problem is that it's a text window that makes it feel like a text message. So people use text message lengths when in particular, the first context setting question should be super long. So one of the things that I'll do is I'll use voice dictation and I'll actually dictate it for a minute and a half, three minutes, get something very substantial. And my follow-up questions tend to be shorter, but my first one tends to be extremely long. And that's why I use voice dictation. So I can just get it all out. And I find that ChatGPT is quite good at sorting what's really important. Tyler Cowen Something a lot of people are doing. I haven't myself tried it yet. I suspect it works very well. They say they're using O3 Mini to write the prompt for them. And then they ask the full model and they get the prompt quickly. So just to think of it as a stacked device, not a single box, but a set of interacting agents that in a sense are trying to evolve toward a market with multiple agents that talk to each other, Correct each other, grade each other. When you view the AI as evolving toward a decentralized system of AIs, which is not there yet, but in the meantime, try to use it as if it were one. The way, like for humans, there's a republic of science, way smarter than Newton or Einstein or any one scientist. We're evolving toward that. We don't have it yet. But you're using AIs to bounce things off each other, so to speak, and have a dialogue where you're part of it.
There are three levels to understanding AI. First, are you using the best AI systems? Some of the best cost money. Second, do you grasp how reinforcement learning and other techniques allow AIs to constantly improve themselves? Many don't get this ongoing improvement. Third, do you understand how much better AIs will get as they develop their own markets, scientific inquiry institutions, and self-correction methods, like a 'republic of science'? This 'republic of science' is speculative but important. These self-built institutions will add immense value to AIs, just like they did for human endeavors. Some private projects are starting to build these AI institutions. Understanding these three levels is key to comprehending AI's massive impact.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen There's three layers of knowing stuff about AI. And most people don't get to any of them, actually. So layer one is, are you working with the very best systems? Some of them cost money. So that's a yes or a no, but that's important. Second question is, do you have an innate understanding of how it is through reinforcement learning and some other techniques that can improve themselves basically ongoing all the Time? A lot of people don't get that. They're impressed by what they see in the moment, but they don't understand the rate of improvement and why it's going to be so steady. Then the third question is, and this is fully speculative, but I believe in it very strongly, do you have an understanding of how much better AIs will be as they evolve their own markets, Their own institutions of science inquiry, their own ways of grading each other, self-correction, dealing with each other, and become, as I said before, this republic of science, The way humans did it, how much did it advance human science or literary criticism to build those institutions? Immensely. That's where most of the value-add is. So AIs, I believe, will do that. I think there are private projects now starting to do that. It's not a thing out there you can access. And when you understand all those three levels, it's like, oh my goodness, this is just a huge thing. And most people aren't even at level one.
Predictive books about the near future are less relevant now. It's better to cover those topics by writing frequently online, like on Substack or Twitter. Transcript: Tyler Cowen Predictive books, books about the near future, they don't make sense anymore. You've got to cover those by writing on this ultra high time frequency every day, every week, something like Substack blogging, Twitter. That's a big change. Some of the recent stuff I've written is about the more distant past that is frozen in history.
David Perell was researching immigration patterns in Buenos Aires. He initially tried to understand the data through tables of Italian cities and their changing populations over time. He found this difficult to process until he asked his AI tool to visualize it, which increased his information intake tenfold.
Transcript: David Perell So I was in Buenos Aires and I wanted to get a sense of the immigration patterns. I had to make a table for me of the different cities in Italy that people had come from and how it changed over time. And something about my ability to read that, it just wasn't working. It wasn't computing. And then I visualized it. And I ask it to make tables and to compare and contrast all the time. The amount of information that I'm inputting like that is at least up 10x.
Writers gotta make their work more personal. They're already doing it anyway.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen Writers will need to personalize more. I would say they already do. 100%.
In Tyler Cowen's PhD class, there isn't a textbook. Students must subscribe to a premium AI service (much cheaper). Their main grade comes from a paper where they're required to use and report AI usage, with the goal being to write the best paper possible, regardless of AI involvement.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen From my PhD class that I mentioned before, there is no assigned textbook. That saves them some money, but they have to subscribe to one of the better AI services. That costs them some money, but it's much less than what the text would cost. And then the main grade is based on a paper. They have to write a paper. They're required to use the AI in some fashion. They're required to report what they did. But I just tell them, your goal is to make the paper as good as possible. How much of it is yours? It's all yours from my point of view. Just like when you write with pen and paper or word processing, that's also all yours. But I want you to tell me what you did in part because I want to learn from what they did. David Perell Right. Tyler Cowen So I've done this in the past. I had a law class the year before where they had three papers. This was less radical. One of the three had to be with AI. The other two had to be them. And it's worked very well so far. And the students feel they learn a lot. Other classes tell them like that's cheating. But we all know there's some forthcoming equilibrium where you need to be able to do that, especially as a lawyer, I would say, but in most walks of life. So why not teach it now?
David Perell: What I'm not doing anymore is I don't read study Bibles. But where it still is lacking is if I speak to somebody who really knows it well themselves, their ability to ask the one question that really matters, the one takeaway, is completely Next level. And the AIs just aren't even close to that. I agree.
Your human network's value has increased significantly due to AI. While AI can be a powerful tool, you'll still need people to mobilize resources, whether it's funding or personnel. The most productive individuals will have a huge advantage due to AI, but they’ll rely even more on their network to bring their projects to life. So, networking is more crucial than ever.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen If you want to get things done, you'll need to mobilize resources. The AI per se can't lend you money, not yet at least. And you need humans, whether it's a venture capitalist or a philanthropist or whatever, someone who hires you. Your network of humans is not just like 20% more valuable. It could be 50x more valuable because the most productive people could be 50x, 5,000x more impactful because they have this free army of highly intelligent servants at their disposal. But to mobilize their projects, they'll need help from others. So networking, again, the value has gone up a lot more than people realize, even when people say, oh, I see the value of the network has gone up.
To prompt AI effectively, think like you're talking to an alien or a non-human animal. Be more literal and put yourself in that mindset. This 'emotional leap' makes prompting easier, especially for deep research where precise results matter. While basic queries don't need much prompting, it's crucial for complex tasks to give the right instructions.
Transcript: David Perell Do you have any simple rules for prompting? Like if you were teaching somebody, hey, here's how you should think about prompting, what are the things that you would tell them? Tyler Cowen Put humans out of your mind. Imagine yourself either speaking to an alien or maybe a non-human animal. Just feel a need to be more literal. If you're willing to do it, I don't think it's that hard, but you actually want to put yourself in that state of mind. It does require some sort of emotional leap that, for reasons of inertia, not everyone seems willing to make. But it's not a cognitively difficult project to prompt well that maybe is emotionally slightly challenging. And do you feel it's becoming more important or less important? Oh, that oscillates very rapidly. I would say with deep research, it's become much, much more important because you need to get exactly what you want and not too much blah, blah, blah. And it still might give you high quality something or other. But if that 10-page report is not what you wanted, why'd you do it? So for a lot of basic queries, it's much less important. You just get a smart answer no matter what. But for some of the very best stuff, it's exponentially increasing in value to give it the right instructions.
Tyler Cowen's two pieces of universal advice: Get more and better mentors, and work every day at improving the quality of your peer network. He emphasizes these points are valuable regardless of AI's presence.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen Two pieces of general advice, with or without AI in the world, that I think are pretty good for almost everyone is get more and better mentors and work every day at improving the quality Of your peer network. And those two things, I'd say they're more valuable in the AI rich world, but they were always good advice. They're good advice for virtually everyone. They don't require you to know much about the person. Those are my two universal pieces of advice that I give pretty much all the time.
Here's what Tyler Cowen uses and why:
O1 Pro: His most-used tool, especially for queries.
Deep Research (O1 Pro feature, uses O3): Impressive but less practical for him; better for generating longer reports. Experiment with it to learn its potential.
Claude: Best for writing; thoughtful, flexible, and versatile. The next version will be even better.
DeepSeek: Sends data to China, so be mindful of sensitive info. Excellent for creative tasks.
Gemini: Excels at handling long, complex documents, especially useful for legal work. On-device versions coming soon.
Transcript: David Perell Walk me through the sort of AI stack and the different reasons that you use different tools? Tyler Cowen I can tell you what I use. I'm not saying it's all you should use. You should use more and experiment with more to learn things. But I use O1 Pro the most. Deep Research, which is kind of an offshoot, is a feature of O1 Pro that actually is using O3. I know the labeling is complicated. They say they're going to clean that up. I think it's the single most impressive thing humans have built that is out there, but I don't use it that much. It's not that practical for me. It will do more to replace human labor than O1 Pro. O1 Pro is best for queries. Deep research is best for 10-page reports. I don't want it doing 10-page reports for me, for the most part, a bit when I teach. So that's not that much in my routine, but to learn what it can do, it's something you should spend a lot of time with. Claude is a wonderful mix of thoughtful, philosophical, dreamy, flexible, versatile. It's the best writer. You should use Claude a lot. The current Claude is already amazing. The next Claude is just going to be out of this world. So yeah, you should be doing Claude. Deep Seek, absolutely. Now you're sending things to China. My view is China knows a lot about me already. I'm not at all nervous about that. But don't, if you work for the military, the CIA, talk to some people, give it some thought. It's China, right? If I ask Deep Seek for a glorious description of eating a mofongo and the Chinese know I want that. I'm like, yes, I'd love to spread this to China. They don't know what mofongos are. Gemini can do some things other services cannot. I don't use it much because I'm not working with very long or thick documents. But if you are, it is often the best for a lot of legal work. And there will be versions of all these things soon where you're not sending your data to another company. That's limited the use of these for legal work in particular. You'll be able to do it on your own hard drive in some fashion. I'm not sure what the loss of value will be at first, but people are working on this a lot. It'll come soon. It's one thing that if you follow AI, you know is coming. Some people would say, I can't send my data to Gemini 2, Google, whatever. Okay, you can't, but pretty soon you won't have to. But Gemini is, there's some ways in which its multimodal capabilities and its ability to handle big, thick files. It's number one
A lot of future philanthropy should fund data for AIs, similar to Nat Friedman's work translating burnt scrolls into readable text.
Transcript: Tyler Cowen A lot of philanthropy in the future should just be paying for data to be fed into AIs. This is like what Nat Friedman is doing. That's right. And he's translating scrolls from burnt to readable.
📰 My Weirdest a/B Test Blew Everyone's Mind by Tom Orbach
Here’s one of the strangest A/B tests I’ve ever run: Put a blurred product screenshot behind your sign-up form. 🌫️ That’s it. That’s the marketing idea. When I was at privacy startup MineOS, our form completion rates jumped by 25% after replacing the default background with this beauty
📰 Roll Up Your Sleeves! by Austin Kleon
Morning pages: By my spot at the kitchen table I keep my old diaries and logbooks going back in 5-year increments — 2020, 2015, 2010, etc. — and if I have nothing to write about, I’ll dip into them and do a little time travel. Flipping through my logbook covering SXSW 2010 is particularly wild to me, because that was when I held my first book *Newspaper Blackout* in my hands for the first time. I was 26 years old! Life felt like it was just beginning. Salad days! (If you want to see my nerdy diary from that time, scroll down to the P.S. at the bottom of this letter.)
📰 How Knowledge Work Will Evolve in the AI Era via Every
We tell stories about why technology is bad. In the 19th century, people lamented the emergence of new diseases like “telephone ear,” “typewriters cramp,” and “bicycle back.”
A paper published recently by researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University surveyed 319 knowledge workers to understand how using AI affects their critical thinking. They found that these tools shift what “thinking critically” means in three main ways: ... From gathering information to verifying information. ... From solving problems to integrating AI output. ... From executing tasks to overseeing them.
📰 Vibe Check: Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code via Every
Claude Code and Cursor both use 3.7 Sonnet, but Claude Code is better
A new version of coding agent Cursor was released around the same time, but according to Every’s Klaassen, it’s not as good. “Cursor’s new version succumbs to 3.7 Sonnet’s power and goes off in wild directions, not following instructions nor reading the right files,” he says. “Claude Code is tamed better, but they use the same model under the hood. So it's really about how they use the model and the tool calling structure on top..”
📰 Three Weeks With in-Laws and Zero Meltdowns by Priya Nain
"Beta, you don't have to worry about anything that can be fixed with a lil bit, or even a lot of money later. Just worry about your work, your food, your routine AND being nice to your guests. If it's replaceable, it should not be your worry right now”
📰 Writers Who Have the "Juice" by John Warner
What we’re experiencing in these moments is an encounter with what I call a “unique intelligence.” As it happens, every single one of us is a unique intelligence, it’s just that not everyone is capable of transmuting that intelligence into a text that achieves this kind of connection.
Some writers just have the juice and in some cases, that fact was obvious to my subconscious from the get-go. Colson Whitehead is one of them. These are some others.
In my recent Chicago Tribune review of Weike Wang’s latest novel, *Rental House*, I explicitly said that Wang had the juice, and it was apparent to me with her first novel, *Chemistry*, which is written in a completely winning comedic dead pan. The story of a first-generation American PhD student of Chinese dissent who is struggling with trying to figure out what *she* wants in life, Wang’s humor smuggles in deep feeling.
The opening of Kiese Laymon’s *Long Division*, the story of Citoyen “City” Coldson crackles with energy and made me laugh three times in the first paragraph. Satire, metafiction, time travel, the legacy of Jim Crow, Laymon stuffs this novel with everything imaginable.
That Yaa Gyasi published a novel with the scope and complexity of *Homegoing* at age 27 is mind blowing. *Homegoing* follows eight generations of a family from present-day New York back to the origins of the African slave trade. I’ve recommended this book at least a dozen times and it’s never disappointed.
*A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall* by Will Chancellor takes an Olympic-level water polo player felled in a freak accident into the depths of the Berlin art scene and a series of unlikely and uncanny adventures. This is what I had to say in my review, later extracted for promotional purposes by the publisher.
The protagonist of *And Now You Can Go,* Ellis, a graduate student taking a break on a park bench, is soon accosted by a man who is enlisting her in a kind of murder suicided. By reciting poetry she’s memorized she manages to escape with her life, but the incident leaves her understandably unmoored. She spends the rest of the novel searching for the equilibrium she lost, but also maybe never had. Vida’s novels - including *Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name* and *We Run the Tides* - are quietly brilliant explorations of the intersection of women and a world that simmers with hostility.
📰 We Gave GPT-4.5 a Myers-Briggs Test. It’s an Extrovert. via Every
At Every, we write—a lot. GPT-4.5 is the first model that we have used that is at times legitimately a great writer. It hits a sweet spot Evan described as “not too hot, not too cold.” Previous models struggled with style: Too cold meant repeating rigid patterns typical of LLMs, overusing the same bland constructions like, “It's not X, it's Y.” Too hot meant slavishly mimicking provided examples without generalizing. GPT-4.5 strikes an impressive balance. “It feels like editing a writer who has a lot of talent but doesn’t necessarily know how to think through things,” says Evan. “GPT-4.5 has a sense of what's right—even if you couldn't articulate exactly why.”
Costs will continue to fall though through a process called distillation. Conversations with large models like GPT-4.5 can be used as “synthetic data” that smaller models can learn from, replicating much of their performance at significantly lower costs. Eventually, this results in more accessible, affordable, high-quality AI. It also means that the cost of recreating performance is orders of magnitude less than developing it for the first time, which makes pricing these models particularly difficult.
📰 The Belle Effect: How to Build Exponential Confidence by Izzy Sealey
psychologists call the confidence-competence loop:
1. When we try something new (like me attempting acting, or even filming YouTube videos), we develop competence
2. As our competence grows, our confidence naturally follows
3. This increased confidence makes us more likely to try *new* things
4. Which leads to more competence in even more areas
5. Which further increases our overall confidence
📰 LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Mike Birbiglia! via Elizabeth Gilbert
if you ever think that anything out there in the world will be better than doing something you enjoy with a friend you like, then I’ve got news for you: it doesn’t get better than that.
Going to Target with Rayya. Going to coffee with Leah. Dinner at Margaret’s. Breakfast with Jennie. Swimming with Sherry. Walking with Cree. Going to Costco with Cat. Sitting on the grass with Suleika and the dogs. Watching Bojack Horseman with Shankari. Getting a bagel with Katie. Picking up Susie at the airport. Watching the deer and the birds from Barb’s porch. Sprawled out on a couch doing nothing at all with Ruby, Marty, Roey, Sister G, Abby . . .
📰 These Books Made Me a Better Leader by Ryan Holiday
anyone can be a leader and everyone *should* learn how to be one–of families, of companies, of a team, of an audience, of a group of friends, of ourselves.
March 8
🎧 Is the 40 Hour Work Week Dead? by Elle Griffin and Khe Hy
Some folks love the 40-hour work week, others don't. It became standard in the early 1900s during the labor movement, replacing a grueling 60-hour week. Businesses, led by Kellogg and Ford, realized overworked employees needed rest to be productive, so they pioneered the 8-hour workday and 5-day workweek.
Transcript: Elle Griffin Think some people love the 40 hour work week. Some people hate it. But, you know, it's established as a standard during the labor movement in the early 1900s with good reason, because back then it was like a 60 hour work week. And it was actually only when businesses started being like, okay, well, our employees are run ragged here and we need to reduce the work week so they have more time for rest and leisure And can come back refreshed and working hard. And this was kind of spearheaded by Kellogg and Ford. And they started the eight-hour work day and the five-hour work week, or five-day workweek. And we've just kind of held steady at that.
It used to be 40 hours on an assembly line. Now, for many salaried workers in the service industry, it's 40 hours on a computer. A salary job means you're responsible for a set amount of tasks weekly, loosely based on the idea that it'll take 40 hours. However, some finish in way less time, while others need much more.
Transcript: Elle Griffin What used to be I'm spending a 40-hour workweek on the assembly line. Now in the service field, we're spending it on a computer. And service industry, especially in the United States, is the bulk of our work. And a lot of our work, a lot of that work is salary work. So what I think is super interesting is a salary job just means you are responsible for a set amount of tasks to accomplish in a week. And that's based loosely around the idea that that work might take you 40 hours. The interesting thing is some people, it does not take 40 hours to get all that work done. Some people have to work way more than 40 hours and some people work way less than 40 hours.
Part-time work isn't as prevalent in the US due to benefits laws tying eligibility to full-time status. This is changing, with Salt Lake City piloting a program separating benefits from full-time employment, and Uber experimenting with benefits for drivers working around 20 hours a week. This shift could redefine 'full-time' based on earning a living wage rather than hours worked.
Transcript: Elle Griffin Where part-time work is more established as a as thing the reason why it's not a thing in the u.s is because of our benefits laws like we establish a full-time employee as somebody who Can who can is eligible for benefits and so we try to make everybody a full-time employee um actually recently that's changing and salt lake city is doing a pilot study where they changed The law so that benefits are not a part of the equation and you can now be a part time employee and earn benefits. So Uber is actually doing a pilot in which drivers can get a benefits package if they're working like 20 hours a week or something. And I think that's really interesting because I think that will shift that, that idea of it needs to be a full-time job. What's what will make it a full-time job is, is whether you're earning enough money to live.
Khe Hy's family of four (with his wife being an artist) spends about $2,000/month on a high-deductible health plan, totaling $24,000 annually. With a $17,000 deductible and additional medical expenses, their healthcare costs reach around $31,000 per year.
Transcript: Khe Hy Your point about healthcare, which is we're a family of four on a high deductible plan. My wife's an artist, so we don't have access to healthcare until Obamacare. And I think that our monthly spend is close to $2,000 a month. So that's out of the gates. That's $24,000 post-tax. And I think we have a $17,000 deductible. So we're probably adding another, we're all very healthy, but we're probably adding another $5,000, $7,000 of medical expenses. So that's like $31,000 of healthcare out of the gates. It's just like, it's so broken.
The internet acts as a bridge between people's skills and income goals. Many high achievers find it challenging to leverage this because there's no clear roadmap, leading to uncertainty.
Transcript: Khe Hy I've adopted the principles that you have put forth, which is like, I need to make this amount of money and I have these amounts of skills. And then there's this thing called the internet as like this fat layer that sits between like what I need to make and what my skills are and then like yeah it's it's amazing like and I I'm Actually surprised I think most people and I want to get to this point later I think most people in these kind of let's call them giant air quotes high achieving industries really struggle To make that because there's there's no map. There's like, there is a high, high degree of uncertainty.
Traditional roles still hold prestige, but that's changing. Prestige is shifting to the internet world, with titles like 'founder' and 'podcaster' now carrying significant weight.
Transcript: Elle Griffin There is still a prestige to some of those roles. But I also think that's shifting. And I do think prestige now is coming for the internet world. I mean, how often do you hear somebody described as a founder and podcaster? Like that is that is like a kind of high prestige job now to say to say you're a podcaster.
Contrary to popular belief, we actually have more leisure time now than in the 1930s when the 40-hour work week was established. This is because factors like longer retirements, unlimited vacation days, and starting work later in life weren't accounted for. If you average out how much we work across our entire lifespan, it's significantly less now.
Transcript: Elle Griffin We actually do have more leisure than we we've ever had and i think everybody focuses on the 40-hour work week as proof that we haven't had a change since the 1930s but um that is to completely Leave out that now we have these like 25 year retirement periods um unlimited vacation days um full weekends oh you know some places have a week off for Christmas. But we have all of this leisure time that's been added into our lives so that if you actually like net averaged out how much we work a week for the entire extent of our life. Oh, we start work later because we don't start work now. Sorry. We don't start work now until we're 22 and out of college, whereas we used to start work when we were 14. So if you actually look at our lifespan and averaged out how much of our life we spent working in the 1930s compared to now, it's insanely, insanely less.
We've already reached the era of abundant leisure time predicted by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. However, it doesn't look like what we expected.
Transcript: Elle Griffin We already do have the leisure time that John Maynard Keynes once predicted we would have in the 1930s. It just doesn't look the way we thought it would.
It's cool that nowadays we're able to monetize activities once considered leisure. For many, work is becoming an extension of personal interests and passions.
Transcript: Elle Griffin When we stop working, do we have something else we need to work on? And the answer is yes, of course we do because nobody wants to just sit there idle. And how cool is it now that there's the opportunity for so many things that we might consider leisure that we could actually make money doing it my job is totally leisure I mean I used to Do this kind of writing before as a side hobby of my job like this is something I did for my personal passion and interest and then I took it full-time
Elle Griffin views disruption as a chance to rebuild. She uses the hypothetical example of Trump abolishing the Department of Education to illustrate how states would then have to reinvent their education systems, creating opportunities for improvement.
Transcript: Elle Griffin My personal take on the current moment is that everything is a mess and that's a perfect opportunity for us to slide in and organize it. Because, okay, so let's just take an example and imagine that Trump decides to get rid of the Department of Education federally and that's gone. Okay, well, now what happens? All of the states have to manage education and they already do mostly. So they're like, okay, well, we need more funding. We need to figure out what an ideal education could look like. We don't have a curriculum anymore. We have to figure out like what an ideal curriculum could be. And suddenly everything is a startup basically because we have to start from scratch and rebuild something. And this is maybe an opportunity, for example, for Democrats who are like, I've always wanted a better education system. Our education sucks. Everybody knows our education system sucks. Let me come up with something better and like propose this to my state.
When societies face collapse, pre-existing idealistic visions for better systems get a chance to be implemented. Thinkers create these blueprints, and when current structures fail (banks, education, etc.), these ideas become actionable alternatives, potentially shaping new norms. SpaceX replacing NASA exemplifies this shift.
Transcript: Elle Griffin We have these kind of thinkers and idealists who were like, I have this idea for a better society. And then boom, their entire civilization collapses. And there's like, well, now we have to build a better society. So we might as well use some of these ideas we came up with. And here we can think of, you know, Thomas More, who literally wrote Utopia and imagined this kind of idealist world without poverty or class. But he actually worked as a statesman, and he actually reformed the justice system of his time when the king was doing all this crazy stuff. And he was like, oh, actually I have some ideas for how we can fix this. And the same was true of Francis Bacon, who wrote The New Atlantis and imagined this fantasy world where universities kind of took the place of government and scientific advancement Was like the future. And then when we kind of had the opportunity to create some of these educational institutions, we put that into place. We can think of Edward Bellamy and William Morris, who both imagined an end to capitalism. And maybe their ideas didn't end up coming into pass, but we did bring some of their proposed ideas into fruition. For example, the credit card, that was Edward Bellamy. William Morris fathered the arts and crafts movement and established the design moment, kind of a forebear to Etsy. So we kind of have all these thinkers who come up with these incredible ideas that might seem sci-fi or futuristic and totally idealistic and unattainable. But then we also have these collapsing structures where we're like, the banks aren't working, the education system's not working. What are we going to do instead? And this is the opportunity for those ideas to be like, oh, actually, I have an idea. Let's create this instead. And that could become the new norm. I mean, you think about how SpaceX took over for NASA, and now the government uses SpaceX. So we can do that for literally everything. We can create a new education system. We can create a new anything system, and that can be the new norm.
During the pandemic, when schools shut down, teachers, though not typically entrepreneurs, created 'pod schools.' They taught small groups of kids in homes, getting paid by multiple families. This shows how failing systems can push people to create new solutions, even if they don't consider themselves entrepreneurial.
Transcript: Elle Griffin You said not everybody wants to become an entrepreneur, but they do when the circumstances cause it. For example, when all the schools closed during pandemic, there were suddenly all of these teachers saying, I'm going to start a pod school in my neighborhood where they would have Six kids come over to their house and they would teach them or they would go over to somebody's house and teach a pod of like five people. These are not entrepreneurs, but like five families are paying a teacher to teach their kids because there is no school. So I think that I think that the more the systems that don't work crash, the more that we do step in to create new ones, even if we don't think of ourselves as entrepreneurs.
Don't worry too much about your specific major. The job market changes so rapidly that continuous learning and adaptation are more valuable than any specific skill set you acquire in college. Technical skills in fields like engineering are helpful, but they'll evolve significantly over time. Focus on the ability to learn and adapt.
Transcript: Elle Griffin Like you can get, you can get a major in anything you want, but afterwards that job is going to significantly change over the next 50 years of your life. And you're going to have to learn on the go and on the job because it's going to be different. I mean, how many of our master's degrees or bachelor's degrees are totally obsolete now? The advice is not the same. So I kind of feel like it doesn't matter. Like, obviously, any kind of technical skills are really helpful if you have any interest in software engineering or any kind of or regular engineering and any infrastructure jobs. Like all of those will always remain, but they're going to change a lot over time. Khe Hy So it's kind of like the ability to learn. Yeah, the ability to learn and constantly adapt.
Elle Griffin's 'cautionary tale of consumption' highlights how we often choose longer work hours to afford conveniences like Peloton subscriptions and takeout, rather than working less and enjoying simpler, more fulfilling activities like running outside or cooking.
Transcript: Khe Hy One of your posts that we'll link below, you have this example of you call it the cautionary tale of consumption, where you have these great quotes, like we could work a 20 hour work week And go for a run outside. Instead, we work 40 hours a week so we can pay for our Peloton subscriptions. We can work a 20 hour work week and cook our own meals. Instead, we work a 40 hour work week and get takeout. And it's funny because one of the people I'm coaching right now, they basically took a gigantic pay cut to do some of the stuff that we've been talking about. And then there was like, wait a minute, I don't need childcare anymore because I can go pick up my child after school and like I can cook. And so it was like, yeah, I'm taking a pay cut. And but with that pay cut, I there's all this like spending that no longer needs to happen. And it seems kind of obvious, but I feel like a lot of people don't recognize this. I'll share really quickly.
A former McKinsey consultant's boss advised her to automate every aspect of her personal life (laundry, childcare, cooking) so she could focus on work. She countered by suggesting automating work to have more time for analog personal pursuits. This highlights the individual choice between automating life versus automating work for more analog leisure time. People are increasingly doing this, some secretly within salaried jobs, others by shifting to part-time or fractional work.
Transcript: Elle Griffin Ray Katz's If You Were Rich, Would You Still Fold Laundry? And the whole premise of it is I think she used to be a McKinsey, a consultant. And the boss was like, here's what you do. You automate all the other parts of your life. You, you know, you ship out your laundry, you hire childcare, you hire a personal chef, or you order in every night for dinner. You can just literally automate your whole personal life so that you can work. And she was like, well, what if I want to like, not work as much so I can enjoy my personal life and make dinner by hand or fold my own laundry or watch my own kids. And I think that that is something I think that's something that honestly, every person has to decide for themselves because there's there's some whenever people like, get upset about Something else being automated, there's always the rehash of like, but wouldn't we rather do that by hand? And I'm like, well, okay, we invented washing machines and dishwashers. You can still wash your dishes by hand if you want. You can still wash your clothes by hand if you want, but you could also choose to save time, do those both, have those both done quickly and go do something else. So every single one of us can decide what are the things we want to still do analog and what are the things that we want to kind of automate away. And I think that where that gets interesting with work is when we would rather automate away our job so that we can enjoy more analog time in our leisure. And I think that people are doing that either secretly through their salary job, not so secretly by taking a pay cut and an hourly cut and working more part-time job, taking fractional Work where they work for a bunch of different companies for less hours. But whatever that is, I think that that's just going to continue. We will keep automating and keep automating every part of our lives as we can, but we'll still have to decide what we want to actually do.
It's crucial to know what you truly want. If you love your work, you'll happily do more of it in your free time. Finding work you're passionate about may involve career shifts and examining your values and mimetic behaviors (e.g., consumerism). Understanding yourself, your desires, limitations, and insecurities makes many things easier.
Transcript: Khe Hy Wonder too, as I try to harmonize or distill all of the threads that we have covered in our conversation, one thing that really strikes me is, it's like, do you know what you want? And it almost feels like that is, you know, because you talked about, like, you love the work that you do. So if you had more free time, you would just do more of that work, because it's not a burden to you. And some would be like, oh, well, she's just lucky. She's in a world where she does a job that she's passionate about. But I would suspect that you had to crawl through different machinations of your career. I did a wholesale shift and like basically like burned all the ships and be like, okay, what do I actually care about in this, in these elements of consumerism? It's like, wait, it's like, how much of this is like mimetic behavior? It's like, oh, everyone has a Peloton. So I should be, I should be riding a Peloton where it's like, it's like shameful to like still be a jogger or whatever. You know, like I feel like, like so much of what we've discussed gets easier if you like truly understand yourself and like your desires and your limitations and your insecurities.
Choosing a college major is a choice driven by aligning interests with earning potential. This choice is possible due to today's diverse job market compared to the past, where most jobs were in agriculture.
Transcript: Elle Griffin You can decide what your college major is, is even all like people have to make that choice, but they do make that choice because they try to come up with something that is most aligned With what they want to do and will make money. And they can have that choice because there are so many different varieties of jobs available. It's not like, you know, it used to be 90% of jobs were agricultural. Now 1% of jobs are agricultural and we have all these other options.
We must design our lives whether or not we're part of the traditional workforce.
Transcript: Elle Griffin Yes, we do have to design our lives in some way, but we already have to do that just by nature of being part of the workforce and having free time.
With more leisure time, people spend more money on personally interesting things, leading to a rise in creative pursuits. Examples like Webtoon and Wattpad, where hobbyists create webcomics and serial novels, demonstrate this. These creators gain real-time followers and earn through platforms like Patreon. While not all webcomic artists will profit, this signifies a growth in unique creative jobs, regardless of work week length.
Transcript: Elle Griffin So long as we have more leisure time then we will spend more leisure time and thus more of our money on things that are personally interesting to us and that will mean that there are more Creatives because if you can think about something like web webtoon or wattpad for example where you have all of these people following like a niche web comic um or a serial novel by some Hobbyist and they're following them in real time and paying them via patreon and they're like yes i want the next chapter of this webcomic so much. That is such a weird job. Nobody in the past ever was making money from webcomics. But because we have so much leisure time that people are, one, writing and drawing them, and two, reading them, then we have a webcomic person that's how they're making their money. That doesn't mean everybody in the world who's a webcomic will be able to make money doing it but it means that there will be more people having those unique creative jobs um whether that's Creative job is on the side of their work or is their work is will always be shifting whether it's because our work week is 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week and we're spending our other hours Doing it you know that will all be up for debate those things will shift but like regardless I think as we make more money from our jobs have more leisure time we will spend more of that leisure On creative pursuits and we will thus create more creative opportunities
Elle Griffin noticed her spending isn't on physical goods, but on creative subscriptions like Substack, Spotify, and Apple Music, reflecting a trend of increased spending on creative and leisure pursuits.
Transcript: Elle Griffin If I look at my budget every month, what am I spending it on? I'm not actually spending it on buying a lot of things, things that I can actually buy and have in my home. But I have so many Substack subscriptions. I have a Spotify subscription. I actually have Apple Music now. It's better. And I pay for so many subscriptions, which are all creative things, like how I spend my leisure time. And I think that's only going to continue. The more we spend our money and time on creative pursuits, the more that will be a thing.
Elle Griffin envisions a future of increased interaction with creative individuals.
Transcript: Elle Griffin I think that's the future where I'll just meet creatives.
March 7
🎧 Taimur Discovers the Value of History - Not Overthinking
Without historical consciousness, you're limited to universal explanations, like those found in natural sciences. These explanations often miss the nuances of time and place.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal It's kind of very related to jason blakeley's shtick um uh from his um book lost an ideology and we built reality but basically i think if you if you have no historical consciousness if You don't if you're not really engaged with history then um the only kinds of explanations that are going to be open to you are explanations that try and be really universal about things. And Jason Blakely's shtick kind of talks about this a lot, where in the natural sciences, we can come up with these universal law-like generalizations that work wherever you are, regardless Of place and time and et cetera, et cetera, you can come up with these laws that seem to just sort of hold in all times and all places. And I think unless you have taken the humanities somewhat seriously, going to be your model for all explanation pretty much you know
When explaining anything related to humans, always start with context, history, and culture as your foundation. Then, build upon that foundation.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal When it comes to human stuff the starting point of an explanation i think should basically always be very contextual very historical and and very cultural and then you kind of work from There and maybe maybe you can sometimes find some universal type explanation
Taimur mentions a blog post titled 'A Study Guide for Human Society Part 1'. He's disappointed that parts 2 and 3 haven't been released yet and even messaged the author about it.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal The blog post is called A Study Guide for Human Society Part 1. And he wrote it a few years ago, but he hasn't published Parts 2 and 3, which I was really sad about. I DMed him about it on Twitter.
To understand human society, prioritize reading history first, then behavioral science, political/moral philosophy, and lastly, social science. Ground-level historical facts help identify distorted data in other fields. Grand theories of civilization should be read last, only after establishing a strong historical foundation to assess their accuracy.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal If you care about understanding, you know, human society, human affairs type stuff. Yeah, that's the context here. He says, history is the most important thing you can read. Why? Only a strong background in history can tell you when writers in other fields are full of crap. I cannot tell you the number of times I've found a political argument or even fairly, even a fairly well-regarded work of social science that reads compelling at the 10,000 foot view, But falls apart when you stack it up against concrete facts of history seen from the ground. Humans are motivated reasoners. We bend our data to fit our theories. If you're not familiar with the data, you will not realize when it's being distorted or misused. And he, so he says that if you are someone who cares about understanding human society, human affairs type stuff, he says, I'd prioritize my reading in the following categories and In the following order. One, history. Two, three behavioral science four political slash moral philosophy and five social science um but he says history is basically the most important one and then and then within that He kind of talks about um sort of different types of you know different types of history books um and you know there are types of history books that are like super specific about like uh You know this is like what happened in this particular town from like, you know, 1705 to like 1730 or something. You know, there's like history books like that. That are trying to sort of explain like, you know, thousands of years and some idea there, you know, maybe something like Sapiens, something like Guns, Germs and Steel, something like Fukuyama's Political Order. So he says, the last group of history books that you should read are the ones you are likely the most eager to read. These are books like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Francis Fukuyama's Political Order, Ian Morris' While... Ian Morris' something... I got the highlight wrong. He says, while methodologically these books are properly considered histories, for the purpose of this series, I grouped them with the social sciences. They are concerned with the same questions that animate works of social science, like, you know, why nations fail, prosperity, poverty, etc. You know i'll try and answer questions like you know why do some countries become wealthy while others do not what explains the rise and fall of civilizations why did western countries Conquer the world instead of the other way around you know etc um he basically says he says these books are fine to read and fun to contemplate but if you start here you are doing it wrong I have collected 15 separate 400 plus page books that try to answer the question why did the west get rich first and that was seven years ago the number of good books tackling this question Has only grown larger but if if that is all you read you are in trouble how will you know who is right and who is wrong if you are not if you have not read widely in history and anthropology Who are you to judge there is absolutely no point, for example, in reading one of one guy's books if you don't have the background knowledge needed to assess whether his models match The historical record. There is no point reading some other guy's explanation for why China stagnated and why Europe did not if you do not know anything about Chinese or European history yourself. Grand theories of civilization should be at the bottom of your list. Here's a problem though. What do you think? The facts of war The facts are boring.
To tackle history's vastness, pick three distinct periods you're curious about. Ideally, they'd vary in time, place, and culture (e.g., ancient, modern, non-Western). Genuine interest is key, enough for you to enjoy reading several books on each.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal The problem with history is that it is too big. It is impossible to get a fine-grained picture of every people and era on the planet. There is just too much of it. My recommendation is to pick three very different historical periods that you find fascinating. They can be any three, really. But ideally, they will be a bit separated from each other in space, time, and culture. For example, you might choose pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Abbasid Empire, and revolutionary Russia. Or maybe your interests lie with Republican Rome, the Protestant Reformation, and 20th century India. That all works. It does not really matter what you choose as long as you have a decent spread, so at least one that is modern, at least one that is ancient, and at least one that is from a non-Western civilization. The important thing is that you have a genuine interest in these societies, strong enough that you could gladly read four to six books about each of them without getting bored
To assess historical theories effectively, build detailed knowledge of specific times or events. This allows you to test claims (like "Y leads to Z") against your understanding of how similar patterns played out in the past. Signs of sufficient background knowledge include knowing major historical disagreements, key sources used, and identifying a seemingly minor incident that reveals how a society functioned.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal Your goal here is to build up a fairly granular knowledge of a particular time or event that can be called on to test and assess theories and narratives that will be thrown at you. You know, so if famous scholar X proposes that Y leads to Z, you can think, hmm, did Y lead to Z in like these three areas that I actually know something about? You will know you have the background knowledge to do this right when you can answer questions like the following for a given area of expertise questions like you know what are some of The biggest disagreements historians have about this era or this event what are the main sources historians or archaeologists use to try and understand this um you know if you had to Pick one small incident about the era that seems insignificant at first but is actually a very revealing example of how this society worked what would it be so
You don't need incredibly deep answers when exploring history. Look for insights that go a bit further than a basic Wikipedia summary.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal You don't need phd level answers to these questions just something more insightful than you would get from the wikipedia page
You don't need extremely deep historical knowledge to gain valuable insights. Something a little more insightful than a surface-level understanding (like what you'd get from Wikipedia) is often enough.
Transcript: Taimur Abdaal You don't need phd level answers to these questions just something more insightful than you would get from the wikipedia page
📰 Knock Out a 5-Day Educational Email “Crash” Course Outline by Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole
The 5 Day Educational Email “Crash” Course Outline
“Crash Course” Template Outline:
Day 0: Introduction & Email Course Outline - “Here’s what you can expect”
Day 1: X Most Important Things To Know
Day 2: X Mistakes Most People Make
Day 3: X Steps To Go From Zero to 1
Day 4: X Simple Upgrades To Accelerate Growth
Day 5: X Best Practices Moving Forward
Step 1: “Think” about what’s most valuable for the reader. It’s your job to “think” and make a very clear offer to the reader as to what they’re going to “get” by typing in their email and giving you their attention.
What problems do they have? (e.g. don’t know where to start)
What outcomes do they desire? (e.g. getting followers)
What are their biggest questions? (e.g. what should I write about?)
What platforms or tools do they want to learn more about? (e.g. Typeshare, Twemex, etc.) Spend 3 minutes thinking about each question for the audience you serve. Then complete this simple template for your topic: *“How to get {outcome} without {problem}”* Once you have your topic, move on to the next step.
Step 2: Train ChatGPT on the Educational Email “Crash” Course
Copy/paste this script inside ChatGPT:
I am going to train you to create 5-Day Educational Email Crash Course outline. The "Crash Course" is everything you need to know to get started on a topic. For example: here’s a template for a 5-day email “Crash Course" - Day 0: Introduction & Email Course Outline - “Here’s what you can expect” - Introduction to the email course and what participants can expect to learn. - Overview of the 5 things that will be covered in the course. - Day 1: 3 Most Important Things To Know - {Big Point Of View} - {Actionable Tip} - {The 1 Secret To Success} - Day 2: 3 Mistakes Most People Make - {Mistake 1} - {Mistake 2} - {Mistake 3} - Day 3: Steps To Go From Zero to 1 - {Step 1} - {Step 2} - {Step 3} - Day 4: 3 Simple Upgrades To Accelerate Growth - {Actionable Tip 1} - {Actionable Tip 2} - {Actionable Tip 3} - Day 5: 3 Best Practices Moving Forward - {Best Practice 1} - {Best Practice 2} - {Best Practice 3} I will give you a topic and some additional instructions, then you will use the template to create a Crash Course outline. Are you ready?
Step 3: Give ChatGPT a topic.
Focus on the problems, benefits, and outcomes you are solving / creating for the reader. Feed your topic to ChatGPT, and ask it to create a similar outline. Please follow the Crash Course template and create an outline for the topic: [INSERT TOPIC] Please provide succinct, imperative, and action-oriented phrases or statements. (Use 8-12 words) Each phrase should convey a clear and direct piece of advice or instruction, related to {Topic}. Use colloquial language. Avoid jargon. Check out what ChatGPT came back with using that prompt!
Note: ChatGPT has a bad habit of labeling everything. If it does, instruct it to “please remove the labels and don’t change anything else!”
Readers will happily part with their email address and eventually their $$$ because you are giving away FREE education.
📰 How to Capture Leads From Day 1 on YouTube by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush
YouTube is amazing for discovery, but if you’re not capturing emails, you’re just renting attention instead of owning it.
How To Set Up Your YouTube Opt-in Funnel In 5-Steps Let's break this down into simple, actionable steps that you can implement right away:
Step 1: Create A Free 5-Day Educational Email Course
This could be a simple 3-5 day email sequence. Focus on solving one specific problem your audience has. The key is to make it valuable enough that people would pay for it, even though you're giving it away for free. Not sure what to write? Use the prompt below to generate a tailored course for your audience, or check out this post for additional help.
Step 2: Write Your Opt-In Landing Page
You don't need anything fancy or expensive. I recommend using Carrd which costs just $9/year and is incredibly simple to use. Your landing page should clearly explain what people will get and why they should sign up. Use this prompt to help you write a simple high-converting landing page content. It's the same template we use for all our email courses that have generated thousands of leads.
Step 3: Configure Your Email Capture System
For this, I recommend the Carrd + Kit combination to capture email addresses. Kit offers a free plan that's perfect for getting started. For a quick 5-minute tutorial on how to set this up, watch this walkthrough video. The technical setup is far simpler than most people think. (View Highlight)
"The quality of your thoughts is determined by the quality of your reading. Spend more time thinking about the inputs."
"To understand others, watch what they reward. To understand yourself, watch what you envy."
Social media consultant Charles Miller on balance: "Spend a handful of hours a day going fast. Crush a gym session. Do deep work on a project you care about. Spend the rest of the day going slow. Take walks. Read books. Get a long dinner with friends. Either way, avoid the anxious middle where you never truly relax or truly move forward."
March 6
🎧 Scott’s Career Advice: Imposter Syndrome, Startups & Networking - Prof G Pod
When considering a startup job, look for companies with 20-200 employees. This often represents a balance between equity potential and established product-market fit, which reduces risk, especially for those with families. Consider also the investors, funding secured, and press coverage as indicators of the company's trajectory.
Transcript:
G (Scott Galloway)
I find that the sweet spot from a risk reward standpoint is kind of 20 to 200 employees. And that is you're still early enough to get significant equity. But if they're at that point, it means that they have probably some level of product market fit. So I find that sort of the sweet spot of risk to reward, especially given that you have a family. In addition, there's other signals. Who are the people who have backed the company? How much capital have they raised? How much press have they received? Not all of these are, you know, it's sort of the good housekeeping stamp of approval, which by the way, approves talcum powder, which ended up giving people all sorts of cancer. So it's not a guarantee, but when there's good people and VCs or customers involved, there's signals you should be able to discern around how the company is doing. But again, I like the sweet spot of kind of, there's some limited evidence of product market fit. And, at the same time, if I show up, I'm still going to get quote unquote
📰 Pointing at Things by Austin Kleon
“When you write,” says Steven Pinker, “you should pretend that you, the writer, see something in the world that’s interesting, that you are directing the attention of your reader to that thing in the world, and that you are doing so by means of conversation.”
As I wrote in *Steal Like An Artist*, > “Step 1: Wonder at something. > > Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you.” Point at things, say, “whoa,” and elaborate!
P.S. Several of you have suggested an occasional “Ask Me Anything” mailbag feature for these Tuesday letters. (See Nick Cave, who elevates it to an art form.) I think I’ve figured out a decent way to collect questions that doesn’t rely on me sorting through email: Ask me a question
📰 a Solution to the Packaging Problem...? by Ali Abdaal
As I mentioned last week, we generally rely on thumbnailtest.com to run these experiments. YouTube does have an A/B testing feature but it only gives you access to one metric which isn’t overly helpful, and also doesn’t allow you to test titles so we generally stick to Thumbnail Test.
📰 More. Better. New. by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush
a simple framework I learned from Alex Hormozi: More → Better → New.
Step 1: More
Before worrying about "optimizing," focus on volume.
For us, this means:
Extracting as many shorts as possible from each long-form video
Not treating shorts as a completely different initiative
Maximizing every piece of content we create
Let me tell you what actually works: MORE!
If you're posting twice a day, the next question should be: *"How do I post three times a day?"*
If you're posting three times a day, the next question is: *"How do I post four times a day?"*
Step 2: Better
Once you've maxed out MORE, then you focus on improving. This is when you ask: *"I'm doing as much as I can, how do I do it better?"*
Step 3: New
The final step is New (or Different). You only do something completely NEW when you’ve maxed out MORE and BETTER (*and* your “channel” isn't growing anymore).
📰 Photo Insider: Shooting Something Beautiful Isn't Enough by Cody Mitchell
I’ve been workshopping an idea I’m calling the Photography Rule of Threes—not to be confused with the *Rule of Thirds*.
Here’s how it works:
1. When something strikes you, take the first shot. Just get it out of your system.
2. Now that you’ve already shot it, take a second photo, but try to refine the composition. Make it more intentional.
3. Take a third shot, but try to push yourself to improve even further.
🎧 Elon's Ultimatum, Trump's Military Purge, and Amazon's 007 Deal - Pivot Pod
The U.S.-Canadian border is the largest undefended border in the world
Ronny Chieng: We're making fun, as far as I'm concerned, our job is to make fun of the asteroid as it's coming in to destroy Earth. We'll be making fun of it until the end.
🎧 Is Breaking Up Intel the Right Move? + the New Gold Rush - Prof G Markets
England was about to pull all the gold from New York banks to pay for World War I. So, to avoid repeating the chaos that had historically resulted from stuff like this, they closed the NYSE before WWI.
Transcript: Josh Brown We've had instances where they closed the New York Stock Exchange heading into World War I. And one of the main concerns is all of the gold was about to be sucked out of the banks in New York and sent to England to finance the prosecution of that war against Germany. And they wanted to preempt the chaos that that kind of thing had historically caused.
Back in the day, America's agrarian economy caused gold to flow from city banks to rural areas in spring for farming costs, then back to the cities in summer, fueling stock market booms. This cycle created seasonal patterns like "sell in May, go away," reflecting gold leaving financial centers for harvest season in October and causing market instability due to liquidity shortages.
Transcript: Josh Brown This seasonal pattern in the springtime, America 100 years ago is very agrarian economy. Everything was about agriculture and farming. So you'd have all the gold leave the banks in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and it would head to the Midwest and it would be dispersed amongst the farmers who had to it would show up in The banks in rural America. The farmers would then be able to fund the cost of seed and equipment and hiring farmhands and people who would help them plant. And then the summer would go by. There would be speculative. The gold would return back to New York. All that gold would lead to there being excess capital. That excess capital would lead to these huge booms in the stock market and people speculating with the money while it was there. And then all of a sudden the banks in rural America would call that gold back because it was time to bring in the harvest. And you would have this seasonal pattern that resulted in us saying things like sell in May, go away. Or you would see like October being this month where all of a sudden all hell would break loose on Wall Street because the gold would leave these financial centers where all this trading. And you would have this literal dearth of liquidity and you would like, you would have this drop off in money and in capital. And, uh, it kind of became ingrained in the patterns of stock markets and business and commerce. We've been able to neutralize that over time as society has become less agrarian.
📰 Reflection Calendars Reveal What Words Can’t in Your Journal by Erin Nolan
What started as a tool to visualize progress on my class uncovered a deeper insight around month three. That’s when I began seeing undeniable patterns I had been avoiding about my nearly decade-long relationship that was about to end.
I don’t pressure myself to find time to draw every single day. I keep my daily practice forgiving and flexible by writing daily updates in a digital journal that syncs to my phone. I usually do this right before falling asleep, or the next morning if I forget. Then, about once a week, I head to my favorite coffee shop to review the digital journal and translate it into memories I want to reflect on later.
What do I draw? I ask myself: what stood out to me that day? Who did I talk to? What resistance did I work through? What do I want to look back on a month from now and think, "Ah, WOW, I remember when I was dealing with *that* challenge, or meeting with *this* person, or taking *this* class, or visiting *this* place. Look how far I've come." This practice transforms what would otherwise be lost (daily struggles, small victories, subtle patterns) into a visual map that reveals not just the past events of my life, but also inspires me to imagine where I’m headed.
📰 Goodhandedness and the Best Conference of the Year by Cam Houser
An anachronistic practice I'm enjoying: calling friends and acquaintances on the phone. No planning, no cal invite. Raw. If the person doesn't answer, I don't leave a vm.
When seatbelts were invented, people started driving more carelessly. I think something similar may happen with our decision-making as we become more dependent on AI. Hang on to your critical thinking and discernment. More writing about this coming soon.
when AI takes everyone’s jobs, the value of facilitation skills will go up
📰 How I Turn a Long-Form YouTube Video Into 10+ Shorts by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush
The Short Per Main Point Method If you’re producing educational content, the simplest way to think about cutting a Short from a long-form video is to create 1 Short per main point. For example, in this long-form video I covered 15 writing tips to become a better writer overnight. So, for each tip, I created 15 corresponding Shorts.
1. First, I downloaded the transcript from YouTube and then used this simple AI prompt to summarize the video into the main points: *“Please summarize my video transcript in 10 bullet points: [Insert Transcript]”*
2. After I ran the prompt, I scanned the generated bullets for a topic I thought would be useful to my audience.
3. Then I used this prompt to extract all the relevant talking points.
4. Next, I asked Claude to turn those talking points into a YouTube Shorts script.
5. Finally, I used Descript to build the Short. I imported the script and used an AI-generated voice, default music, and a few images from Sora to create my final faceless video.
don’t be afraid to turn your camera around and record yourself for 30-60 seconds. Read your most popular Note, LinkedIn post, or tweet.
Go back to one of your old videos (or any long-form video in your niche).
Extract 3-5 Shorts from it using the steps above.
Post them on YouTube Shorts, Instagram, or X.
March 5
🎧 What the Heck Happened to the Internet? by Khe Hy
You can now upload videos of yourself to generate a script, and then have an AI-generated video of yourself speaking that script. One could take this further by having an AI (like ChatGPT) produce content on a topic they have expertise in (like career changes). This AI-generated content could then be fed to an AI video avatar to create, for example, an entire educational course. Some people are already doing this, and while viewers realize it's AI-generated, they still find value in it and don't mind.
Transcript: Khe Hy On a side note on AI, there's even this thing now where you can upload a bunch of videos of yourself and then you can just generate a script. And then the video of yourself is talking that script and it looks pretty good. I think you can still tell, but think about that. Imagine like, think about this, this workflow cycle. Let's say you want to, you know, like what's something I have an expertise in? I have expertise in changing careers, leaving a high paying job. I could have an entire interaction with chat GPT about all the steps, all the frameworks, all the principles, all the questions to ask yourself exercises and all that. And it would be really good. I mean, I would review it and all that. I'd interact with it. That's kind of the new skill of interacting with AI. And then let's say it produced like 25 pages of content, you know, 10 hours of ideas, right? I could then take those 10 hours of ideas and feed it to my AI video avatar, which by the way, looks, I haven't done this yet, but it looks really good. And then it could just teach the course. And some people have done this and they've said that, um, people know that it's AI, but there's a, uh, a legitimate, um, transfer of value that it makes them more interested that they Don't care. They don't care that it's AI. They're just, you know, you have information. I want to receive the information. I want to get smarter. I don't, I know it's AI and I don't care. And so just, again, we are heading into this world, right? (Time 0:09:16)
Indie hacker Peter Levels suggests that shitposting—a blend of humor, trolling, sarcasm, and memes—is something AI can't replicate due to its reliance on personality and understanding of the zeitgeist.
Transcript: Khe Hy There's this guy, Levels, Peter Levels, who's kind of an indie hacker, which means he just does a bunch of little side projects, a one-person company. And he said, what's the thing that AI can't replicate? It's shitposting, shit posting is like this kind of mix of humor and trolling and sarcasm and memes it's like very personality based like it would be hard to see an ai and oh i'm referencing The zeitgeist it would hard to see an ai be really good at shitposting, right? So again, this like trend towards humanness is interesting. (Time 0:13:31)
Khe Hy doesn't use Google Search anymore. He uses Perplexity for current events and sports, ChatGPT for learning, and Claude for coaching research because it feels more human. He even finds his blog content showing up in AI search results.
Transcript: Khe Hy Right. I don't know about you, but I, I don't use Google anymore. Google search. Like I don't use it. And I have a little roster where if I want current events, I go to perplexity, um, like things that update quickly, sports, you know, like why did, why did Luca get traded? If I want like to learn something, I'll go to child GPT. And if I want to kind of, I want to like a more human touch, mostly for my coaching work, I go to Claude. Claude, which is anthropic. Found that claude is more a more softer it feels more human uh chat gpt i think is amazing like the the ease of use i've been talking to chat gpt a lot and like i'll be in my car and i'll i'll Say hey i want to learn about you know the genocide in Cambodia and starts talking. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, say that point again. Go deeper down this point. But the long story short is I barely use Google search anymore. I write a blog. No one reads my blog anymore. But I found out that I actually show up in some AI search, like in some AI queries around changing careers and psychology. It was just like, again, it's interesting to see the shift. So we're just not using the web anymore the way we used to, because a lot of that's moving into the AI native apps.
Khe Hy was planning to spend $20,000 and three months working with an agency to rebuild his website, radreads.co (migrating to khe.com). It's a complex site with tons of content (almost 600 blog posts, hundreds of images, etc.) and he wanted a complete overhaul, not just a refresh. He wanted to add interactivity, AI features, better speed, and more. Instead, he used an AI-powered app called Cursor and rebuilt it himself in two weeks, and it's almost finished.
Transcript: Khe Hy A very specific use case. I hate the radreads.co website. And in fact, I'm trying to switch it over to khe.com. And I had budgeted this year, $20,000 to do that. It's a pretty complex, it's 10 years of blogging. It's 589 blog posts, 375 images, a lot of different layers of things, but I wanted to do a full tear down, right? I didn't want to just give it, if you use a house analogy, I didn't want to just give it a fresh paint, a coat, coat, and change the bathroom. I wanted to fucking tear that thing down to the studs and rebuild it the way I want to do. I want to be more interactive. I want it to be fast. I want it to have different pop-ups. I want it to be flexible. I want it to use some of this new AI stuff. I want to have sliders on it. I want to have graphs, things like that. So I wanted to tear it down. And so I had earmarked three months of work, like of interacting with a development agency and, um, uh, $20,000. I did it myself. I don't have the background information. I'm 90% done. You'll, you get, you all will see it soon. It took me about two weeks using this app called cursor.
Think of software as a way to solve problems. Identify a problem you care about and have experience with, then build a solution you want to see in the world. Use AI tools to create content, research, and even automate tasks, allowing you to create and market valuable products or services, regardless of your technical skills. Imagine the possibilities in 6 or 12 months, given the rapid advancement of AI.
Transcript: Khe Hy Not everyone needs a website. No. Think about any, any problem you have, right? I mean, software to me is just helping people solve their problem. So to-do list is, solves the problem of helping someone become more productive. Uh, a journaling, uh, app solves a problem of helping someone become more introspective of a dieting app solves a problem of someone trying to lose weight. Now, anybody has access to that. I'm in the business of solving problems. I solve problems through writing, right? Like you're like, Hey, I'm trying to think of quitting my job. Like K's written 50 blog posts about that. I solve problems through coaching, group coaching, one-on coaching, radreads.co slash coaching. That's a more intimate way of solving problems. I solve problems through teaching, uh, pre-recorded courses. And now I can add software to that. Fucking Hey, you can add software to that. You can add writing to that. You can add video to that, right? You could do a deep dive right now. What does it take to become an excellent manager? You could use perplexity. You could use the $200 version of chat GPT that does like literally like full on research. You could use regular chat GPT. You'd use Claude to make it sound like your voice. You could then upload it to that video. You could then get AI to buy ads for you on Instagram, whatever, Twitter, YouTube. You could do all that. You can do it. You who has no, I had no coding experience. Right? That blows my mind. That is so freaking exciting. And that's why I wasn't, this was not on my bingo card to be spending five or six hours a day coding in AI. And, but that's why is for that example, like, I think I'm going to build that app for first-time managers, not even an app, some, some of knowledge base. And then I'm going to sell it. Something I care about. It's a problem that I know needs to be solved. It's a solution that I want to see in the world. I have unique curation and experience, right? I have been a manager. I know how to make videos. I know how to use AI. Like I could put that whole fucking package together and it's going to be awesome. And I just thought about this this morning. What does this look like in six months? What does this look like in 12 months? Right. You already have, you know, in the $200 version, which I'm about to buy, you have two new features. One is this feature called operator, where you can go in and get like the AI to click a screen for you. So you can say, find me all of the cheapest flights to Japan that only leave in the morning from LAX direct and have available aisle seats. And I'm like, click, you can literally watch it, move your mouse, click, click, click, click, click, sends you a report. Super clunky from what I've heard, but that's V0, right? Remember ChatGPT a year and a half ago? I think it wasn't that great It was cool, but it was not great. That's one. Then the other thing in chat GPT is pro, the $200 version is the research thing where they can go in. So you can ask it to do research on what does it take to become a great manager? And then you can go in and it will like go through all the academic papers in the world. What the fuck?
As automatable content increases, there'll be a premium on human qualities like in-person interaction, humor, empathy, and even physical touch. A hug might become more valuable in a world saturated with bots and AI.
Transcript: Khe Hy I think that there's going to be a premium. Like when all this stuff is automatable, there's going to be a different premium. And that premium is going to be on humanness. It's going to be on in-person. It's going to be on jokes. It's going to be on humor. It's going to be on empathy. It's going to even be in things like physical touch, right? Maybe a hug will be at a premium. When you're getting so much stuff through these bots and agents and rappers, God, sometimes you're just going to want a hug from a human, right?
It's important to balance embracing automation with staying true to yourself and expressing your humanity. Transcript: Khe Hy It's like, how can I be the most fucking human version of me? And how can I do all this cool automation stuff? That gets me super excited.
March 4
🎧 Jay Shetty on Life, Love, and the Business of Podcasting - Prof G Pod
Jay Shetty uses the ESM model when evaluating potential partnerships:
1. Energy (E): Assess the energetic match. Do you feel a positive connection with the other person or team?
2. Strategy (S): Once a positive energetic connection is established, evaluate the strategic fit. Does the partnership align with your goals? Does it have a clear and accurate plan?
3. Money (M): Finally, analyze the financial aspects of the partnership. Does it make sense from an investment standpoint and align with your perceived value?
Transcript: Jay Shetty Whether we're choosing an ad partner to come on our platform, whether we're looking at a partnership, and it's always been called ESM, and the E stands for energy. The first thing I look at is, do I think we're energetically matched? So when I met Michael Acton-Smith and Alex, who founded Calm, I really like those guys. They're great people. And so if I can, I'm always trying to sense energy. I loved it when you came into the studio. I felt we hit it off. I hope we can do lots more together. I'm someone who likes to live in an energetic space. The second is strategy. Do I really believe now that we've passed through the gate of energy, do I really believe that strategically this partner, this brand, this idea, whether it be a venture, is it strategically Accurate? Do we actually believe this has a plan? Does it strategically make sense? Does it have, do we understand the market? Do we understand demand? And I always do that second. And that's an important second gate for it to pass through. And the M stands for money. Finally, financially, does this stack up in terms of my investment and time in terms of what I believe our value is, that person's value is? Are we aligned financially? And so to me, ESM has always been my model. And because I think in initial times, the energy would be great and you just rush into a relationship. And it's almost like bad dating where like, you're like, oh, we energetically get along. We should build something together. And then, you know, three months down the line, you realize it wasn't a good fit. And so ESM has protected me and helped me make better decisions. Not that I've made perfect decisions, but it's definitely been a supportive technique. (Time 0:15:17)
Free content's great for scaling, while memberships are great for monetization.
Transcript: Jay Shetty Free is a great way to scale and membership is a great way for depth.
Jay Shetty learned through his wife to value himself based on his character, not just his accomplishments. He realized the importance of being loved for who you are, not what you achieve. He encourages others to examine their relationships and consider if their value is tied to external achievements rather than inherent qualities.
Transcript: Jay Shetty My wife, by her own admission, I would say, isn't the number one fan of my success, but she is the number one fan of me. And I think this is a really important point. I had to learn through my wife to value myself based on who I was and how I behaved, not what I achieved and what I killed and what I created. And I think if it wasn't for the way she loved me for that, I think I would have been someone who measured my value based on simply my success, my wins and my accolades. And so I would encourage people to say, is your partner here for you? Because chances are they are, but we're so wrapped up in wanting them to love us for what we achieve and what we do. I've had so many friends who are like, oh my God, like I just don't feel valued for what I'm building and what I'm creating. I'm like, that may be the case, but what if you lost it all? Would that mean you wouldn't be valued now? Is that how you want to be loved? Do you want to be loved for that and unloved for not having that? Or do you want to be valued for the qualities you have, the characteristics you have, the values you live by? So that was a big, big, big lesson for me that I learned through my wife. (Time 0:51:41)
📰 Two Years a Dad by Paul Millerd
In the first four months of her life, I sold about 20,000 books, which generated a lot of income I wasn’t expecting and covered almost all my living expenses for the year. This is when Penguin reached out and tried to buy my book. I kindly said no. I didn’t need a boss. My daughter not only brought a loaf of bread upon arrival but a full course meal. I was going to enjoy the spoils with her.
As she turned one, I was craving a little more work. I had definitely found the lower bound of “enough work.” I felt like a full year of “parental leave” or whatever you might call it when an underemployed person remains underemployed, was enough. I needed to embark on a second book.
March 3
🎧 How Ryan Holiday Is Preparing for the Next Four Years - The Daily Stoic
Morgan Housel can't recall news from 10 years ago, but he *can* remember books he read. Those books gave him ideas that have helped him over the last decade.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday I interviewed Morgan Housel here when we were doing the Daily Stoic podcast, and he said something like, he thinks back 10 years ago, he can't really remember any articles, any news Reports he heard from that time, but he can remember a lot of books that he read from that period. Those books had ideas that helped him over that 10-year period. And I think that's true for the books that you can read now.
Read Viktor Frankl, Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King, the Stoics, fiction, epic novels like *The Odyssey* and *The Iliad*, and James Stockdale's *Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter*.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Read Viktor Frankl, read Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King, read the Stoics, read fiction, read great epic novels, reread the Odyssey, read the Iliad, read Stockdale's Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot.
Do your job and be good. Focus on what's meaningful and the duty you accepted, regardless of external changes in consequences, recognition, or pay.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Our job is to do our job, which is to be good. And then also to do the thing we were trained to do, to do the thing that we know is important, as meaningful, that we promised to do when we took up this responsibility. And so like the consequences, the recognition, the pay, all that can change, but the duty remains, right? The duty remains.
Randall Stutman, a coach for top Wall Street CEOs, observed that high performers often have hobbies that don't involve a lot of voices, like listening to classical music, fly fishing, or long-distance biking. These hobbies cultivate stillness, allowing them to reflect, process, and connect with themselves before re-engaging with the world.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Randall Stutman, who's coached some of the biggest CEOs in the history of Wall Street, he talked to me once about how he noticed that all these high performers tended to have a hobby that Didn't involve a lot of voices, right? They would listen to classical music. They went fly fishing. They did long distance bike races or they ran or they did archery. These people who are perpetually busy, there was endless demands on their time. They were talking to people constantly. They had to cultivate stillness in their routine, in their life that allowed them to reflect, that allowed them to sift through things, that allowed them to connect with themselves So then they could go back out in the world and connect with other people. And ultimately, that's what stillness is the key is about.
To build rapport during an interview, ask the interviewer questions about themselves and their experience. For example, ask how they got involved with the company, what they enjoy about working there, or their thoughts on your skills and fit within the organization. This shows confidence and helps determine if the role is right for you.
Transcript: I also find it kind of a hack in interviewing to get the person to like you, because a lot of this is based on relationships and how they feel about you after the interview, is start asking Them questions. Are narcissists or they're self-involved and they love talking about myself. So Lisa, how did you get involved at Salesforce? Or what do you like about working here? Or when you look at my skills, what do you think? Do you think I'd be a good fit here? So what you want to figure out and you want to be confident is to say, okay, I think I'd be great at this, but is this the right fit for me? You know, start asking them questions. Who does really well at Salesforce? Or I'm just using that as an example.
🎧 Is Reddit Undervalued? + Netflix Goes After Podcasts - Prof G Markets
Reddit's a great fit for podcasting. Think of the discussions, the threads, the audience. Distributing clips, full podcasts, and live podcasts on Reddit could make it the Spotify or YouTube of podcasting.
Transcript: G (Scott Galloway) I think in 2026, the arbiter of podcasts and the biggest growing distribution mechanism of podcasts is going to be Reddit. I think Reddit is so perfect for podcasting. Think about the discussions, the threads, and the audience. I think if you could figure out a way to distribute clips, full podcasts, live podcasts, To me, it's just out of central casting to become the Spotify or the YouTube of podcasting.
Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, prioritizes in-person interviews, traveling to guests for a month at a time. He insists on high video production quality, going against the trend of remote recording.
Transcript: G (Scott Galloway) What he does on his pod is he will go to New York for a month, go to LA for a month, and he does, he demands in-person interviews. The thing I did with Constantine was the first time they had ever done a podcast remotely. He demands for, again, for video production quality. While everyone is trying to get rid of the studio, he's going the other way. And Rich Roll does the same thing. Rich Roll forces you to go out to Agoura Hills, which is not fun.
Netflix might move into podcasting, but highly-produced video podcasts risk losing the authentic feel that makes the medium special. People connect with podcasters because they're real and relatable, even with simple production setups. Increased production value could make podcasts less genuine and relatable. The intimacy and connection fostered by less-produced podcasts shouldn't be lost in the pursuit of higher production quality.
Transcript: Ed Elson What do you think a Scott Galloway Netflix show should look like? And I think this is an opportunity to think, like, imagine we are a Netflix producer. Like, what kind of content do you think people are looking from podcasters? Because I will say, I don't think it's just a video podcast. They can already get that on YouTube. They can already get that on Spotify. I also don't think it's whatever the fuck CNN Plus was. Something about that didn't work. G (Scott Galloway) It was maybe- Jake Tapper's book club? That wasn't riveting content? It's too produced. Ed Elson You lose all of the authentic feel that you get with the podcast and with that relationship with podcasters. What do you think a good Netflix show for a podcaster would look like? G (Scott Galloway) Well, it would be Scott and Ed. So I think eventually Netflix goes into news and they do a loop where they, so a daily business update where it's more highly produced, more graphics, more visuals. And also if you were going to do a regular podcast every week, what I think you'd want to do, if you're talking about, your guest is Richard Reeves, you take 15 or 20 minutes and you go talk To parents and young men, you just, quite frankly, you take podcasting and you just massively increase the production value. Because right now, the means of production are, and this is the thing I love about podcasting, and the thing that scares me about this is the means of production are basically what looks Like a toiletry kit for me. And that is Drew, who's our tech wizard, puts together this little dop kit for me, and it's the size, it's smaller than a lunch pail or literally like a toiletry kit. And I can take it anywhere and pull out my mic, plug it into my laptop and boom, I'm podcasting. The game is going to be upped and you're going to see podcasts where it's an hour long podcast, but they'll do breakouts. And when we're talking about Reddit, it breaks to like a three minute thing where they're interviewing the CEO or they use amazing visuals to go online and talk about Reddit and what's Interesting about it. But the game, the bar is going to be raised and they have such incredible depth of talent that they'll be able to say, okay, Scott and Ed, if you want to do a daily market show, we have an unbelievable Production team in not only in New Jersey, but in Madrid. And when you're done recording at 7pm, we have our folks in LA take it over, then they throw it over the wall to the folks in Madrid at three in the morning, where it's eight in the morning Their time. And they produce just this really impressive podcast meets Hollywood, if you will. The days of me just tapping in from the Dolphin Hotel and Walt Disney World and getting a quarter of a million people to listen that day with, you know, the bad curtains in the background. I'm not sure that shit's going to survive. Ed Elson And maintain the level of authenticity that you get on podcasts. I would argue, I don't think it's possible to do that. I think the more highly produced you get, the less real things start to feel. And there's something nice about you being in a hotel and there's a curtain behind you and we can actually see what is happening in your life. Because as I've said, I think the thing that people crave most is connection with people. This is what I wrote about in that blog post, People are the New Brands. They crave connection with real people because of this issue with loneliness that we keep on seeing. And I don't think that a highly produced Netflix series is going to be the kind of thing that addresses that level of connectivity and authenticity that you get with podcasts.
March 2
🎥 How to Actually Make Money Online in 2025 - Case Study - Ali Abdaal
When you rock up to a call to ask me a question, you prepare a document to say, "Okay, this is all here. Here are all my problems; these are my goals; these are the things I think you're going to say. Here's what I would say in response. So, this is really my ultimate question." You prepare for those questions so much more than almost anyone else does, and you're getting value out of the program. A lot of it is that you get what you put in.
I think you and other entrepreneur friends of mine, including myself, it's like if I sign up for anything, of course, I'm going to get the value out of it. I'm not, if it's a trivial cost for like, you know, $200. For what it doesn’t matter, but if I’m paying serious money for anything like it’s guaranteed to be ROI positive because I will make it ROI positive
📰 My Encounters With "Resistance" - Ali Abdaal
As Steven Pressfield talks about in The War of Art, the more important a task is to our growth and fulfilment, the more Resistance we’ll feel toward it.
🎧 Eamon & Bec Share 3 Rules for Life - Three Rules
Happiness is a choice. This can be triggering, as many resist the idea that they can choose to stop being unhappy. Eamon references Mo Gawdat's book, *Solve for Happy*, where this concept is discussed, noting that many readers stopped reading after encountering this statement.
Transcript: Eamon Happiness is a choice. And I think it's important to preface this with it's our rule and how we live. And I know that as I say that it can be really triggering for people. I first learned about it from Mo Goddett's book, Solve for Happy. And he said, after he made that statement on his like Kindle analytics, can see that 80% of people drop off. So people don't want to hear it and they don't want to know that they can make the choice to stop being unhappy, which is another way of saying the same thing.
Bec was about to buy a $10,000 van. Holding the paperwork, she asked Eamon if he wanted to choose the adventure.
Transcript: Bec We were just about to buy it it was like ten thousand dollar van and i'm like holding the paper and i looked at you and i'm like do you want to choose the adventure
Instead of asking "What do you do for work?", try asking questions like "What are you excited about this week?". This approach makes conversations more engaging and allows people to share what's important to them.
Transcript: Bec Little questions that can be make conversation a lot easier something like what's something you're excited about this week Rather than what do you do for work? You're just much more interesting of a question if they want to tell you what they're do for work, they're going to answer with that. But little things like that have helped me kind of connect with people a lot more.
📰 A Life Spent Reading by Tommy Dixon
Literature is loaded with characters who laboured endlessly in their libraries to become learned, but were ultimately unfunctional and incomplete individuals. Mr. Bennet in Jane Austen's *Pride and Prejudice* spent his afternoons locked in his oak office, preferring the company of Walt Whitman to his wife, calm and content, while his household descended into chaos¹. Prospero, in Shakespeare's *The Tempest*, was too absorbed in study to attend to his duties as Duke. His love of books blinded him to his brother’s treachery, ending in his exile. Goethe's *Faust* realized that his years of intense reading were pregnant with frustration but barren of wisdom, and decided to strike a deal with the devil, gaining the world but losing his soul.
In wrestling with this problem, I often return to Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics.* For two reasons. One, Aristotle proposed that virtue is the "golden mean", the middle way, between two extremes. Courage, for example, is the middle way between rashness on one end and cowardice on the other. The path to friendship lies between flattery and confrontation. Good humour, between buffoonery and boorishness. In other words, virtue is *balance*. Excess reading, like excess anything, is probably a vice.
📰 Prompt No. 25: Standing and Walking by Samantha Dion Baker
Gloria Steinem’s, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!, the book I illustrated back in 2019, and this page has always been one of my favorites.
🎧 Austin Kleon on Fueling Artistic Ambition - The Daily Stoic
It's observer effect. They talk about them in physics. That like by observing something, you change it.
I was listening to C.S. Lewis's uh surprised by joy his like autobiography and he said this thing about like, oh, you know, just keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you'll find everything you need. And I was like, OK, do I how do I underline this? I think that's the problem with audiobooks, you know? Yeah. I love anything that gets people reading.
You got another thing coming yeah you know the expression is actually you've got another think coming
Rob Halford of Judas Priest introduced leather and studs into heavy metal fashion, drawing inspiration from his experiences in gay clubs. This challenges common perceptions of heavy metal as hyper-masculine.
Transcript: Austin Kleon The other thing I love about Priest, not to get too into this, is like Rob Halford brought leather and studs and stuff into metal because he's a gay dude. Yes. So he's going to all these clubs and stuff. So this heavy metal music that we think of this like super hyper macho or whatever, they get all this leather and gear stuff from this dude who's been to these clubs.
Kurt Vonnegut had a good middle-class life by writing stories for magazines. He made a living from this because magazines were widely read back then.
Transcript: Austin Kleon Like I think about Vonnegut all the time, like Vonnegut, you know, has a little bit of journalism career, PR guy, but then he gets, you know, he has a really good, solid middle class life For a while writing these stories for these magazines because people read magazines, right? Ryan Holiday And so I think that like- Yeah, imagine getting a work of fiction published in not book form and making a living from it. Austin Kleon And making $4,000 in 1960 on it, right? I think for me, it's just about looking around and being like, what can I use? Yeah. You know, just being like really open to your, thinking deeply about your context.
The systems that previously supported creative work, like traditional publishing and established literary scenes, have changed. You can't simply emulate past successes; you need to adapt to the new environment and forge your own path.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday There was economics and incentives and a business structure. And a lot of that is no longer true. So you can't sit down and write your book of Joan Didion essays. Yeah. She was a well-known journalist. And there was also like a whole scene that would review and talk about like there are only vestiges of that left. Yeah. And so pretending that you can just she can be your hero, but you have to figure out how to do it in a new way. You can't just pretend to do that thing.
It's okay to have hobbies you're not great at. Churchill's paintings weren't technically good, but they were valuable as a creative outlet, enriching his ability to perform at a high level in other areas.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday I was talking about Churchill and painting. And I was like, for someone who loved painting it's interesting how he never really got good like his paintings his paintings are not good doesn't matter but they're worth a lot and we Celebrate them because of what they allowed him to do yeah right yeah that it was it was an outlet for him that enhanced the thing that he did perform at an incredible level. Yeah. Right. Like a great person could and perhaps should have something they're not good at.
Many successful, driven people have manic energy or obsessive tendencies. This can be very useful, but it needs to be channeled positively or it will destroy you.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Many successful driven people in office have some kind of, if they're not outright bipolar, there is a manic energy, an OCD tendency, an obsession, and can serve you really well, but It's eventually going to find other places. You need to, you need to direct it or destroy you. Austin Kleon It needs to be channeled positively
Narcissism is lowest in famous people who achieved fame through mastery. In other words, their craft or skill led to notoriety rather than being "famous for being famous."
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Narcissism tended to be lowest in famous people who caught famous through some form of mastery.
Ryan brought up David Foster Wallace's essay on talk radio hosts, noting its relevance to how podcasts are affecting people's thinking and how some podcast hosts are leaning toward misinformation.
Transcript: Ryan Holiday Have you read David Foster Wallace's essay on talk radio hosts? Austin Kleon A long time ago. Ryan Holiday It's so good. But he's. Yeah, it's like this is not. And I think actually I think you're seeing podcasts break a lot of people's brains. There's a reason that a lot of, I think, podcast hosts have drifted towards sort of misinformation and extremism.
John Warner, the "biblio oracle," argues that the way writing is taught in schools encourages kids to "bullshit" in their essays. The rigid structure of assignments, like the five-paragraph essay, prioritizes form over substance, teaching students to say a lot while saying nothing.
Transcript: Austin Kleon John warner has a great sub stack he's the biblio Oracle, and he's written a couple of books about how writing is taught. And he's working on a book right now about chat GPT and like how AI and writing is his like beat. He's he's really great on the subject. But what he talks about is, and I think about this all the time with the arts right now, is we've already taught kids to bullshit in their essays. We've already encouraged them. If you think about the way writing is taught in school, we've already encouraged them to have a lot of saying to say a lot and say nothing. Yeah. Just by the very structure of like, write me a 500 word essay. Right. It has to have an introduction. You know, forget all the Michelle de Montaigne I've read, you know, like it has to have this and this and this. You have to fill the boxes. And so like we've already encouraged kids to be mediocre writers and to bullshit basically. And that just like, you know, that goes all the way up is how like John talks about. And I think he's he's right.
People's reaction to AI, positive or negative, stems from being fed low-quality, mass-produced content for years. This 'slop' has made us accustomed to a certain standard (or lack thereof).
Transcript: Austin Kleon One of the things I think about just culturally right now, why people are so excited about AI or not excited about AI is we've already been fed slop for the past 20 years. I mean, we've been fed computer generated, mass produced, lowest common denominator, Hollywood slop for the past 20 years. Why would we? Oh, yeah, sure. Make an AI movie.
March 1
🎧 Eugene Teo Shares 3 Rules for Life - Matt D’Avella
To gain clarity and make better decisions, regularly ask yourself:
What kind of person do I want to be (e.g., father, friend, partner)?
How would that person act in this situation?
What am I choosing to do instead, and what's the less ideal choice tempting me?
Aligning your actions with your values brings clarity and direction.
Transcript:
Every single morning, I ask myself, just mentally in my head, I don't need to write this down. Sometimes I might need to though, you know? So what kind of father do I want to be? What kind of business owner do I want to be? What kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner? What kind of family member do I want to be? And how would that person act? How should that person act for today? Or for in this current situation, if I'm at a crossroads, if I've been introduced to a new business venture or a really big whatever decision, say, what would a good business owner do? They might do, they might work harder, but what would a good family member do? What would a good father do? Might be a bit different. Which one do I want to be pulled more towards? And also importantly, what am I choosing to do instead? Or what am I choosing to do in general? What is like the devil on your shoulder saying you should do? And being aware of those things. Because as soon as I start living my life in alignment with who I want to actually be, that really opened up a lot of doors to me in terms of, well, it gave me a lot of clarity on what I need to
🎧 Male Addiction in the Digital Age — With Dr. K - Prof G Pod
To gauge your relationship with technology, check your screen time stats and reflect on how you feel about them. Ask yourself if your current usage aligns with the life you desire.
Let's take a look at your like screen app usage. So you've spent 32 hours over the last two months on TikTok. How do you feel about that? Is this the kind of life that you want to live?
Before a first date, take an hour-long, device-free walk. This can improve the date's quality. Shared emotional experiences are key for connection, which digital devices suppress. A study showed couples meeting on a rickety bridge felt more connected than those meeting on a stable one due to the shared experience of fear.
Transcript: Alok Kanojia What I'll tell people like who are struggling to fall in love is before you go on a date, walk for one hour and do not touch a device. What I find is that people who do that, the quality of their dates improves. There's another really fascinating mechanism. So remember that all social media and the technology and all this kind of stuff suppresses our negative emotional circuitry and evokes emotional circuitry. And one of the key factors for falling in love is shared emotional experience. So this is there's a beautiful study that that that illustrated this. So they had a group of two groups of couples go on dates where they met on a bridge. But there are two bridges. One is a stone bridge that's stable. One is a wood bridge that's rickety. And what they found is that when you meet in the middle of like a wood bridge that's rickety, we're both a little bit scared. And so since there is a shared emotional experience between these, I think we're heteronormative dates. When you have two human beings that are both share the same emotion and we're both scared on the bridge, we actually bind together a little bit. The empathic connection becomes strong. And when we meet in a stable place where there is not a shared emotional state, then those people feel less connected.
Negative emotions are powerful motivators designed to signal needed change. They're stronger than positive emotions and drive us to fix things in our life. Things like porn, video games, and social media let us wipe away these emotions instead of harnessing them as fuel for growth. This disables our primary motivational fuel.
Transcript:
G (Scott Galloway) And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women want more economically and emotionally viable men. So they're dating older. And I find without the joy and probably more importantly, the guardrails of a relationship, men just come off the tracks. That women reinvest that energy in work and friends and men reinvest it in video games and conspiracy theory. Your thoughts on limiting the amount of porn such that a young man, quite frankly, builds up more desire and is willing to take more risks in terms of meeting women or putting himself In a context or another man where he can take that leap of faith and endure the rejection, take the risk? Thoughts? This is the biggest problem that I see right now.
Alok Kanojia We are coping with our negative emotions instead of harnessing them. So this is something that I want you to really think about. Why do human beings have negative emotions? Right? So negative emotions are, first of all, much more powerful motivators of behavior than positive emotions. Curiosity will get you interested in something for a little while. Joy will get you interested in something in a little while. Shame, sadness, and anger are incredibly powerful motivators. Now, why are they such powerful motivators? Because these are the signals that our brain sends us to tell us we need to make a change. If I'm ashamed of my body, the solution to that in the way that our brain evolved, because we couldn't avoid people, we were in like tribes of 300. So I had to see these people every single day. That shame is a powerful motivator to change the way that I look, change the way that I act. And even this hunger for companionship, this sexual drive, which is one of the strongest drives in the human being overall, is what causes us to reach out and overcome our shame. And now what's happening with things like pornography and technology, social media, video games, is we are taking all of these negative emotions, which normally are the most powerful Fuel to allow us to fix our lives, and we're wiping them away with things like porn or video games. And now what we're doing is we're disabling our primary motivational fuel, which is negative emotion. And you'll see this all the time.
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Thank you for sharing my essay Becky 🥰 I want to check out the other ones. I appreciate that you do things like pull out quotes from podcasts which does make me more interested in checking them out.
I did not know you publish this list every month! Glad to have discovered something to binge watch, and read.