September 2024
Books, articles, podcasts, and thoughts throughout the month
Books read:
📖 Crypto Confidential by
(40% completed)📖 Good Work by
(85% completed)September 25
🎧 Nike's CEO Shake-Up, Trump's "Deranged" Messaging, and Guests Kate Conger and Ryan Mac - Pivot Pod
Paying young people for 80% of what older people can do is an arbitrage
The ultimate arbitrage in the last couple centuries in a modern economy has been first and foremost fossil fuels. You can build shit faster and cheaper with fossil fuels than anything. That's been the ultimate arbitrage. The second ultimate arbitrage is to find young, talented, ambitious people you can pay $100,000 to who are 80% as good as the 40-year dude making $400,000. If you can attract young, talented people on a regular basis, as big tech does, you can attract the youngest and most talented people who don't have dogs, don't have kids, are willing To work around the clock for less money than the 40-year That's the ultimate economic arbitrage. We don't like to say that out loud, but the firms that can draw those people are the ones that win. And young people, generally speaking, young, ambitious people, what I found at my firm, despite the reports that they all want to walk their dog in Brooklyn Park, really young, ambitious People actually like the office.
🎥 The Secret to Getting THE BEST Shots!! - Peter McKinnon and Chris Hau
That is in in a sense what the whole craft is about, is capturing time and then being able to gift it and then look back on it with fondness and sometimes not.
Chris Hau made a photobook of his grandmother seeing her sisters in Austria for the last time
September 24
🎧 Why Young People Are Worse Off Than Their Parents — And What to Do About It - Scott Galloway’s TED Talk
The person who put together the slides, Mia, makes $160,000 a year, and I'm allowed to say that with her permission. She's 26, very talented young woman. She pays $9,000 a year or 6% in Social Security.
🎧 Future of Marketing — Part One - Prof G Pod
Capital shifting from marketing to product
What was the algorithm for shareholder value from the end of World War II to the introduction of Google? Simple. Manufacture a mediocre product. And it doesn't matter because we had just leveled our competition, specifically Germany and Japan, and so we could produce a mediocre product. And then we would wrap it in these amazing brand codes of American toughness or youth or sex appeal or European elegance or paternal love or maternal love, right? Let's turn 20 cents of peanut butter paste into $2 of peanut butter. Why? Because choosing moms choose JIF. And if you want to show your neighbors that you love your kids more, then it's worth it. This is maternal love. And these brand codes could be hammered away and cemented into our psyche using this extraordinarily cheap medium called broadcast television, where all of America spent five hours A day watching Y-TANG, which the astronauts drank was good for you, right? All of these amazing associations we were better at imbuing than anyone in the world. And that was the world of marketing and there were marketing departments everywhere.
Where has the majority of capital gone? It's gone back into the product. Why? Because digital technologies have unlocked an opportunity to 10x products. The idea, the ability to unlock product quality and find the better product using digital technologies and these weapons of mass diligence called Google and TripAdvisor and all these Other platforms has essentially taken traditional marketing and kicked it in the nuts. So I think you're going to see a reallocation of capital going back to the original notion around CEO's job is to, or manager's job is to allocate resources to their greatest return. I think the greater return is pulling money out of marketing right now, and I hate to say it, and putting it into supply chain or actual product innovation using new digital technologies.
If you’re in advertising, move to the client side
What does that mean if you're working in advertising? Boy, am I going on here. It means if you already have momentum and you're doing well, you probably should stay put. I would argue if you're under the age of 40 and you don't see like you're not skyrocketing at your current agency, I would say thinking about, I would consider getting out of that business And getting in on the client side to things that are more closer to the product, if you will.
Building community for brand connection
If you can create a community of evangelists or people who have sort of a good will towards you, and there's ways to activate that, obviously it's hugely important. Something NYU does not do well. There's not that same sense of camaraderie or community post-purchase, if you will. So thinking about how to illuminate or really engage or activate this community and give them opportunities to get together, one of the things we're talking about for all of our podcasts Is doing a series of events or a tour next year. Because when we meet people and you're nice to them and they see you live, they just feel more cemented. They feel more engaged. They feel more intimate with the brand.
Post-purchase > Pre-purchase
You wanna have a bias against pre-purchase, kind of a mediocre bias against distribution, and you wanna have a bias towards post-purchase. Why? Because pre-purchase is over invested because it's cool. I used to go back to New York and advertise with Conde Nast because I wanted to have lunch in the Conde Nast cafeteria with my friend David Carey because the people were hot and I got to see Anna Winter and they would invite me to these cool parties and I felt cool. And you get to hang out with good looking people who wear black and invite you to cool parties when you spend money on pre-purchase, mostly agency people in magazines and media companies. Purchase is kind of fun. That's stores. Expensive, but kind of fun. Post-purchase is boring. That's slipping a pizza under the door to a bunch of MIS guys building CRM databases. It's not romantic, it's not sexy, and guess what? The inverse correlation holds here as it does with careers. The less sexy, the greater the ROI. So I want you to have a bias towards post-purchase loyalty programs, database marketing, CRM, and also community, if you will.
September 23
🎧 Takeaways From the Second Debate + Does the US Need a Sovereign Wealth Fund? - Prof G Markets
When people get older though, and they start thinking about families, because if you're gonna expect people to work 80 hours a week, what you're saying is we don't want mothers here. And that's a problem.
My first boss, Carter Cordenar, actually, you know, as I was shitposting everyone to Morgan Stanley, actually a lovely guy who took a real interest in me. He, he taught me, he said, when you go into a meeting, he said, unless you're late, walk around, go to them and shake their hand and introduce yourself. And I wouldn't have done that, and actually as a 22 year old, I would kind of set higher, waited for someone to introduce myself. He said, no, go around the table and walk to everyone, say, hi, I'm Scott Gallo, I shake their hand. I mean, that sounds... And it kind of reminded me of that. She went over to them. I thought it was fantastic.
The best marketing in the world is tobacco companies, a company whose primary product is death, disease, and disability that figures out a way to sell a product at 96 points of margin And create these very aspirational brands. That's the best marketing in the world. The second marketing in the world by sector has been the financial services sector that has convinced you that they can outperform the S&P because they have these old guys and suspenders And all these models and people from the smartest schools and wealthy people like to believe they should have access to something different. So they continue to invest in these funds. And if you added up all hedge funds, all mutual funds, all internal investments, I mean, this is an enormous industry. Everyone on CNBC, they have underperformed the S&P by the amount of their fees. So what you're basically doing is buying the S&P, but giving some guy that's highly credentialed and highly aggressive, unbelievable living.
🎧 Debate Reax, Taylor's Endorsement, Apple's AI Upgrades - Pivot Pod
I really empathize with the point as it comes to the relationship between parents and schools. And I found myself, when I was in the position on our schools, saying to people, calm the fuck down. If at some point you think things are so bad, then put pressure on me as your representative to find a new headmaster. But until then, your job is to support this person who has a PhD in education and has been teaching for 40 fucking years. All right? So just back the fuck off. As opposed to these parents showing up and deciding that all of a sudden there are many experts in education because they have kids.
And unless we as parents all bind together and say schools cannot have phones in schools, maybe a flip phone so you can communicate with them, fine. None of this is going to change because I'm telling you their addiction is greater than our parenting skills.
🎧 EP127 — Raptors, Moo Deng, and Everything but Stationery - Stationery Cafe
Boox Palma
it's an Android device. So you can actually. Um, install. Any. Android apps on here. It actually even has a camera and like a light. And stuff. But yeah, so you can, so like, I have the Kindle app on here. And you can read books. Oh, you have one. No. I'm holding a picture of it. Of a photo of it. It's the size of a phone. It looks like a phone.
September 22
🎧 Living for Longevity — With Dan Buettner - Prof G Pod
Beans as part of longevity diet
Beans are the cornerstone of every longevity diet, and if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably worth about four extra years of life expectancy.
Retirement home, instant lowering of life expectancy.
📰 Are You Planting Seeds of Entitlement? by Khe Hy
Entitlement is the fear of frustration.
During an interview with the Dr. Becky Kennedy a clinical psychologist and the author of Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent you Want to Be she describes how at a very young age, kids are deeply aware of what happens during moments of extreme frustration.
📰 12 Books That Shaped My YouTube Business by Ali Abdaal
books that I’ve recommended to creators and students of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy
👥 Branding & Marketing
🎨 Creativity
✍️ Storytelling
💡Entrepreneurship
🚀 Business & Product Development
⌨️ Productivity
📰 Commit Before You're Ready by
In the commitment equation, people overestimate the importance of finding the right thing and underestimate the necessity of making it the right thing through their commitment.
Commitment comes with risks. But the problem plaguing modernity isn't committing to the wrong things, but committing at all. Optionality is the opiate of the masses. Instead of searching for the thing to go all in on, we’re obsessive about accumulating adventures and manufacturing memories, collecting experiences like tourist trinkets and turning them into shareable shards of content to amuse strangers.
September 20
🎧 What the 2024 Rate Cutting Cycle Could Mean for Investors — Ft. Lyn Alden - Prof G Markets
The sector that previously owned product launches was the automobile sector
The sector that owned tech launches or product launches was the automobile sector. And it was a big deal, they had these big unvalings of the new, you know, 1984 Chrysler-Lebaron, and Ricardo Montalban would be there with some hot girl in a Rockettes outfit. And Liat Coco would be there talking about how the new K car was a breakthrough technology, and was gonna bring Detroit back.
Speaker 3
Sounds a lot better than Tim Cook in Allbirds.
📰 The Mr. Beast Memo Is a Guide to the Gen Z Workforce by
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, said in an interview when giving advice to students recently - > "For most of you guys, turn off TikTok, Facebook. A total stupid waste of time....My advice to students: learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn...Read history books. You can't make it up. Nelson Mandela, Abe Lincoln, Sam Walton. You only learn by reading and talking to other people. There's no other way"
John Green gets to in a thread about the document: > When you are 26 years old, it common to spend a lot of time pursuing what you want without spending much time considering why you want it… Seeking money/fame/power/whatever without knowing why you're seeking it turns out to be a dangerous business. Even if you're lucky enough to make it to the top of the mountain, you'll find that it's a lonely place without much oxygen… It's hard when you're young to think about both what you want and why you want it, and to really interrogate the why. But it's also important. The longer you go without doing that, the harder life gets no matter your success.
September 19
🎧 Our Favorite Photographers of 2022 - Sunny Sixteen
Taylor's black-white film stock choices for her upcoming year of black-white photography. I'm assuming it's gonna be mostly like double X (BWXX ) and like hp5 just to keep it like really nice
🎧 Unpacking Tech’s Influence on Today’s Media - On with Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher making 10-15x more than she did at NYT
I'm making 10 to 15 times more than I made it the New York Times, at least. So that was all. And no meddling. So I think that was one of my, they're very meddlesome.
Encourage juniors to start outsourcing bits of tasks to AI
And I even tell a lot of the junior reporters I work with to be thinking about which ways, like, don't be afraid to say, which parts of my job can this do now? Because it means they will free you up to do other things.
Overhyped & underhyped in tech:
Kara: Overhyped in tech or media, Elon Musk. Underhyped, Elon Musk in big trouble if Kamala Harris wins.
Charlotte Klein: Overhyped, making it big on sub-stack. I think that's like a tiny sliver of people. I don't think that's a realistic path to journalism. Under hyped print news, print media. Fancy curated magazines are coming back.
Joanna Stern: overhyped, blaming smartphones for everything. Underhyped, blaming smartphones for everything
Oliver Darcy: overhyped to me is the television news anchor. I think that we pay way too much attention to the television news anchor, and I think that's a dying medium, obviously. Underhyped, maybe local news.
Buy, borrow, die
One of those pieces of tax avoidance you referenced, and that is basically the strategy is buy, borrow and die. What do I mean by that? I own a bunch of Amazon and Apple stock. I don't sell it. It keeps going up, tax deferred. Well, what happens? Maybe I need some money. I can borrow against it at very low rates. And then that money keeps compounding off the whole base because it doesn't get taxed. I don't have to send 23 to 40 cents of it to Uncle Sam. It keeps growing off a much bigger base. And then I put it into a trust, and then when I die, it transfers to my kids tax-free. That is how the wealthy get even wealthier and build dynasties, which is bad for America.
🎧 Google Antitrust Redux, Debate Predictions, and Guests Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe - Pivot Pod
Everybody has a platform
So our world, we know so intimately. Similar to how you know your world so intimately. So soccer, basketball, we know it to the depths. I can't tell you how many articles I read that are just wrong. I can't tell you how many takes that I see that are just blatantly wrong, just wrong, literally, factually wrong, all kinds of wrong. And I think I've known that for a very long time, I'm sure everybody in this conversation has. And that's when I realized from a political standpoint, I can't just believe every article, I can't just believe every take. And that really, I think, ignited something in me on the education knowledge standpoint. So listen, everybody has whatever platform they have, whether it's 10 million people or one person. And I just feel like in my little world, I just try to be as knowledgeable as possible and understanding as possible. And I just try to share that with people around me who might not be doing as much deep diving. And I think that's how you can also have impact.
September 18
🎥 Photo Road Trip MEGAVLOG by Sunny Sixteen
nighttime long exposures on film: we're gonna switch this over to bulb mode which will let our shutter release cable just keep the shutter open manual focus lens we're going to focus to infinity and wide open at f2 or I don't know if that matters as much it'll definitely be softer but might as well um 800 speed film in here
🎧 Prof G Markets — Why Are Millionaires Moving Abroad? + the Biggest Deals in Podcasting
Tech companies emerge when they’re close to a strong technical university
The ground zero for any tech company that ever hopes to be worth more than $10 billion that I can see is that every one of them is started within a bike ride of a world-class engineering University. And it's just no accident that the Valley is smack in between, in San Francisco, smack in between Berkeley and Stanford, two of the finest technical universities on the planet.
Podcasts is the new arena for ads
If you have a vehicle, a media vehicle, such as the one that the two of us are on right now, that people are willing to endure ads on, that asset becomes more and more valuable because there Are few and fewer of them. This is why you've seen an explosion in the value of sports franchises because they can garner TV rights or sell their TV rights and people are still willing to endure ads in live sports. They're not willing to endure ads in original scripted drama anymore, but they are willing to endure ads so far in audio, specifically podcasts.
And our deal with Vox is up in May. So we're out there positioning ourselves. And my guess is we'll probably end up same with Vox because we like working with them so much. But oh my gosh, it's going to cost you folks. It's going to cost you.
Subscription is just, was the right move 10 years ago? It's not any longer because there's still too many advertisers that need to reach people. And that number, 23% growth, I think that means podcasts are growing faster than Alphabet right now.
📰 Happy Chuseok! Here Are 4 Recipes for Korean Thanksgiving! by Joanne Molinaro / The Korean Vegan
reading out memoir to friends
the memoir. I had some friends over for pre-Chuseok last night (did you really think I'd make a whole bunch of food for content and then eat it all by myself???) and actually read a portion of the draft out loud to them. I think this is the first time I've ever done that in my entire life. I mean, I've read things out loud to Anthony and I've read things out loud in my writing classes, but never to a group of friends over bindaetteok and japchae. In any event, I say this only to demonstrate how excited I am about this project. The memoir will consist of stories from my life, but also stories from my maternal grandmother and my mother.
It will attempt to answer the question: What does it mean to be a 'woman'?
Would you guys be interested in reading snippets as I write it?
September 17
🎧 X Blocked in Brazil, Nvidia Wipeout, and the Fuss Over Founder Mode - Pivot Pod
On timing the market
You should never try to time the market because the majority of the gains in the market come across just 11 days and you never know when those 11 days are going to happen.
Idolatry of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments when he was worth a quarter of a billion dollars, and yet he's our Jesus Christ because he invented an amazing Phone. There's just a certain idolatry of these folks that they and everyone else propagates that they should be subject to a different standard than everyone else.
Why employees don’t care about the company
At every company, you have to connect the outcome of the company to the person's economic well-being, directly connect it.
🎧 Tech and Kids — Parenting Expert Dr. Becky Answers Listener Questions - On with Kara Swisher
Kids need different parts of lead parent
If I think about all the different parts of me I think we all have multiple parts of ourselves each of my kids Needs a different part of me to be lead parent to them.
Kids need sturdy leadership
First principles, kids are good inside, connection first, kind of at the end of the day, connecting to your kid is really the only parenting strategy you have, or at least I think of it As a multiplier on the effectiveness of every other strategy. Kids need sturdy leaders, this idea of sturdy leadership. That's true for every single kid.
Dr. Spock
You're being called Dr. Spock of this generation. And for those who don't know, Dr. Spock wrote a groundbreaking parenting guide in 1946. It sold 50 million copies by the time he died in 1998. So basically, Boomers and Gen X was raised on his ideas.
Parents are set up to fail
I think what makes parents anxious is that we are set up to fail. And then we're set up with a narrative that explains that struggle as our fault. And that's, you know, big picture what what I'm looking to change.
Phones reducing frustration tolerance
Our phones reduce our frustration tolerance. We are all less tolerant of the frustrations of day-to life because of the gratification cycles our phones get us in. Wanting something and then spending very little effort and getting that thing quickly, get us accustomed to those circuits.
Kids need to learn how to do independent play
The truth is, to be kind of successful, quote, successful at independent play, kids need to do the work. They have to be creative. They have to try things. They have to watch their block tower fall five times and build it a sixth time. And all of a sudden, the sixth time, and you're like, wow, I just cooked dinner, right? Because my kid was able to do that.
Our ability to tolerate frustration is massively predictive of our ability to like function in the real world because life is frustrating.
My job is not to keep my kid happy. It's to keep my kids safe.
Normalize urges
Naming and normalizing the urges our kids have because urges don't lead to problems. It's urges without coping skills.
September 14
🎧 Be a Better Leader, the Human Paradox, and the Folly of a Plan — With Simon Sinek - Prof G Pod
Optimism is an undying belief that there’s light at the end of the tunnel
How do you maintain your optimism, especially in challenging times? And what advice would you give to someone who tends to be like myself, kind of see the glass as half empty if you will?
So optimism doesn't mean I'm naive nor blind, and it's not blind positivity. It's not looking at a broken world and be like, everything's fine. That's not how I am. I'm quite cynical a lot of the time. But I generally believe that the world tends toward good. And I believe that even if we're in darkness, that if we come together and work together, we will get through this and we will come out better than we went in. So it's this undying belief that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Young people should learn to be a friend
Young people, for me, fundamentally, the single best thing a young person could do is really learn to be a friend. Learn to put away a device and learn how to engage with another human being. Learn how to be there for someone. Learn how to accept help when it's offered. Learn how to ask for help. And all of these sort of pretty fundamental things about adolescence.
Simon’s mentor relationship
At some point, we went out for lunch and eventually the sort of mentor-mentee relationship evolved. And I thought of him as my mentor. And I remember we became quite close. And I remember I was leaving his house one day and I used the M word for the first time. And I put my arm around him as I was saying goodbye. And I said, you know, Ron, I'm glad you're my mentor. And he said back. I didn't expect he said and I'm glad you're mine And this is what I think great mentor relationships are which is it's it's both of us are mentors and both of us are mentees Somebody who's Had more experience is still learning about the world from somebody who's asking for help.
The definition of a mentor is someone who always has time for you. And it can't be one-sided. You can't simply, just because someone's accomplished and you're not, you can't just go up to them and think they're an asshole because they don't wanna mentor you. Just like you can't think someone's an asshole because they don't want to be your friend. It's a relationship.
Genius is a spirit
Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk, but it was magical and it was hugely helpful to me. She talks about the concept of genius and then the pre-Renaissance, a genius was a daemon, a spirit that lived in the walls. And if you did something great, people would say of you, you had your genius, your genius was with you. So you couldn't take full credit for your accomplishments. And if you failed, people would say, oh, I'm sorry, I guess your genius wasn't with you. And so you couldn't take full credit, but you never had to sort of like beat yourself up if it didn't go so well either. But at some point in the Renaissance, having your genius, genius became being the genius. And now if you accomplish something great, people said of you, you are a genius. And now you're labeled and straddleled with that stress for the rest of your life, and the fear of not being the genius anymore becomes part of the identity, which I think is part of the Failure. But I think what we've done is it's all part of the package of this over-indexing and this rugged individualism, especially in America, where we've heroized CEOs, and we've heroized These individuals who none of them accomplished their stuff by themselves. But we don't celebrate the team, the group as much. So I think it's societal.
Simon Sinek weighs in publicly only if he has something to add
My rule has always been that I will, that I will only say something publicly if I believe that I can be additive. And if it takes me a week to come up with something that's additive, then I'm gonna wait a week. I've, and it's very hard to resist the pressure, but I don't want to simply add to noise simply because a certain base wants me to join their side. My rule is it has to be additive. It has to be additive. And by the way, sometimes I have nothing to say that's additive. And so I will sometimes be conspicuously quiet. I only want to contribute. Not just virtue signal.
Financial literacy rate is low
What you just described though, having a lack of financial literacy, I think you're describing 97% of America.
Prestige isn’t always meant for me
Can I tell a story? I'll be here all week, try the veal. It was a former undersecretary of defense who was giving a speech at a large conference, thousand people, whatever. And while he's giving his remarks, he takes a sip of, from his coffee that he's holding in the styrofoam cup, and he smiles, and he interrupts his own presentation. And he says, you know, last year I spoke at this exact same conference, except last year I was still the undersecretary. And last year they flew me here business class. There was somebody waiting for me at the airport to take me to the hotel. I got to the hotel. Somebody had already checked me in. They just gave me my key. I came down in the morning. There was somebody waiting for me in the lobby. They brought me to the same venue. They took me in the back entrance. They took me into the green room. And they handed me a cup of coffee and a beautiful ceramic cup. He says, I'm longer the undersecretary, I flew her coach, I took a taxi to the hotel, I checked myself in. This morning I came down and took another taxi to the venue. I came through the front entrance, found my way backstage, and when I asked somebody, do you have any coffee, they pointed to the coffee machine in the corner and I poured myself a cup Of coffee in this here styrofoam cup. He the lesson is the ceramic cup was never meant for me. I deserve a styrofoam cup. I've tried to remember that. That it's okay to enjoy the ceramic cups. It's okay to think about the ceramic cups, one ceramic cups. But at the end of the day remember that it's not being given to me. It's giving to the position I held in this moment. And when I move on, they'll just give it to the next person. It was never meant for me. And I think what that does is two things. It reminds me where I come from, what I'm entitled to, and it also helps me live in absolute gratitude. That anything that I get, all the ceramic cups I get to enjoy, I am grateful for every one of them and think I deserve none of them. And so, when you ask me sort of like what helps me stay true as a storyteller, I think it's very simple, which is, I don't view myself as an expert, I view myself as a student. I generally think of myself as an idiot, I'm just more comfortable with the idea of admitting it these days.
September 13
Brad Gerstner is starting Invest America
As Warren Buffett has said those first 25 years changes everything Right start with that really small snowball, but what does he say you need a really long hill and almost every American misses the first 25 years of that hill.
🎧 Zuck Under Pressure, Presidential Debate Rules, and New Covid Vaccines - Pivot Pod
Signs vs Symptoms
When you're in medical school, one of the things you learn to differentiate and understand the difference between signs and symptoms. Symptoms are things that you're feeling like fatigue, my muscles hurt. These are more of the subjective things. There are actually signs as well, and signs are things like fever, elevated heart rate, laboratory studies, elevation, sedimentation rate in your blood, etc. And more and more, as people are studying this, they're really understanding that long COVID has both signs and symptoms. And so doctors are more astute now about looking for those signs because they're objective as well as the subject of sensations and believing people when they say exactly what George Experienced.
We're in the first generation of parents who actually grew up with social media.
Guests: George Hahn, Louie Swisher, Jeff Swisher
📰 The World Is Your Oyster. But… by
I worry about that. I worry about comfort and luxury and ease and convenience. I'm scared that it's going to make me a lazier, less courageous, less ambitious, more depressed person.
📰 This Conversation Changed My Perspective by Ali Abdaal
Seth Godin has been saying the same thing for 25 years, just in different formats.
Ali: Wait, really?
Barrett: Yes. And he knows it. He's comfortable with it. That's the game. Seth's core messages are things like: "Marketing is about spreading ideas that work," "Build a tribe of loyal followers instead of trying to appeal to everyone," and "Take risks, be remarkable, and stand out in a crowded marketplace." He's been repeating these ideas in various ways for decades.
And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think it's brilliant. I've been following Seth's work for years, and I'm always amazed at how he can take these core ideas and make them feel fresh and relevant. He applies them to new contexts, uses different analogies, or connects them to current events.
This also reminds me of Ramit Sethi. He's been saying essentially the same things about personal finance for over a decade now. His core messages haven't really changed - automate your finances, focus on big wins rather than small cutbacks, invest in yourself, negotiate your salary. But he keeps finding new ways to present these ideas.
📰 What Happens When You're a Writer, but You Don't Write by
Like many other closet writers, we tell ourselves that writing is optional, when the truth is, for some of us, it’s as much of a physiological necessity as the aforementioned bathroom stops.
📰 3-2-1: On the Cost of Success, the Secret of Creative Work, and the Power of Walking by James Clear
The secret of creative work is to make a lot and publish a little.
📰 Mark Zuckerberg’s 20-Year Mistake by
By his own estimation, it will take Zuckerberg another 12 years for Meta’s brand to recover from the drubbing it began to take at the end of 2016.
September 12
📰 Don’t Defer Happiness to a Future State You May Never Achieve by
I’ve been wanting to write a book about the story that unfolded from that first overseas move for years now.
In early June, I finally jotted down a rough project plan as a note on my phone to get started:
Best Practices From “Day One”
Two ways I plan to do that are: 1. Pick fun locales to write from
Quit each session before I want to
Learnings (i.e., What Came Out)
Thinking in chapters is key.
There's a healthy tension between capital and labor. And during, for example, the 60s and 70s, it got out of control. And labor became too profitable, and there were no profits in corporations, and the stock market went sideways, hugely mediocre returns for the better part of 20 years, and it was hard To attract investment capital and grow. And so, labor had too much power. And there was a series of regulation, the activist investor popped up, and since then, since then, Washington has been weaponized by corporations, and almost everything that happens Favors the corporation and shareholders. And this is all tied back to compensation that has increasingly been focused on shareholders.
📰 Animal Art Academies by
James Gurney links to 10 valuable “animal art resources” at the end of his post
📰 How to Stop Being Invisible by
interaction isn’t the same as connecting. True communication is, as the word implies, communal.
📰 The Alchemy of Work by
thinking about my work through the four classical elements of earth, water, fire, and air.
Earth, represented by my part-time product manager job, provides the solid, grounded foundation of my career. Like the earth itself, this role is reliable and constant, offering financial stability and a predictable structure. Working about 20 hours a week, it's the bedrock that supports my other pursuits, representing the tangible, material aspects of work. This job ensures I have enough money coming in to sustain my lifestyle and focus on long-term pursuits without financial worry.
Fire, in the form of my coaching practice, is what lights me up.
Water symbolizes the fluid nature of my work with Downshift.
Air represents my writing, giving breath to ideas and allowing for free movement of thought.
My perspective on time off has shifted since I’m paid hourly in my part-time job. Taking a full week off feels less worth it compared to half-days or long weekends.
September 11
🎧 The Politics of Joy, Telegram CEO Arrested, and Guest Host Adam Grant - Pivot Pod
Leadership by press release is not leadership
One of the things I'm increasingly frustrated by is the pressure that's coming from below for senior people to make a statement on every single thing that happens.
Every single thing, which has been growing over time. Yeah.
Leadership by press release is not leadership. I think what's going on there is they want to feel seen and valued by their organizations. And if people are putting pressure on you to make an externally facing statement, to me that's a signal that you haven't spent enough time internally hearing what people's concerns Are and letting them know that you have their backs individually.
Mental time travel for NASA astronauts
I've actually spent some time with NASA on this. And one of the things that they train astronauts in is mental time travel. To rewind their mental clocks to the past and the future. What?
Explain this. I need more details.
What do I mean by that? What is mental time travel?
So they called you and said, come in and consult with us?
Yeah, I've had a few requests over the years to work with them on resilience and preparing for the psychological and collaboration challenges of being on the space station or doing Extended trips. So looking back to the past is the first thing they do. Nostalgia around what are your favorite memories from being on Earth can give you something to look forward to when you go back. But then also fast forward into the future and imagining, okay, this might be my last time in outer space. What will I want to have experienced? Often gives them an opportunity to appreciate being stuck as opposed to feeling like I can't wait to get out of here.
Adam Grant only weighs in on issues publicly if he has a unique expertise to bring to the table
So I don't think about this from a cost benefit perspective. I think about it more in terms of, is this an issue where I have unique expertise to bring to the table? And so I don't weigh in on a lot of politics because I don't think as a social scientist I'm adding value there. But in this case, he's making a leadership decision.
🎧 Ask Us Anything — Scott and Ed Answer Your Questions - Prof G Markets
Ed’s investment portfolio
So my portfolio is very simple. It's all ETFs. So S&P 500, and then some wider baskets too, Russell 1000 growth, Russell 1000 value, very simple plain portfolio. I don't think about it. I basically don't touch it. The reason I don't think about it is because I'm at a point in my career where worrying about stocks is basically just a waste of time.
The highest ROI investment I can make is just being really, really good at my job. So to me, that means spending my time developing writing skills, developing speaking skills, understanding markets, meeting people, reading obsessively. That's what I spend my time doing. So, you know, I don't really pay that much attention to the portfolio.
I take, if you want some more detail, I take 5% of my income and put it in my 401k. Luckily for me, Scott offers a 5% contribution match. So in effect, that's 10% of my income that's being invested to build an asset base. I plan to start cranking that number up over time, but I live in New York and I spend a fortune on rent and food and alcohol and experiences, all of these things that I want to spend money On. So for me, 5% makes a right amount of sense right now.
Ed’s book recommendation: The Odyssey
I personally think everyone should read The Odyssey. I just think if you want to understand storytelling at a very fundamental level, that is the book that you have to start with. It's basically, aside from the religious texts, the most influential book in history, it invented this idea of the hero's journey, which is the template for pretty much every story In our society today. The character in Odysseus is super interesting to me and probably my favorite character. The context here, every hero in these stories in Homer has what's known as an epithet, which is basically like the adjective that's attached to your name. It's like being called the Incredible Hulk or whatever, so you have like swift-footed Achilles and Earth-shaking Poseidon, all these characters. The epithet for Odysseus, the one adjective that is used to describe him was this word polutropos. It's a very weird word. It means of many different ways, which basically is saying he was anything moment to moment. He would change his nature. Like another way you could say is like a man of twists and turns. And it's just such a, such a unique, that was his superpower, basically. His superpower was the ability to read situations. Situations. Read people's emotions, and adjust his behavior to get along with people, to make things work, depending on the context. I just think it says a lot about humanity, of all of these heroes with these different superpowers, strength and speed and lightning bolts, the one that we exalted most was this word, Polytropos, this guy who would change his behaviors from context to context to make things work.
September 10
📰 Burn All the Ships by Khe Hy
Kristen Faulkner started cycling as a hobbyist in Central Park at 25 years old. Three years later she bailed on her VC career. And at 31 years old, she won Olympic gold. But this wasn’t a high-risk YOLO. It was a well-executed and bold pivot.
1. She ran some experiments
In an interview with Voxwomen, Faulkner explains how she needed to understand if she had “the physical aptitude to succeed as a professional cyclist.” To test if she was ready, she hired a professional cycling coach who: > Analyzed my numbers, built me a solid training plan, and gave me constant feedback on how I was developing as a rider.
2. She put in the work
Faulkner had a plan to ensure this wouldn’t happen:
She trained 2 hours every weekday before work
She raced every summer weekend in amateur races
She used all her vacation days for more competitive races
3. She worked within her constraints
Faulkner made some changes to accommodate a more intense training regime. First, she moved closer to work to reduce her commute time. Next, she received permission from her boss “to start and finish work later every Wednesday so she could fit in a 4-hour morning ride.” Lastly, she negotiated with her manager “to work half-time and remotely for two months so that she could race in Europe.”
4. She hit her breaking point
During the 7-day stage race at Ardèche, I woke up at 6am everyday to respond to work emails, and then analyzed financial and business documents while in the team car on my way to each stage. After each stage, I returned to the hotel around 7pm or 8pm, showered, and ate dinner while on Zoom meetings for work. I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 6am the next morning to repeat my routine.
5. She made sure she wanted the successful version of the job
She had fallen in love with the sport and was ready to take the leap. And make the sacrifices.
6. She managed her financial risk
If I didn’t receive a contract with living wage after two years, I wanted to make sure that I had enough savings to live off for six months until I found another full-time job.
📰 This Flow Chart Explains How I Cope by Khe Hy
A simple antidote to coping?
There’s a simple question to shut this all down.
It doesn’t “work” right away. In fact, it may take a lifetime to truly work.
But I promise you, if you ask this question.
> What am I unwilling to feel right now?
And then sit with the response – without running to one of your tried-and-tested coping strategies.
Something will awaken inside of you.
Being in the core brings credibility support for your work. The closer you are to the best galleries, the more successful your paintings are. However, being on the edge of the network means you have connections to other types of networks, and can mix different influences. The people at the centre of a network are very similar to each other; being on the margin gives you a differentiating perspective.
DNA was discovered by a biologist, James Watson, and a physicist, Francis Crick, working together; Rosalind Franklin, whose work they relied on, was a chemist. Walt Disney was never the best animator: he collaborated with others to make his ideas work. These peripheral collaborations reinforced initiative and self-direction.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell identified people he called Connectors: people who enjoy knowing people and connecting them with other people, places or ideas. What seems like a chore to most of us is no problem for the Connector. They keep in touch with many, many more people than the average person. This means that, wherever they go, if they find something or someone interesting, they can tell someone in their network about it.
It is probably true that we are all connected by six degrees of separation — but not everyone that we are connected to is going to do us a favour. It’s a small world, but a busy one.
📰 Postcard #3: New York and the Key to Creativity by
The Strand, probably NY’s most famous bookstore, which opened in 1927 and bills itself as having 18 miles of books on its shelves. I could have spent hours there, especially in their rare books room.
📰 A Parent's Theory of Relativity by
Everything is relative, except relatives. Relatives are family. Good luck!
🎧 #166 Breaking Free of the Rules —
andThe state of being alive
Coming alive over getting ahead and somehow I don't know how you, how you get that orientation, whether it comes through the way the modeling you have for your parents or your community, Or you're just born with it. But there was never a question for me between those two things. I was never tempted to get ahead, over do the thing that just made me feel alive.
Yeah. The way I've put it to people is there is this state you can find that you feel so connected, so alive that you stop worrying about the things you think you need to focus on. But I don't know how to get there. I don't know the recipe of how you, like the second person you can get there. But knowing that that state exists should sort of drive you crazy and is like, I need to try stuff to try and find that state.
People close to you can override a lot of your limiting beliefs
I've talked about getting a job a couple of years ago. And she's like, I don't think that's you. But it's very powerful to have that behind you. And I think sometimes people will project. Oh, don't worry about this, that all these things. And it's like, actually, the belief of people close to you can override a lot of those things. Absolutely.
It's those moments where we peel off and defend our withdrawal that we shrink our lives.
The cost of inaction
This is something I feel so powerfully on my existing path is I've become much more in touch with the cost of inaction. Yeah. And realizing how much often it's a psychological tax, I thought about renaming this podcast from reimagined work to the pathless path podcast for four months. So this was about a year and a half ago. And then the moment I did it, it was like obvious, right? Right. And bad.
Rick wrote his book through a collection of stories
When I sat down in front of the computer, determined to write a book of some kind in 2009, it was like, I'm going to write down every single story I can think of or remember from my years as A street performer, from the waiter, what happened with the waiter routine. So it was writing down all these stories and looking at them from the perspective of what I knew were organizational issues, communication, leadership, innovation, productivity, Integrity. These were all the things that were talked about ad nauseam over and over in events. And I began to first, I wrote down all the stories and I went, how can these stories relate? How can they feed into learnings or lessons I could offer that fit in these buckets of organizational interests?
Love your message
In terms of writing a book too, I think a thing people don't, they underestimate with a book is the potential of actually loving your message. And if you love that message, you can continue to talk about it for years.
Rick on changing things up
It's just too much in my system at this point to not reinvent. There's a particular feeling that is very telltale. I wouldn't even know how I describe it. But there's like an inner flat lining. You can feel it when I start to go, Oh, I'm just I'm comfortable. I'm and you know, it's really kind of gotten to that point with a corporate event. So I'm always doing something different.
Serving wherever you can
But I can't imagine just continuing in ways to serve wherever I can. For me right now, that really looks like wanting to support and train and find people who can be ambassadors of authenticity on stage. I'd like to support people who want to speak, who have expertise in mastery in different domains. Because going back to your earlier comment about how corporations need outsiders, they need a fresh perspective. They're always looking for someone who can come in and speak to these core issues, but from a new and fresh angle.
September 9
🎧 The Keys to Healthy Living — With Andrew Huberman - Prof G Pod
Sleep > exercise
Nighttime light exposure
Now, the tricky thing is that light exposure in the evening and at night, it doesn't take very much in order to disrupt, for instance, your melatonin activity. There's wonderful laboratory at Harvard Medical School, Charles Eisler's lab, that has shown that even 12 seconds of very bright light in the middle of the night will cause your melatonin Levels. Now, if that happens every once in a while, no big deal. But if you're somebody who is in a bright light environment at 10pm and having trouble staying asleep, you know, you go to sleep at midnight, 12.30, and then you are waking up at three In the morning. Chances are your evening and nighttime light exposure has something to do with that. There could be other things too, right? Too much caffeine late in the day, et cetera. And this is a big part of what I believe is related to the, you know, the mental health crisis that we're seeing, not just in young people, but in adults as well, where people are waking Up at the middle of the night, they're looking at their phone, you know, then in the morning, they're not feeling rested, then they're, you know, overindulging in caffeine.
As a neuroscientist, people ask me, what's the best thing I can do for my brain? Keep my memory, etc, as I age, and be healthier mentally. And it's simple, Get great sleep every night. And then I explain one of the ways to do that. And if you don't get great sleep for a night, have some things in place that we can talk about to adjust for that. So sleep is the foundation of that. But then it's exercise. We need to move.
3 cardio exercises/week + 3x strength/week
If you do three sessions of cardiovascular exercise per week, in any format, I would say that you can do without injuring yourself.
The faster clip exercise, which is slightly anaerobic, where you get your heart rate up, that's going to do a number of different things in terms of your conditioning and your ability To tolerate these more stressful cardiovascular sessions, not just in these sessions but in life, and I'll talk about that. And then the shorter bout of exercise, day per week is essentially giving you access to your VO2 max, right? It's improving your VO2 max, which is your ability to bring more oxygen into your system overall for any number of reasons. This is great.
Now it's also vital and we know this for men and for women that we do some sort of resistance training. To have done as full body workouts, keeping three sets per major muscle group, three sets for quadriceps, three sets for hamstrings, three sets for biceps, triceps, back, chest, shoulders, Three times per week, maybe two times per week if somebody doesn't have more time than that, totaling a session of about an hour.
Training with resistance is one of these rare instances in life where you actually get a window into what the results will look like. People, I should just say, people who are concerned about getting too big, keep this in mind. You will never get any bigger than you appear at any moment in the gym from a workout. So resistance training is peculiar in the sense that, you know, like if you do a set of curls, the biceps get bigger, but that's transient, but you're getting a visual window and, you Know, a sensory window into what it's going to look and feel like, should you give it proper rest and nutrition to recover.
Fermented food is essential
The best way to support the gut microbiome is to consume one to four servings of low sugar fermented food per day. These exist in all cultures. So things like kimchi, sauerkraut, kiefer, Greek yogurt, again, low sugar versions of these, low sugar kombucha. It is not necessary to take pill-formed probiotics. It's not if you're doing this.
Why eat whole foods
When you eat foods close to their whole or minimally processed state, the brain can make the correlation. It's a subconscious correlation between kind of food taste, macronutrient content. So like if you eat, for instance, a steak or let's say an orange, in either case, you're tasting that, there are also amino acids from the steak going to your gut. Your gut is actually signaling your brain unconsciously about how much more to eat and signal satiety centers. And there's this whole learning. It's a system, a neural system and a hormonal system that's very prone to learning, so that you start to associate your appetite with how much you need to eat in order to get the proper Amount of amino acids, which is largely why we eat, to talk about this, the amino acid foraging idea, plus essential fatty acids. And we tend to get better at not overeating for what we need, right? We tend to get enough of what we need, but not eat too much. Now, when you eat foods in combination like a sandwich, that's not a bad thing. Yeah, I love a really good sandwich, but it's harder to ascertain what you're getting from each component. And people often will overeat foods in combination,
The best alcohol is low sugar soda because of the hangover
Maybe focusing on a higher quality alcohol or you asked what alcohols are going to be best or worse, low sugar alcohols in general, not because of the sugar per se, but because of the hangover. So like brandies and things like that. Cognacs are generally not as good for you in terms of the hangover component as a clear vodka. If I drink, I like a white tequila soda in wine. That's it. That's like my thing. Especially with Mexican food on a hot day, that's like nothing better.
Why Andrew Huberman uses AG1
Here's how I feel about this. Get the behaviors right, sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management, explore healthy supplementation. And I would say the things for supplementation that makes sense for most people who can afford it are a quality fish oil, so quality omega-3s, get above a gram per day of the EPA form, maybe Two grams for a variety of reasons. Get some form of probiotic, prebiotic, you could supplement this, like you know people know and often associate with AG-1, you could do it that way or you could eat more fruits and vegetables. There are a number of things in addition to AG1 that is why I think it's good for me, but again, this is not a sales pitch for AG1. This is to say, make sure your foundational nutrition is going to take a multivitamin is basically what I'm saying if you can't afford that. And then I do think that many people can get what they want without going on TRT by making sure that you're training hard but not more than an hour per session.
Creatine weight is usually caused by water
You'll gain 5 to 10 pounds of water weight within your muscles, mostly within the muscles when you take creatine, and then you'll urinate that out if you come off it. I mention that because a lot of women don't want to take creatine because they don't want that extra weight, but it's mostly muscle weight. And a lot of women can really benefit from more muscle and strength for all the reasons we talked about before.
Standards > goals
Goals aren't really the way to think about things. Standards are the way to think about things. This is very much borrowed from the military community. To think, as you mentioned, a few minutes ago, when you have a standard for yourself that you should be able to do five sets of five pull-ups, for instance, on your birthday every year, No matter what, or that you should be able to do three sets of 25 full push-ups.
When you have goals, it's very easy to reach a goal and then lapse, you know? But when you have a standard, you're always staying above that line and you have the opportunity to exceed that standard by a lot, but you never let yourself drop below that standard.
Beware of dominant culture
If you're in a, whatever dominant culture is around you, beware. That's what I always say. Even if you're hanging out with rebels, beware, right? You know, it's good sometimes to rebel against the rebels, right? Just keep it. It's not just about independence of thought. It's that develop habits that you know are good for you. And when the dominant culture is, you know, dude, why are you working out or why are you studying?
Be strong to help others
I've noticed that the people who are willing to take really good care of themselves and not in a vain way. This isn't about vanity. It's taking care of yourself so that you can do more in the world for other people, especially, but also for yourself. Like be the strong one who can help other people.
Be the purest version of yourself
Point number one is if you're going to be public facing, as you know, you're not going to satisfy all those people. You're just not. At the same time, I think people can feel intention. You know, I think people sometimes focus, there's kind of a gravitational pull around like cold plunges and supplements and weightlifting that I think sometimes interesting topics That I really enjoy. Each one has an interesting science and discussion around it, which I thoroughly enjoy. But I think sometimes they overlook the fact that like 90% of what I talk about on the podcast is about neural mechanisms, endocrine mechanisms. I've worked on cold physiology and to try and teach biology in the IT package in protocols for health and then teach protocols for health in a way to people who are interested in that and Then also get them a bit enchanted, hopefully, about biology. The number one takeaway for people that want to do some public facing work or to allow people to appreciate what they do is they... I can't emphasize this enough. If I could put this on a billboard in Times Square, I would... Except no one looks at billboards anymore. You have to be the pure version of yourself. And this is why not everyone does this.
🎧 Struggling With Body Image - Staying Up with Cammie and
Self-compassion
I've been obsessed with this podcast called The Happiness Lab. And it's just like, it feels like it was made for me. It's like studies about happiness and like positive psychology or just like any social psychology really. And the episode I listened to most recently was about like self-compassion and learning to like be kind to yourself. They break self-compassion down into three things. One is self-kindness, which is being gentle with yourself in the face of mistakes or failures. The second piece is common humanity, so recognizing that everyone makes mistakes and experiences pain. Yeah, everybody has those days. Yeah, everybody has those days, smiling to it. And then the third is mindfulness, being aware of your emotions without any judgment. And they talk about the power of just being self-compassionate to yourself. Some of these things I think is so crazy. So people kinder to themselves had better immune systems, aged more slowly, were better able to stick to healthy lifestyle tactics. People with high self-compassion have a 50% reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms. 50% compared to those with lower self-compassion. Self-compassion is linked to a 20% increase in emotional resilience, which helps individuals bounce back from setbacks more effectively, which is so crazy. The fact that you could be having a tough time with yourself, be kind to yourself through the tough time, and just the kindness alone can help you get back to where you want to be is insane. And very pertinent to this conversation we're having today is women with higher self-compassion report 34% greater body satisfaction regardless of their body size or shape.
🎧 Office Hour’s Best of Parenting - Prof G Pod
Talking to his kids about being online
What I try to communicate is that, look, if something bad happens online, this is the deal. I'm gonna try and be generous and not judge you and not get mad at you. Maybe you do something really stupid here and something bad happens. I'm gonna give you a bit of a hall pass on this stuff. And in exchange for that hall pass, you're gonna come to me when something happens that upsets you. Because what you don't want, and we're real tragedy strikes here, is that something bad happens online and the kids suffer in isolation, and the parents don't even know about it. They don't even know about it. A kid gets bullied online, starts having suicidal ideation, goes down a rabbit hole at night, and the parents don't even know what is going on.
Helicopter parenting is a prescriptive childhood
An actionable plan is stop racing to nowhere, you know, clear out your schedule, limit your children's extracurricular structured activities between the ages of one and 12. Children are meant to play and explore and be in this dreamlike state of creativity and in a quest. Putting them in all these manic activities robs them of their ability to explore their inner world. If you ask me what is the one disease of today, it's that our children do not know how to sit in stillness in creativity and be bored and activate their inner resources without governance From parental and other supervisory figures who constantly are telling them what to do, how to do, when to do. And then we wonder why our children, by the age of 14, are listless and motivational lists on the couch. Well, because we've robbed them of that initiative and we've prescribed them into how to be. And no one wants to live according to a prescription. Well, that's what we're doing to our children.
Phone is convenient but removed the capacity to build resilience
I left at 21 to America without a phone, without you used to write letters home, and it took three weeks for news to reach home and a lot of money to call long distance. We've removed that, you see, but what we've removed is not just inconvenience. We've removed the capacity for resilience for our children to sit in the mess of their life, to be bored, to sit in the anxiety of waiting for a bus, to wait for their meal, to walk to the Encyclopedia Britannica and find it on the shelf and then wait for it to come back because it's been checked out. All that waiting, albeit terribly inconvenient, now has been bypassed. And when you bypass waiting and and delaying gratification, you take out life skills, which is dealing with, the main life skill is coping with your discomfort. Why do you think children are more anxious ever today than ever before? Because we have removed discomfort from their life, and they don't know how to deal with discomfort. They expect things at their fingertips, because we have trained them, our generation did this to them. Don't be blaming children. I always tell our generation of parents, we gave them all this technology because we were tired of walking to school. We were tired of cooking. And now we've raised children who are highly indulged and incapable of sitting with messy feelings.
September 8
📰 Wood Engravings by
Until the 1880s, pictures in magazines had to be reproduced by means of carved wooden blocks.
A good engraver made all the difference in the final printed result. Their role was so important that engravers signed the printed piece on the opposite corner from the original artist. Relations between artists and engravers were often strained.
📰 Box Breathing—how to Adapt to Your Unique Nervous System by Charlotte Grysolle
The right way to do it… is to first measure your CO2 discard rate, and use that to determine the duration for your box breathing.
Step 2: Determine your Box Breathing duration Discard rate → box breathing duration • 0-20 seconds → 3-4 seconds • 20-40 seconds → 5-6 seconds • +50 seconds → 8-10 seconds Step 3: Start Box breathing
Note: Mine was 26 seconds. so hold for 5-6 seconds
My favorite new thing I’ve learned: we don’t breathe equally out of both nostrils. The dominant nostril switches roughly every 2 hours. A dominant left nostril is linked to parasympathetic activity. A dominant right nostril is linked to sympathetic activity. Wild!
🎧 Convention Kickoff, Kamala Reshapes the Electoral Map, and TimTok Arrives - Pivot Pod
How to talk about economy as Kamala Harris
If I were Vice President Harris, I would announce an alternative minimum tax against corporations who were paying their lowest taxes since 1939, the richest Americans who pay an average Of 6-8%, and I would bring up the D word, the deficit, and I would steal the economy from the right.
2 ways to have a good sense of humor
There's two ways to have a good sense of humor. A, to be really funny, and that's difficult. You're kind of born with that or you're not. But you can also have a great sense of humor by laughing out loud at things you think are funny. And she's not afraid to laugh out loud. And it's infectious. She starts laughing, she's got a beautiful smile. She's very attractive. Great with kids. And she seems like she's having a good time. People are coming out of COVID. So much doom and gloom, so much hate, so much fear. I think they're ready for a little sunshine. I think they're ready for a little disco, right? I mean, it's... Yeah.
🎧 Prof G Markets — How Scott Navigates Money With His Family
Aligning with partner financially
How did you know that you and your partner were aligned financially?
Well, it's not easy to sort of have that conversation with your young because you're not entirely sure you understand each of your approach to spending. You get a sense for it.
Building economic security with someone else
To build economic security is rewarding, but what's incredibly rewarding is to build it with someone else. You just feel like you're building something, and if you buy your house together and you make money and you can build a nice life together that includes economic security, it's just So much rewarding than building it on your own. It's almost like it doesn't really happen. I love investing with other people. That way, if the investment goes well, you both celebrate it, and it's just so much more fun. I've never had separate accounts.
How Scott informs his wife about investments
What we do on money, though, is because I manage the investments, is that on a regular basis, I tell her where we are. And that is I'll sit down with her probably every three, or it's probably every six months, and I'll say, this is how much money we have. I have like, I don't know, 25 investments. And I'll say, this is how they're all doing. And I try to give it to her very sober and very straight.
But I think what strains relationships is obviously economics, but I think what ruins them is surprises. And so I always want my partner to know where we are economically. And I'm, look, I'm good at money. And so she outsources that part of our life to me, and pretty much she does almost everything else. But around investments and maintaining kind of top line wealth and wealth decisions, I make those decisions. But on the big ones, I check in with her. This is what I'm thinking. This is what we're investing in. And I just want her to know what's going on. I don't want her to ever feel surprised. I don't want her to feel like she's reading the markets are up 30%, but our wealth got cut because of our investments are down. I never want her to be surprised. So I tell her exactly how it is. And I always, I would say have a little bit of a, I kind of give it to her a little bit, I don't know, worse than what it is, but I'm very quick to tell her about the losses and not as quick to tell Her about the wins. I mean, I eventually do, but the key is you never want your partner to be as surprised about this. I mean, losing money is bad. What's worse is surprises.
Take care of parents financially?
Hopefully you have siblings, hopefully your parents were economically responsible and saved enough money. But yeah, I think the definition of family is you take an emotionally and financially invested, you're invested in their success and their wellbeing. And so ideally you and your siblings get together and figure out a way that your parents are comfortable.
What's been really wonderful in terms of like, for example, my father's, there's different ways to contribute. My father's kind of needed a lot of care or financial care over the last 10 years. He's gotten older and divorced for his fourth time. I have the money to do it, but my sister handles all of the logistics and hiring and firing of the nurses and negotiating with the facility he's at. And to be honest, my part's the easy part. I pay for it all because I make more money than my sister, but I see that as the easy part. She has to get on the phone with these folks and figure out if they're gonna have a full-time nurse, the hours are. It's been a great partnership. I'm really grateful that me and my sister are really aligned around this. But yeah, every family is different.
Plan for family "economic needs”?
Do you think people should kind of factor that in when it comes to economic planning?
I mean, you talked about planning with your partner. How much do we intend to make, what are our goals, do you think people should be thinking, and this is how much I want to be providing for my family, this is how much I want to have stowed away To take care of my parents when they're old, etc.
No, I think that because at the end of the day, your ability to do that is going to be based on how much money you have. And so I think you should just be focused on, you know, what we talk about, the algebra of wealth, finding something you're good at, doubling down on it, becoming great at it, which will Give you economic currency in the marketplace, trying to spend less than you make, invest that money, develop an army of capital you can deploy, recognize time's gonna go faster than You think, and then diversify, such that you're in a position to be generous with your family and extended family. So you need to affix your own oxygen mass first. And when you're young, your parents probably aren't sick and don't need help. You don't have kids to take care of. That's the time to develop that savings muscle and that professional currency and put yourself on a path to financial security.
You have siblings, right? I have two sisters. Between the three of you, especially have a good relationship with them and they're like-minded and generous around, and feel obligated to pitch in and help with your parents, one Of you might be wealthier than the other two and be able to help more with money. One might have a better relationship and be able to spend more time with your parents because they just get along with them better or have more time. And one might hopefully have their shit together logistically and be able to kind of handle and negotiate stuff that, you know, there's the money part, but the thing that's I think been Rougher that my sisters had to deal with is there's just so many decisions to be made every day. And not like that, sometimes your parents aren't cooperating, right? They don't want to leave their house and move into an assisted living facility. My dad starts leaving the facility and taking walks and no one knows where he is. And I have to like, you know, call him and try and get through to him and tell him he's not allowed to leave the facility. I mean, and, you know, and meanwhile, he thinks I'm his brother, not his son. So, you know, this stuff gets complicated fast. But I literally don't know what people do that don't have a lot of money. I'm spending so much money on my dad right now. And it's not a lot of money for me, but it's real money. I don't know what people do that aren't wealthy.
Money is a means to deep and meaningful relationships
That it's really important, but it's a means. It's meaningful, but what's profound is that money is nothing but something that should enable you to have an absence of stress such that you can focus on relationships. That you need to be professionally competent, you need to be self-sufficient. Making money is a lot of fun, but it's just a means to the ends. And the ends is deep and meaningful relationships, and that money can be a lubricant for that and provide an absence of stress in a series of experiences that make you feel closer to the People you love and help you take care of them.
🎧 The Harris Campaign's Got Jokes, Tubi's Taking Over, and Mike Birbiglia's Our Co-Host - Pivot Pod
On comedy
In comedy, typically a joke has a setup in a punchline and and a setup is something that we all agree to be true. And the punchline a left turn that we don't see coming. And I think the problem with political comedy in everything year 2016 on is that we don't all agree on what is true. And so in other words, if there are no setups, there can be no punchlines. Or I should say, it's very hard to come by a punchline.
That the key to stories is, telling comedic stories, is finding one joke in it that opens up the audience and tells the audience that you are okay laughing about this thing.
What I always tell people about stories is, as long as you have a beginning, and most importantly, an ending, the audience will stick with you for the middle.
Mike Birbiglia’s new special
Because I'm driving home and I'm realizing my whole life, I sort of wanted to be my dad. And at a certain point, I decided I wanted him to be me.
📰 Greta's Growth by
It’s been said before but the second Greta started making connections between climate change and capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism the media coverage came to a screeching halt.
As Greta’s politics have grown and evolved, they reached a point where they now make billionaire media owners, milquetoast executives of major non-profits, and more than a few politicians a little uncomfortable. All she’s done is follow the science, but over time the science has led her to see that the climate crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are massive monetary incentives to destroy the planet in this capitalist system.
Chico Mendes said, “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”
September 7
🎧 How to Build a Rich Life — Ft. Ramit Sethi - Prof G Markets
Calculating hidden costs in property
Well, a very, very back of the napkin calculation, especially from the old days would be that your total cost of ownership, that includes your mortgage, your sprinklers, your roof Repair that you're gonna make 11 years from now, but you haven't even counted that in all of it, transaction costs, all of it, should equal less than 28% of your gross income. Now, that's not realistic anymore, especially in high cost of living areas. So we can stretch that number, we can stretch it to 30, 32, 33. But beyond that, it becomes very risky, and you are incurring massive risk, particularly if one person loses their job or something unexpected happens. There are also things like saving 20% for a down payment. Again, incredibly difficult these days. I encourage it. I don't necessarily think you have to put 20% down, but by saving 20%, you demonstrate that you have the effective ability to save money for what may come. And when you own a home, that is exactly what you need to be able to do.
Couples should have a shared vision of a rich life
What advice would you have for young couples starting out in terms of their approach to money and how it fits to their relationship?
When I speak to couples on my podcast, the most common problem is that they simply have no shared vision of a rich life.
Target meme
You look at these reels on social media. I went into Target to spend 50 bucks. I walked out with $300. That's not funny. That actually is not funny. It actually is playing small. Because if you are fixated on a $50 purchase at the grocery store or Target, you are missing out on what a truly rich life is.
Mistakes young people make
What is our ideal vision of a rich life and how do we use money to live it? The second thing is no connection or understanding of how where they came from affects their decisions today.
Value of spending money
Scott's one of the only guys, Scott, you're one of the only guys who talks about the value of spending money. And I think that that is a huge problem in our culture, which is everybody teaches you how to save money, but nobody actually teaches you how to spend it meaningfully. And that's the purpose of a rich life is not to hoard money and accumulate it. That's not the point.
The point is to spend your money meaningfully on a rich life, whatever that is for you. You know what really bothers me? This is not arrogant.
You know what really bothers me? This is not arrogant. I have so many rich friends that don't know how to spend their money. They still have anxiety and all of that, or they just spend it really poorly. They live in shitty homes, take shitty vacations, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, dude, you need, you spend so much time learning how to make money and no one has taught you how to spend it. They don't take nice vacations, they don't give money away, they don't. Anyways, I'm totally on board here.
Changing dudes’ perception on money
We have to be able to articulate our views of who we are. Am I actually just a provider? Does a provider only relate to how much money I bring in? Can I provide in other ways? These are questions that women have been asking for a long time, but men are not expected to ask them. They don't have the skills to ask them. And frankly, a lot of them don't have the interest to ask them. That is what I'm trying to change.
How couples should start talking about money
Do you recommend, for example, that maybe couples sit down once a month and discuss their finances or something like that?
Absolutely. So at least once a month, when you start off, it might be once every two weeks, it's a 60 minute meeting. You always start off with a compliment. Always. You know why? Because most people, they only talk about money when they're fighting about it. They literally never talk about it when things are good. They only talk about it when things are bad. How could you? I go, no, we're not gonna do this. We're gonna recalibrate. So it's as simple as saying, every time we travel, I love that you book our flights, you do such a great job, and I know that we're gonna have comfortable seats. Thank you, I love you. Simple as that.
Track just four numbers (you pick which buckets)
You need to know four numbers. You track those numbers carefully. There are a couple of variable costs that people have. Typically it's eating out and travel, kids sometimes, depending on what you're spending on. You pick the numbers, you track it according by the month. Each person owns a little bit, which by the way is a key mistake couples make. There's the money person and there's the non-money person. This is a big mistake. When your money person gets hit by a bus one day, the other person is left bereft, they are grieving, and they're gonna be preyed on by the vultures from those shitheads at Goldman Sachs. This is what we do not want. So you want them both to be engaged. And you talk about your numbers, then you talk about what's exciting coming up next month, what do we need to plan for, and then you call it a day. You don't need to solve everything in this meeting. You just need to be on the same page, and move on until you talk next time.
Be curious about people who spend money
I used to scoff. Why would somebody go to a nice restaurant? I'll go to Taco Bell. They're paying a hundred times what I and I'm more full. And I really looked down on people who spent money. What I should have done was get more curious. Why would somebody who can afford it sit in the front of the plane? What are they getting that I don't understand?
How to teach children about money
So for parents, here's what I would suggest. When your kids are young, really young, pull them up to the computer with you. Say, hey, we're about to pay this bill. Can you help me push this button? This button is what helps us keep a roof over our head and eat all this food. Make them see the excitement of engaging with money. As they get older, have them go to the grocery store, say, we have here's what we need to get, help me do this. Even if they make mistakes, they're going to forget about taxes. Fine. Then by the time they're in their teen years, late teens, they should have planned a full vacation for the family. That means understanding everything like taxes, tips, transportation, all of it. That is how you take a child and turn them into an adult with money. You don't leave them defenseless. You build those skills along their childhood.
Money is emotional.
Money is emotional. There's nothing wrong with that. It will always be emotional.
So for parents, here's what I would suggest. When your kids are young, really young, pull them up to the computer with you. Say, hey, we're about to pay this bill. Can you help me push this button? This button is what helps us keep a roof over our head and eat all this food. Make them see the excitement of engaging with money. As they get older, have them go to the grocery store, say, we have here's what we need to get, help me do this. Even if they make mistakes, they're going to forget about taxes. Fine. Then by the time they're in their teen years, late teens, they should have planned a full vacation for the family. That means understanding everything like taxes, tips, transportation, all of it. That is how you take a child and turn them into an adult with money. You don't leave them defenseless. You build those skills along their childhood.
Money categories
Four categories, avoider, warrior, optimizer and dreamer.
And for optimizers, one of the things they need to learn is actually to give themselves a pat on the back, except that they won this part of life, and that they actually have a new chapter Of their life, which is to enjoy money. It's to connect, it's to be more generous.
Financial advisor fees
I had a young woman, she was 30, and she wrote me an Instagram DM, and she said, I can't tell if I'm being ripped off by this financial advisor. I said, tell me your numbers. So she told me what she was paying, which was something like 1.25%. Again, if you've never heard this number, you go 1%, 1.25%, yeah, no big deal. Oh, somebody looks over my money, that sounds great. And I said, okay. I asked her a couple of questions. I said, how much do you think that that will cost you over the course of your lifetime? She had no idea and she was actually steadfast. She refused to answer my question. I said, just guess. I'm not going to hold you to it. She guessed something like $30,000. I calculated that she would actually end up paying over $315,000 in fees. And I still have the screenshot of what she said. She said, OMG, WTF, is this a joke? And I love this moment of realization where the way you looked at the world through one set of lenses is actually replaced by an entirely new set of lenses. She had worried about the price of potatoes at the grocery store. She had agonized over ordering a second lemonade. And here she is invisibly paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of fees and not even knowing it. In fact, thinking she was doing the right thing.
To be competitive, have a strong point of view
I think the rarest thing in the universe is Having a strong point of view. It can't be bought it has to be developed from the inside and it's incredibly rare So I want everyone to develop their own point of view on what a rich life is. And your rich life will be different than mine. And that's how it should be. My rich life, the more I turn that dial and it fits me like a handmade glove, the more confusing and even bewildering it is to the outside world. That's exactly how it should be. They go, how can a guy who makes that kind of money still rent? That makes no sense. Why does he do this? Why does he not care about that? But he spends extravagantly on this thing makes no sense. Good. That's what a rich life is. It fits you like a glove. And it doesn't necessarily make sense to other people on the outside.
Increase saving by 1% every year
My suggestion is if you increase your investment rate and your savings rate 1% every year from your 20s, you will be a multi-multi So this year you're investing 4% at the end, make it 5%. Just 1% every year, you will be a huge multi-millionaire.
Favourite luxury hotels
Yes, okay. Well, I'll tell you my favorite hotel is Udaivalas, which is the Oberoi Hotel in Udaipur in India. I love the Oberoi properties in India. Amanpuri is another one in Phuket was absolutely beautiful. And we have a lot of fond memories of that. And then I'll give you another one in Kenya, Angamah Mara, which we really loved as well when we were there on safari. But I love hotels because to me, they are the Olympics of hospitality.
By the way, I'm really good at this game. The Beverly Hills Hotel, the Waldorf Story in LA, I can go by city. In London, the Chiltern, if you like a good bar, the best gym in Europe is probably the Soho House in Berlin. The best hotel in Europe is the Hotel du Cap, Eden Rock. Keep recording, Claire. I think Bachelor's Camp in Kenya is right up there with what you're talking about. Bachelor's Camp. And I mean, obviously the Sangeeta properties, but there's a new property in Capri, the Siena, which is owned by the same people as Hotel de Cap, which is spectacular. I'm a bigger, the newest Four Seasons and Bangkok spectacular. I think the almonds actually in Vietnam are better than ones in Thailand right now. This is top 10 douchey. It is. But I absolutely love hotels. I think it's just, I mean, if you give me a city, I'll tell you where you can stay based on what you're looking for. I love it.
September 5
🎧 What Era of YouTube Are We In? by Sunny Sixteen
Building authentic opinions
I don't go out thinking I'm going to make a video think I'm going to get free gear I just I just talk about the things that have an opinion on and eventually yeah and eventually brands are like oh we we value your opinion
Taylor making her videos slower in pace and they took off
Taylor any other things with like the videos you make specifically that you have seen work for your channel obviously they're pretty consistent with like do you try to you know I feel like once I I feel like once I slowed it down which was like halfway through the whole lifetime of grain check in this last year once I like took the pace down I found that it's like just consistently just growing at such a consistent rate that I'm like okay this resonates which is hallelujah because I'm making the videos that I want to make so I just are they longer as well
Jason in in grainy days like dude he did like a it like a feature film length YouTube video it was sick
watch time is the gold mine for YouTube
second channels
what I noticed actually last year was like two channels that I noticed that people did and they were doing a lot well is Willem did his car channel will and it's like gaining a ton of good because it's a core audience that's a little smaller but very engaged and then Eric Floberg with Floberg Runs core audien highly engaged it's like creators and now he's like a sponsored athlete
Now I can hand off the B-tier videos I'm going to hand off some B-tier work on my A-tiers because now I'm getting like we're getting more sponsored content coming this way so like and have to kind of manage that a bit better
YouTube Eras
Vlog
I think like it's helpful for me to like think of it in eras and you kind of had this Vlog era and the dates kind of you know mold together and people still do whatever they want on YouTube but like you had vlogging and then you had like
Cinematic
cinematic era and
Challenge / Sensational
then you had what you said C like the challenge like the wow factor walk across the United States Mr style tit click bait T yeah but like the clickbait does it like they do what we bought an island and gave it away it's like yeah technically you you you did that that's actually crazy I feel like the S it was like Sensational I guess we can call it Sensational you had like cinematic Sensational and
Going back to crusty
now swinging back and I do feel like we've even talked we' even chatted about this in the past but I feel like now it's like what is next and I think you are right Caleb with like the individual who was that it's like this the dude who works out a lot his name is like Sam or something yeah yeah massive massive Channel like crusty videos doesn't edit just rolls the camera he's all cut up um yeah his channel went like dust angle he's like yo I'm about to do this his channel went meteoric dude meteoric cuz it was like about the person he talks gives his opinion it's all about him
🎧 Office Hour’s Best of Career Advice - Prof G Pod
Asking expectations around promotions & bonus
You establish a relationship with a mentor or your boss, such that it's informal enough, such you could say, you know, what should my, you can ask very straightforward, what should My expectations be around a bonus or how our bonuses evaluated? What about promotions?
Don’t be out of work for >1 year
Once you're out of the job market for longer than a year, you begin to smell. And I know how terrible that sounds. And that was people like, what is wrong? And your skills begin to atrophy.
September 4
🎧 Trump's AI Accusations, Cable TV Challenges, and Guest Anthony Scaramucci
Mehdi Hasan’s new digital media company: Zeteo
We're only what, four months old? We're a baby of a company. Yeah. We are doing very well. We launched this media company. I launched it in April formally. The idea is to provide a platform, both video, print, streaming, podcast, for people who want to speak a little bit more freely than our mainstream media may allow on topics like Gaza Or Trump's fascism or whatever it is. It's kind of modeled on my own approach to the media, which is not to do a both sides approach to speak a little more bluntly and categorically about what's happening in front of our eyes. It's a platform for me to be able to do my shows again after I left MSNBC, but we have a bunch of great contributors from around the world. Fatima Bhutto in Pakistan, Naomi Klein in Canada, Greta Thunberg in Sweden, Bassem Youssef. So it's a great bunch of people contributing content.
One of the things that I think people don't realize, it's not organized, it's caution that's the problem. Trying to be as anodyne as possible in some ways.
People in MSNBC don’t have cable themselves
I always find it fascinating that, Kara, how many members of my team, how many producers on my own team, people in their 20s, didn't have cable. But we're working at a cable news company. I always thought that was a fascinating disconnect. That the people who are making cable news don't have a cable news subscription. And I think that speaks volumes about what's happening with younger generations. That's when I got out of newspapers.
That's exactly. I said, don't read a newspaper. I'm going to do something on digital. Indeed.
Running own company makes you cognizant of your own costs
And I know as a new media company, and I'm much scaled back, but I still run one, right? But I know exactly how much I'm worth because I know how much I make, right? And that's one of the refreshing parts of running your own little company, correct? You know what you're worth.
You know what you're worth. You're much more concerned about your costs. You're much more cognizant to future revenue opportunities, as we discussed earlier.
Kara correcting the pronunciation of “Kamala”
Kamala Harris, I've said this on my podcast. I've said this, Kamala, I apologize. I'm from New York. I don't mean any disrespect by saying it the way I say it. Let me rephrase it. Kamala Harris, okay, not saying it with any disrespect. You know how you can remember it?
Kamala, but go ahead, Kamala.
I will remember, she's my speech therapist.
📰 Work "Out Loud" and Go Analog by
My first guest is Debbie Cho, founder and creative director of Fruit Sandwich. Full disclosure: she’s my go-to designer and a pure pleasure to work with.
Lately, I have two main clients — and that’s the max for me because I need a life outside of work to not feel boxed-in or trapped. I found this makes me feel at ease, and I can add projects that I'm really interested in but maybe they don't have a huge budget.
Being fully freelance, the self-isolation is real. I’m mostly just by myself in my office. I have a great community of friends nearby. But we see each other on the weekends. “The first thing I did was join a yoga studio. It's probably been one of the best things for me because it cuts my workday at 5:45pm.”
I’ve noticed a lot of designers and creatives have shifted to using their Instagram like a portfolio. I try to keep it more personal. I have a website for [showing my portfolio]. I don't even know if work should be viewed [on Instagram]. It should be bigger.
First of all, I didn't leave my full-time job right away. Instead I searched for freelance gigs, trying to figure out how to get them and sustain myself. (View Highlight)
Yes, I would highly recommend Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristen Neff.
September 3
Megan Pillow and I wrote a book called Do the Work. The Tenth Anniversary edition of Bad Feminist is available. The Portable Feminist Reader is coming out on February 18th, 2025. Pre-orders are now open and it is always a huge help when you pre-order.
📰 How to YouTube - We’re Back! by
There are four ways to make money as a YouTuber:
1. Adsense
2. Affiliates
3. Sponsorships
4. Your own products
The first three can be great, but the fourth is the best.
September 2
📰 A Number From Today and a Story About Tomorrow via Morgan Housel
A fact multiplied by a story always equals something less than a fact. So almost all predictions have less than a 100% chance of coming true. That’s not a bold statement, but if you embrace it it always pushes you towards room for error and the ability to endure surprise.
📰 If It Scares Me, There's Probably Something There via
andEvery time I cut something, I'll never delete it. I just copy and paste it under a line at the bottom of the document. That's how I know I'm making progress – the graveyard gets larger and larger and the only things that are left alive are the things I didn't think I should kill.
📰 Let These Books Make You Better via Ryan Holiday
Given that Right Thing, Right Now came out earlier this year, I thought I’d send a quick email of my favorite books about the cardinal virtues (like Josef Piper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues and C.S Lewis’ essay on the topic in Mere Christianity) and about this idea of justice. Every book is a product of books and Right Thing, Right Now was the product of hundreds of books I read over the years that helped me understand Marcus Aurelius’ definition of justice (“good character and acts for the common good") (View Highlight)
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur Moral philosophy, contrary to popular belief, does not have to be boring. Did you like the show The Office? Parks and Rec? Well then read this book because it’s written by the same person who wrote those shows.
📰 Goodbye, Work Friends by Roxane Gay
I aspired to be a doctor when I grew up. The medical profession was one of the Haitian trifecta of acceptable career choices, the other two being lawyer and engineer. I played the dutiful eldest daughter, but in my heart of hearts, medicine was my backup plan. What I really wanted to be was a writer, but that seemed as unfathomable as becoming an astronaut or the president; I never considered it a real possibility. I was mostly enamored with the idea of being a doctor.
As I grew older, I refined the delusion. I would be an emergency room physician, specializing in trauma care.
When I wasn’t at work or in school, I wrote, very badly, then badly and eventually less badly. I started submitting work to magazines and receiving more lessons in humility by way of relentless rejection.
Every two weeks, I got a paycheck and marveled at how much I worked to earn so little.
I worked as a communication specialist at an engineering college. I was writing for a living even though the subject matter was not really of my choosing.
I’m in a similar situation. I’m writing for a living but the topics are dictated by my employer.
Eventually, I would get a Ph.D., so the doctor thing happened without any of the social utility.
And, I quickly learned, most professional questions are also personal questions. We do not leave who we are at the door when we walk into the office or log on to the company Slack or clock in at the warehouse. Wherever we go, there we are with our triumphs and failures, our families and friends, our identities and political affiliations, our faiths — everything that makes us who we are.
In “The Writing Life,” Annie Dillard says: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” Every moment, of every day, we are spending our finite lives. As a new, fiercely intelligent and wise Work Friend takes over this space, my hope for all of you is to be given the grace of spending your finite life, both professionally and personally, without compromise. It would seem you have made me an optimist after all.
🎧 Tim Walz, X vs. Advertisers, and Global Markets Bounce Back - Pivot Pod
Scott likes to say: Stock market doesn't reflect reality because most people aren't in the stock market. It's mostly rich people essentially.
Noel King: Nobody wants to have their worst shittiest moment put on the internet. Nobody. And then I think further, nobody wants the rest of the world to like draw a larger lesson from their worst shittiest moment. That really sucks.
🎧 Roxane Gay on Guns, Kamala & Media - On with Kara Swisher
Roxanne Gay bio:
My guest today is writer, editor, culture critic, publisher, another multi-hyphenate, Roxanne Gay. I've known Roxanne for a long time, I'm a mire of her work, and I also was interviewed on her podcast last fall with her wife, Debbie Millman. All lesbians know each other, that's all you need to know. She has published more than a dozen books, nonfiction and fiction, which span from her best-selling memoir, Hunger, to the Marvel comic series, World of Wakanda. She's had two successful podcasts and has been a New York Times contributing writer for years. But she started out as a blogger and writer for online magazines, and she's back in that space again with her newsletter, The Audacity, and as a curator for an e-book series. Roxanne came on the scene in a big way about a decade ago with her groundbreaking book of essays, Bad Feminist, in which she questioned whether there was a right or wrong way to be a feminist, Which feminists don't like to question. For example, is she a bad feminist for liking rap music with misogynistic lyrics and pink dresses, or in the case of her latest essay, Are You a Bad feminist if you're a black woman, a staunch Democrat, and also a gun owner? As we all know, US gun politics are tricky and controversial, but Roxanne is very good at teasing out the nuances between all the little boxes we inhabit and probably shouldn't. As you'll find, Roxanne is spicy, she's tough, she's funny, and she's daring. And she doesn't see herself that way. I'm excited to talk to her about guns, the political movement we are in right now.
Who are gun rights actually for? Because most of our Second Amendment rhetoric is actually for white men. It excludes women and it excludes black people and black women.
There are lots of common sense things we could do that would still preserve the spirit of the Second Amendment, which was literally written in the 18th century. And guns were very, very different then.
Scribd essay curation by Roxane Gay
Elaine Castillo wrote about basically a cultural history of dog training and German shepherds and how she became a dog person by fostering a German shepherd, which is a very unique breed.
Kara: It is, the Monks of Skeet is a great book on that.
Truly. And then Julia Turshen, who is a chef and cookbook author, wrote an incredible essay about taking up powerlifting and how that really helped her develop a stronger relationship to her body and to appreciate her strength.
Gabrielle Bellot wrote about becoming kind of like a psychonaut and experimenting with psychedelics and how that really helped with her mental health and really allowed her to understand her mind in different ways.
And then finally, Randa Jarrar wrote about becoming a parent and her essay is written as a kind of instruction manual and she's a Palestinian American and she wrote about, you know, What it means to raise a Palestinian son as a single mother and it's just wry and witty and beautiful.
Having an audience makes it easier to do independent art
Kara: If you have a great idea, you can do rather well and don't need to go through the mainstream even though you have written for the New York Times. And so if I, you don't have to.
Roxane: You don't have to necessarily. However, in my experience, it's easier to try independent things when you already have an audience.
Translating following to sales
Twitter does not translate into book sales at all. But it does bring attention to things you publish online. And so even with not having that, I find it to be a bit of a struggle to find new readers. It's challenging.
Redefining DEI
The opposite of diversity, equity, inclusion is homogeneity, unfairness and exclusion. I said the opposite is opposite of woke is asleep. Like you can start to really redefine it yourself.
Roxane doing many things
Kara: In your last column you wrote this, I wish we lived in a world where I could offer you Frank unfiltered professional advice, but I know we did not live in such a world. Is it just advice, like quit your job, ask a raise, tell your boss you don't work, we against our deeper, more meaningful stuff. You didn't feel you could really say, because you've been a writer, an editor, a publisher, podcast host. You've shifted jobs a lot. And so have I. I have.
Roxane: I have. I think it's the Caribbean in me that takes on like 20,000 jobs. I mean, you're the exact same way. I think some people just have this relentless work ethic. I think many people have it to be fair, and those of us who are lucky get to use it to our own benefit.
Roxane: saying nothing doesn’t have any consequences
A lot of times we're just afraid of saying the wrong thing. And to our detriment, at times, we're so afraid of saying the wrong thing that we actually say nothing or we say things that have no teeth, that have no consequence. And that doesn't help.
Some links are affiliate links, meaning that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through the links at no cost to you.
How in the world do you have time with everything else that you do to take in all of this content, much less to then compile a comprehensive summary of all of it? You amaze me.