Podcasts about north star podcast

In this inspiring episode of the North Star Podcast, host Jim Eskin welcomes a true guiding light in the nonprofit world, Steve Lerman. As a super lawyer with an illustrious five-decade career in communications and entertainment law, Steve shares his journey from personal tragedy to professional success to impactful philanthropy. Key Takeaways: Overcoming Personal Tragedy: Steve opens up about losing father figures early in life and how it shaped his self-reliance and leadership skills. Insider View of Radio Industry: With vast experience in the radio industry, Steve discusses its evolution from high profitability to current challenges due to digital competition. Future of Radio: He candidly offers his perspective on radio's struggle against modern media platforms and hints at its uncertain future. Active Minds Advocacy: As chairman of Active Minds, he emphasizes mental health support for young adults through peer-to-peer interaction—a cause close to his heart after witnessing its life-saving impact firsthand. Scholarship Mentoring Program Success: Reflecting on personal challenges during youth inspires him to lead a scholarship mentoring program with a perfect college graduation rate among participants—defying statistics even within affluent communities like Newton, Massachusetts. Memoir Insights: Writing "The Enchanted Path" helped organize his life into three distinct phases: education, work/professional success, and giving back/philanthropy. Celebrity Encounters & Anecdotes: Sharing entertaining stories about famous clients such as Howard Stern and Don Imus and others that showcases another facet of his dynamic career. Final Thoughts: Steve's commitment shines through every topic discussed—from legal expertise to passionate advocacy for education and mental health. His story is one that reminds us all that despite setbacks or losses we face; we can choose paths leading toward positive impacts on others' lives. A beacon for many nonprofits today, he truly embodies what it means to be a Non-Profit North Star. Learn More about Active Minds at Active Minds.org    

In this episode, we are joined by a special guest, Mackenzie Belcastro. Mackenzie is known for her work in Woman Coaching and as the Host of the North Star Podcast. We will be exploring the essence of her coaching methods and her expertise in empowering women through divine and feminine principles.    Mackenzie Belcastro assists women in navigating life's challenges by helping them tap into their inner strength and wisdom. Her holistic approach focuses on mindfulness, emotional healing, and self-care, enabling clients to develop self-awareness, release emotional blocks, and prioritize their well-being. Through her transformative coaching, Belcastro has empowered countless women to reclaim their power, find their purpose, and overcome adversities. The testimonials from her clients demonstrate the profound impact her coaching has had on their lives.   By embracing the divine feminine, women can face life's hurdles with confidence and grace, benefiting themselves and society as a whole. As women continue to break barriers and redefine societal norms, it becomes crucial to have support systems in place to help them navigate the challenges and hurdles they encounter, sustaining the progression of womanhood.   In this episode, we will delve into Mackenzie's teachings of the divine feminine, her coaching methods, and the transformative impact she has had on the lives of her clients. Mackenzie Belcastro is a renowned women's coach and advocate for the divine feminine. Her unique approach and empowering techniques have helped countless women overcome obstacles and live their best lives.   Before we explore Mackenzie's coaching techniques, it is important to grasp the concept of the divine feminine. The divine feminine represents the qualities typically associated with women, such as intuition, empathy, compassion, and nurturing. However, it is crucial to note that these qualities are not limited to any gender and are inherent in all individuals. Embracing the divine feminine allows individuals to tap into their inner strength and wisdom, enabling them to navigate life's challenges with grace and resilience. While this idea can be easily misinterpreted and distorted to become overly materialistic, at its core, it is a desire to express the feminine side and embrace art, creativity, and sensitivity.   Mackenzie Belcastro strongly believes in the power of the divine feminine and its ability to guide individuals through life's obstacles. Her coaching approach is holistic, focusing on the mind, body, and spirit, placing the person at the center rather than focusing on superficial displays of confidence. By incorporating various techniques, Mackenzie helps her clients develop deep self-awareness, allowing them to discover and embrace their true potential. She empowers people to not just talk about empowerment but to actually feel and embody it. Mackenzie found her purpose in a moment of complete isolation and loss, where she discovered the concept of the Divine Feminine and learned to find creative ways to connect with the complex power and sensitivity within herself. This transformative experience has shaped her into the person she is today.   One of the pillars of Mackenzie's coaching is mindfulness and meditation, which she incorporates through visual journaling. By teaching her clients to be present and cultivate a deep connection with themselves, they can strengthen their relationship with their own intuition and make decisions aligned with their higher purpose. Through guided meditations, Mackenzie helps her clients create a sacred space within themselves and connect with their divine feminine essence. Understanding and embracing the creative sensitivity of women's intuition and challenging societal norms is a blessing.   One piece of advice Mackenzie shared with us is the importance of meditation as a fundamental self-practice for disciplining the mind and connecting with the inner self. She suggests finding a quiet space, even something as simple as a closet, and meditating with closed eyes for a few minutes to find peace within. It can be a process because committing to prioritize oneself at the end of the day requires ongoing effort and dedication. Ultimately, it is essential to become self-aware and recognize the natural affinity that divine femininity has towards higher density thinking and consciousness.   Another key aspect of Mackenzie's coaching is emotional healing. She assists her clients in identifying and releasing emotional blocks, traumas, and limiting beliefs that hinder personal growth. By creating a safe and nurturing environment, Mackenzie empowers her clients to confront and heal their emotional wounds, enabling them to step into their power and live authentically.   In addition to mindfulness and emotional healing through meditation, Mackenzie also emphasizes the importance of self-care and self-love. She guides her clients in developing healthy habits, setting boundaries, and prioritizing their well-being. Limitations are necessary to preserve purity. By nurturing themselves, women can thrive in all areas of their lives, including relationships, career, and personal growth.   “You don't have to try so hard in other things. Once you build up you'll know self-esteem and your own internal worth. You don't necessarily have to try so hard. Make sure that you do the workout or make sure that you get the work done because it's just like a part of the way that you view yourself. part of your image.”  -Mackenzie Belcastro   The impact Mackenzie Belcastro has had on her clients' lives is nothing short of extraordinary. Through her coaching, women have been able to reclaim their power, find their purpose, and overcome adversities they once believed were insurmountable. However, in this special episode we also took a dive into divorce and life coaching in marriage life. We dissect into Jason's shared experience as well as Mackenzie's own life advice to recover from disastrous heartbreaks in a relationship.   We need working at the same time if you're in that corporate world and you don't have control over that schedule, finding that essential work life balance. It's actually not about fitting yourself into the stereotypical boxes.  Learn to know the things you have control over versus the things you don't have control.   Mackenzie Belcastro's coaching methods and unwavering belief in the power of the divine feminine have truly transformed the lives of countless women. By helping her clients tap into their intuition, heal emotional wounds, and prioritize self-care, Mackenzie empowers women to face life's hurdles with confidence and grace, going beyond the material damage and physical hurt. She transcends the limited notion of what it means to be a "woman" in the modern age.   Moreover, Mackenzie recognizes that femininity knows no bounds – it extends beyond biological and ideological definitions. She teaches that there is a deep-rooted connection between masculinity and the divine feminine, highlighting her own experiences serving in the US Marine Corps as an example of how the divine feminine can thrive under pressure. Power is not inherently masculine; it is feminine.   As a woman, it is important to challenge any dynamics that make you uncomfortable, trust your intuition, and not let fear take control. Gut instinct is essential in combating the stereotypical vulnerability imposed on women within the power dynamics of modern society. We need to trust in it and make our dreams a reality. As more women embrace their divine feminine essence, society as a whole benefits from their wisdom, compassion, and resilience.   If you're a woman seeking to navigate life's challenges and unlock your true potential please take a visit to Mackenzie Belcastro official website and learn about her work. She is the coach who will guide you every step of the way.   As always, Higher Density Living reserves no dogma because only the truth prevails in the universe. History is judged by enlightened communities, and the Higher Density Living podcast is committed to the same cause. You are the center of the universe. Thank you for joining us on this cosmic journey, and we look forward to sharing more fascinating topics with you in the future. Stay tuned for more episodes where we delve into the profound principles that shape our existence.   Please support our sponsors TARTLE.CO. It is the only marketplace in the world that provides profit to you. Your personal data will serve for helpful causes. Unlocking human understanding through sharing of data and information, and Quality Mazda where you can avail affordable rides at a reasonable price. 

Have you ever felt like your child's interest in something has become all-consuming? It's not uncommon for gifted kids to develop intense interests that can leave them feeling isolated from their peers. As caregivers, how can we help and encourage them?   For this episode in our Life Skills series, we talk with David Perell, founder of Write of Passage, about how parents can help their children embrace their passions and find a community of like-minded individuals. David shares his personal experience of feeling alone in his interests as a child and the steps his family took to make him feel valued and inspired.  Listen now to hear our conversation about: The difference between what's rewarded in academics and what's rewarded in life [02:59]; How to help your child find a community of ambitious peers who make them feel validated and accepted [12:10]; How the internet can help gifted kids who feel isolated [13:41]; and What parents can do to embrace and support their child's interests [16:51].   Don't miss Today's Takeaways!  Listen all the way to the end of the episode for three tips to help your child thrive with whatever they choose to do.    Links and Resources  Learn more about David Perell's online writing program, Write of Passage. Check out the video version of this episode on the Gifted Minds YouTube channel. Don't forget to like and subscribe! Learn more about GT School, an online program that helps gifted and talented kids supercharge their academics.   Be part of something special Stay connected with our community:  YouTube channel Facebook Instagram  Twitter  If you enjoy the Gifted Minds podcast, would you leave us a short review on your favorite podcast platform? We love reading your feedback and ideas.    About David Perell David Perell is a writer, teacher, and podcaster. He believes writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. David seeks to help as many people publish their writing online as possible. David's online course, Write of Passage, has been taken by more than 500 students from more than 40 countries and from companies like Intel, Google, and Twitter. The five-week course draws on David's experience writing online, building an audience, and his interviews with more than 100 people on his North Star Podcast. Each interview explores the methods and principles of successful creators, artists, and entrepreneurs. His podcast guests include astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author Seth Godin, and economist Tyler Cowen. As an Emergent Ventures fellow, David's work is supported by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.   Podcast Credits Executive Producer and Host: MacKenzie Price Executive Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media  Senior Producer: Amanda Avery Senior Editor: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing Marketing: Patrick Harrell, The Krewe Video Production/Editing: Kevin Smith, Picturebox Productions Music Producer: Dyami Wilson 

#100: On today's episode I am joined by Mackenzie Belcastro. Mackenzie is an accredited Holistic Wellness Coach, a Reiki practitioner, and a novelist. She is also the host of The North Star Podcast. She believes that we've each been brought to this earth with gifts, and it is our deepest calling to tune in and access them. That's why her work centres on tending to the garden within—weeding out what doesn't serve in order to cull space for what does: passion, purpose, presence, spirituality, and courage to be. In this episode we talk about modern wellness, all things Reiki, Yoga Nidra and Holistic Health & the beautiful ways Mackenzie communicates in writing and in voice. This episode is all about softening and melting into your highest self. For Mackenzie's Website, Newsletter, and Offerings: Click here Connect with her on Instagram: Here My Offerings: https://carinajung.com/mentoring-offerings/ Find me on Instagram: @bycarinajung https://carinajung.com

David Perell is prolific writer and online educator, who runs a writing school called “Write of Passage”. David also hosts the “The North Star Podcast” featuring interviews with writers, athletes, and entrepreneurs. Important Links: Website: https://perell.com/ Writing School: https://writeofpassage.school/ Friday Finds Links: https://perell.com/friday-finds-links/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/david_perell Show Notes: Origins of “Write of Passage” Writing leads to thinking David's ever expanding portfolio Live the life that you teach Applying lessons from Disneyland to a writing course Four Seasons of writing education Ana's success with David's course Writing as a career transition Average course cohort age Building a personal monopoly Advice for an aspiring creator Dive into the work of the people you admire Managing fear of creating in public The network age Building a product for high-schoolers Finding your tribe on the internet Going against the trend with long-form essays Checklists and prescriptions The cover band strategy for investing Building an internet native education system Schools stifling creativity The Never-Ending Now Books Mentioned: Zero to One; by Peter Thiel One Summer: America, 1927; by Bill Bryson The Status Game; by Will Storr Invest Like the Best; by Jim O'Shaughnessy

Listen as a writer, teacher, and podcaster, David Perell, shares how there is a growing need for content on faith. He talks about his own experiences in this search and what he is learning. You will take away how to write in ways people can relate and be honest with your struggles in faith. To learn more about David Perell, go to https://perell.com/. Read about his Write of Passage online courses and follow his podcast North Star Podcast.

Sam Corcos, Levels CEO, sat down with David Perell, writer, teacher and podcaster for North Star Podcast. They chatted about the mental barriers to writing, especially when it requires deep thought and articulation. They also dug into the best approaches for when, where and why to use writing in certain forms of communication. Become a Levels Member – levelshealth.com Learn about Metabolic Health – levelshealth.com/blog Follow Levels on Social – @Levels on Instagram and Twitter

In this episode, Co-Founder of Double Up and Supercast Aidan Hornsby interviews David Perell on building an audience through Twitter and the impact of writing online. David Perell is a prolific writer, investor, and founder of Write of Passage, an intensive online writing course to accelerate your career. As host of the North Star Podcast, he interviews successful people such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jason Fried, and Ryan Holiday on what drives them. We talked about: The impact of building an audience How David's twitter account is more valuable than his college diploma The business school of the future How podcasts open David's mind up to new ideas Creating a Personal Monopoly Enjoy! --- Subscribe to Supercasters Premium for FREE to get bonus content with every episode: http://premium.supercast.com (premium.supercast.com) (it's free, takes 2 mins, no special apps to download). For this episode, our bonus section includes David talking through his https://twtext.com/article/1264712805174870016 (flywheel business model), which neatly illustrates how his writing, tweeting, podcasting, teaching, and investing all come together and build on each other for compounding effect. --- If you enjoy the podcast, we'd be honored if you could leave a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes. Help your fellow podcaster find us! Follow Supercast: http://twitter.com/supercast (@supercast) Follow Jason: http://twitter.com/jsewhoy (@jsewhoy) Timestamps 2:08 From television anchor to writer: David Perell's story 3:42 Writing is the new networking 6:07 Playing with and communicating interesting ideas 6:54 Starting the North Star Podcast 9:37 "My audience is the single most valuable thing in my life" 10:58 Download numbers are not the quality and size of your audience 12:14 The unlimited competition for somebody's attention online 14:47 Starting out on Twitter, and social media feeds 16:08 Twitter is a filter for people who resonate with you 17:07 Conversations tear down the mazes of our internal psychology 19:22 How podcasts open David's mind up to new ideas 20:57 Each medium has a bias 22:52 Why we should give lots of free stuff away 25:51 Personal Monopoly and intersecting ideas through writing 29:17 Testing business models and writing with passion 30:27 Being the center of attention paralyzes us 32:28 The power of writing pseudonymously 34:52 Audience building is a game of compounding 37:45 How David Perell became successful on Twitter 39:24 Focusing on email, podcasting is a black box 40:29 Podcasts are an opportunity for trust 42:51 Podcasts coincide the most with ordinary life 45:15 Building the business school of the future 46:46 Building audience-first products Premium Timestamps 0:49 David Perell's Flywheel business model 3:22 The difference between open and closed social platforms 6:02 YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world 8:42 The book as a business card, and a subscription podcast 12:50 David Perell's tips on building your audience Links https://www.perell.com (David Perell's Website) https://twitter.com/david_perell (David's Twitter) https://writeofpassage.school (Write of Passage) Credits Supercasters is a https://kellykelly.ca/ (Kelly&Kelly) production.  The show was created by Supercast, the easiest way to add a paid membership to your show. Get paid to podcast at https://www.supercast.com/ (supercast.com).

David Perell is a writer, teacher, and podcaster. David's online course, Write of Passage, teaches a step-by-step method for publishing quality content and distributing your ideas and has been taken by 500+ students from over 40 countries. David is also the host of the North Star Podcast where he has conducted 100 interviews exploring the methods and principles of successful creators, artists, and entrepreneurs. David joined Chris to discuss revealing your unique ability, leveraging your strengths, and building a personal brand that attracts inbound opportunities. For the video, transcript, and show notes, visit https://forcingfunction.com/podcast/david-perell (forcingfunctionhour.com/david-perell).  

My guest today is Sara Dietschy, a YouTuber with more than 620,000 YouTube subscribers. This is the fourth interview I’ve recorded with her. It’s her second appearance on the North Star Podcast, and I’ve been interviewed twice on her podcast called That Creative Life.  Sara makes a couple of videos every week focused on creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship. Most of her revenue comes from paid partnerships, and she’s teamed up with brands like Intel, AT&T, Visa, Squarespace, and BestBuy, and Adobe.  This episode begins with a discussion of what it means to be a YouTuber, so Sara shares lessons about hiring and monetizing a channel. Then, she talks about her creative process with ideas like her “one for them, one for me” model of creating content. We also talk about the future of influencer culture, homeschooling, the Despacito music video, and what we’ve learned about delegation. ___________________________________________ Links to Sara: Sara’s Youtube Channel Sara’s Website   Other Links: Linus Tech Tips Paul Graham’s Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule David’s Obsession Tweet Eric Weinstein- What Should We Be Worried About Epidemic Sound ___________________________________________ SHOW NOTES: 2:02- This isolation of creative hiring. What it means to be a YouTuber. How Sara learns about new technologies. 12:36- What Sara is most opinionated about. How quantification affects Sara’s creative process. 19:30- How Sara creates her content using the “one for me, one for them” model. David and Sara’s creative process. Sara’s relationship to Twitter and YouTube. The future of influencer culture.   31:01- What is good and bad about obsessive personalities. The future of public school and the positives and negatives of homeschooling. The difference between excellence and genius and how school only trains for excellence.  48:02 The gift of truly hating something. The art of video editing and what makes it difficult to delegate. How YouTube has changed over the past ten years. 1:00:55- What Epidemic Sound is doing well. Why Despacito was so popular on YouTube.  1:06:17- Who has done well with delegation. What is so difficult about hiring for creative roles. Why Sara hired a meme creator. 1:18:42- Why differentiation is free marketing on the Internet. Love languages for hiring. David and Sara’s brand dissection podcast plan.  

In this interview, David Perell aka "The Writing Guy" and host of The North Star Podcast discusses effective techniques to think, write, and create content, while also offering life advice, productivity tips, and ideation strategies.

My guest toady is Patri Friedman, a political theorist whose on a mission to increase competition in government. In 2008, Patri founded the Seasteading Institute with a mission create sovereign ocean colonies and "establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.” We spend tons of time talking about Seasteading and competitive governance in the episode.  We also talk about the incredible foresight of Marshall McLuhan, the impact of modern technology on government, the future of the nation-state, the rise of city-states, and the rise of digital addictions in the internet age. I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is everything the North Star Podcast is supposed to be: wild, wacky, weird, and wonderful. Patri has so many new and thought-provoking ideas. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast Keep Up with the North Star Podcast by Subscribing to My Monday Musings Newsletter My guest today is Derek Thompson, a Senior Editor at The Atlantic who writes about media, culture and economics in America today.  I first discovered Derek’s writing while researching the state of Hollywood for an essay I was working on last year. Derek cultural observation has stuck with me ever since. Derek wrote that Hollywood audiences are ignoring movies that aren’t a sequel, adaptation, or reboot. This statistic stuck with me: In 1996, none of the top 10 movies were sequels. Twenty years later, in 2016, more than half of the top 10 movies were sequels, adaptations or reboots. In this episode, Derek talks about his background in acting and his love for Hamlet. Together, we nerd out on the magic of theater and the surprisingly large differences between what happens in the theater and what happens at the movies. Then, we explore taste and culture. We talk about Stewart Brand’s “Pace Layers” theory of architecture, Japanese Emperors, what fashion can teach us about the world, and the history of impressionism. We investigate how blockbuster success isn’t a matter of chance, but a fascinating intersection of power, network science, art, and sheer brilliance.  Here's my conversation with Derek Thompson. Links Derek’s Twitter Account Derek’s Articles Derek’s Podcast Derek’s Book — Hit Makers Show Notes 3:45 Derek expresses his appreciation of theater  5:51 Derek explains why Hamlet is one of the greatest plays in history 7:08 What made Shakespeare so great? 9:30 Derek discuss the features of Shakespeare’s writing that make it so timeless  9:53 What makes a perfect movie?  11:00 Derek discusses some of the best movies and plays written over the last several decades  12:15 The key differences and difficulties of getting theater to a screenplay 15:00 The cannon of art has a different meaning now. The real question is “what is the best?” 17:23: “We often conflate familiarity with fact.” Derek speaks about familiarity and its influence on our perceptions of facts and quality. 17:50 How our modern perception of cannon has changed as we have begun to question and challenge its history and validity 19:30 Our sense of “good taste” and how it’s defined in the contemporary age 20:19 “Cultural Capital” and “Cultural Omniscience” 22:47 The shift of culture from valuing scarcity to valuing familiarity 23:45 Modern celebrity and the rise of “manufactured intimacy” 25:50 Formality, and how its quickly losing its reverence and relevance in modern culture. Why is the world becoming more formal? 28:00 Derek takes a closer look at how informality has affected modern culture, specifically in the case of presidential speeches 31:45 The blurring line between work and home 32:20 How taste is trained or influenced 37:59 “M.A.Y.A- Most advanced, yet acceptable”  38:56 The sweet spot of familiar and surprising 42:02 Derek picks a point in history he would go back to if he had the chance 50:00 The over-looked and under-rated importance of art history 55:39 Derek delves into the concept of nature vs nurture and the influential and guiding elements of personal development 57:47 Derek talks about his favorite authors. 59:35- How should writers explain complicated ideas? 1:12.04 - Non fiction and journalism compared to the ironic honesty and realism of fictitious writing. 1:07.57 Derek’s take away thoughts on the craft of writing and shares his strategies for learning and information consumption. Mentions 5:53 Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction 21:30 Jon Bellion, The Making of Luxury 25:18: A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change 37:03: Raymond Lowey 44:06 Louis XIV 47:28: Beowulf 57:50 Philip Roth 58:39 Jonathan Franzen 58:45 Donna Tartt  Click Here to Keep Up with the North Star Podcast

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast | PlayerFM Click Here to Keep Up With the North Star Podcast My guest today is Austen Allred, the founder of Lambda School — a revolutionary new school. Here’s how it works: Lambda School trains people to be software engineers at no up-front cost. Instead of paying tuition, students agree to pay a percentage of their income after they're employed, and only if they're making more than $50k per year. If you don't find a job, or don't reach that level of income, you'll never pay a cent. So, how does tuition work?  There are no up-front costs for Lambda School; they only get paid when students do. Once you’re earning at least $50k per year they'll pay back 17% of your income for the first two years, and total tuition is capped at $30,000.  In an age where continuous learning is essential and student debt has skyrocketed, I’m struck by this model. Information is everywhere but learning is still difficult. Online, it can be hard to push through the difficult moments that get you over the hump or find others to share the journey with.  Austen has some exciting solutions and we devote this entire conversation to the present, past and future of education. David Perell and Austen Allred Time Stamps 2:50 - Understanding the trade offs of the job market when making education choices 7:33- How Lambda compares to other universities or colleges 13:01 - Austen describes some of the problems with online education 14:43 Participation differences between pre recorded lectures and interactive lectures 15:50 Austen describes living out of his car during his beginnings in Silicon Valley 21:40 Lambda’s end goal and pursuit of sustainability for both the school and its students  22:49 Shifting peoples perceptions on education and the future 24:10 How the current public education system fails to teach people “how” to learn. 27:05 Why hasn’t education changed much over the past 50 years, and how can we change it? 30:50 Austen explains his perspective on the pitfalls and shortcomings of the current high education system and student loans 34:10 Student loan payments and the adverse effects on the borrower 36:05 How apprenticeships fit into the modern education system and how the affect both job readiness for the apprentice, as well as the impact on a mentor. 43:00 The growing divide among society and conflicting schools of thought among sub regions of the USA. 48:30 Austen shares some Lambda School success stories. Click here to learn more about my company, North Star Media. You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell.

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast | PlayerFM Keep up with the North Star Podcast. My guest today is Michael Nielsen a scientist, writer and computer programmer who works as a research fellow at Y Combinator Research. Michael has written on various topics from quantum teleportation, geometric complexity and the future of science. Michael is the most original thinker I have discovered in a long time when it comes to artificial intelligence, augmenting human intelligence, reinventing explanation and using new media to enable new ways of thinking. Michael has pushed my mind towards new and unexpected places. This conversation gets a little wonky at times, but as you know, the best conversations are difficult. They are challenging because they venture into new, unexplored territory and that's exactly what we did here today.  Michael and I explored the history of tools and jump back to the invention of language, the defining feature of human collaboration and communication. We explore the future of data visualization and talk about the history of the spreadsheet as a tool for human thought.  “Before writing and mathematics, you have the invention of language which is the most significant event in some ways. That’s probably the defining feature of the human species as compared to other species.” LINKS Find Michael Online Michael’s Website Michael’s Twitter Michael’s Free Ebook: Neural Networks and Deep Learning Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Mentioned In the Show 2:12 Michael’s Essay Extreme Thinking 21:48 Photoshop 21:49 Microsoft Word 24:02 The David Bowie Exhibit 28:08 Google AI’s Deep Dream Images 29:26 Alpha Go 30:26 Brian Eno’s Infamous Airport Music 33:41 Listen to Speed of Life by Dirty South Books Mentioned 46:06 Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig 54:12 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut People Mentioned 13:27 Rembrandt Van Rijn’s Artwork 15:01 Monet’s Gallery 15:02 Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Impressionist Art 15:05 Picasso’s Paintings 15:18 Paul Cezanne’s Post-Impressionist Art 25:40 David Brooke’s NYT Column 35:19 Franco of Cologne 56:58 Alan Kay’s Ted Talk on the future of education 57:04 Doug Engelbart 58:35 Karl Schroeder 01:02:06 Elon Musk’s Mars-bound company, SpaceX 01:04:25 Alex Tabarrok Show Topics 4:01 Michael’s North Star, which drives the direction of his research 5:32 Michael talks about how he sets his long-term goals and how he’s propelled by ideas he’s excited to see in the world. 7:13 The invention of language. Michael discusses human biology and how it’s easier to learn a language than writing or mathematics.  9:28 Michael talks about humanity’s ability to bootstrap itself. Examples include maps, planes, and photography  17:33 Limitations in media due to consolidation and the small number of communication platforms available to us  18:30 How self-driving cars and smartphones highlight the strange intersection where artificial intelligence meets human interaction and the possibilities that exist as technology improves 21:45 Why does Photoshop improve your editing skills, while Microsoft Word doesn’t improve your writing skills? 27:07 Michael’s opinion on how Artificial Intelligence can help people be more creative “Really good AI systems are going to depend upon building and currently depend on building very good models of different parts of the world, to the extent that we can then build tools to actually look in and see what those models are telling us about the world.”  30:22 The intersection of algorithms and creativity. Are algorithms the musicians of the future? 36:51 The emerging ability to create interactive visual representations of spreadsheets that are used in media, internally in companies, elections and more. “I’m interested in the shift from having media be predominantly static to dynamic, which the New York Times is a perfect example of. They can tell stories on newyorktimes.com that they can’t tell in the newspaper that gets delivered to your doorstep.” 45:42 The strategies Michael uses to successfully trail blaze uncharted territory and how they emulate building a sculpture   53:30 Michael’s learning and information consumption process, inspired by the idea that you are what you pretend to be 56:44 The foundation of Michael’s worldview. The people and ideas that have shaped and inspired Michael.  01:02:26 Michael’s hypothesis for the 21st century project involving blockchain and cryptocurrencies and their ability to make implementing marketplaces easier than ever before “The key point is that some of these cryptocurrencies actually, potentially, make it very easy to implement marketplaces. It’s plausible to me that the 21st century [project] turns out to be about [marketplaces]. It’s about inventing new types of markets, which really means inventing new types of collective action.” Host David Perell and Guest Michael Nielsen TRANSCRIPT Hello and welcome to the North Star. I'm your host, David Perell, the founder of North Star Media, and this is the North Star podcast. This show is a deep dive into the stories, habits, ideas, strategies, and rituals that guide fulfilled people and create enormous success for them, and while the guests are diverse, they share profound similarities. They're guided by purpose, live with intense joy, learn passionately, and see the world with a unique lens. With each episode, we get to jump into their minds, soak up their hard-earned wisdom and apply it to our lives. My guest today is Michael Nielson, a scientist, writer, and computer programmer, who works as a research fellow at Y Combinator Research. Michael's written on various topics from quantum teleportation to geometric complexity to the future of science, and now Michael is the most original thinker I've discovered in a long time. When it comes to artificial intelligence to augmenting human intelligence, reinventing explanation, or using new media to enable new ways of thinking, Michael has pushed my mind towards new and unexpected places. Now, this conversation gets a little wonky at times, but as you know, the best conversations are difficult. They're challenging because they venture into new, unexplored territory and that's exactly what we did here today. Michael and I explored the history of tools. This is an extension of human thought and we jump back to the invention of language, the defining feature of human collaboration and communication. We explore the future of data visualization and talk about the history of this spreadsheet as a tool for human thought. Here's my conversation with Michael Nielson. DAVID: Michael Nielson, welcome to the North Star Podcast. MICHAEL: Thank you, David. DAVID: So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. MICHAEL: So day to day, I'm a researcher at Y Combinator Research. I'm basically a reformed theoretical physicist. My original background is doing quantum computing work. And then I've moved around a bit over the years. I've worked on open science, I've worked on artificial intelligence and most of my current work is around tools for thought. DAVID: So you wrote an essay which I really enjoyed called Extreme Thinking. And in it, you said that one of the single most important principle of learning is having a strong sense of purpose and a strong sense of meaning. So let's be in there. What is that for you? MICHAEL: Okay. You've done your background. Haven't thought about that essay in years. God knows how long ago I wrote it. Having a strong sense of purpose. What did I actually mean? Let me kind of reboot my own thinking. It's, it's kind of the banal point of view. How much you want something really matters. There's this lovely interview with the physicist Richard Feynman, where he's asked about this Indian mathematical prodigy Ramanujan. A movie was made about Ramanujan’s mathematical prowess a couple of years ago. He was kind of this great genius. And a Feynman was asked what made Ramanujan so good. And the interview was expecting him to say something about how bright this guy was or whatever. And Feynman said instead, that it was desire. It was just that love of mathematics was at the heart of it. And he couldn't stop thinking about it and he was thinking about it. He was doing in many ways, I guess the hard things. It's very difficult to do the hard things that actually block you unless you have such a strong desire that you're willing to go through those things. Of course, I think you see that in all people who get really good at something, whether it be sort of a, just a skill like playing the violin or something, which is much more complicated. DAVID: So what is it for you? What is that sort of, I hate to say I want to just throw that out here, that North Star, so to speak, of what drives you in your research? MICHAEL: Research is funny. You go through these sort of down periods in which you don't necessarily have something driving you on. That used to really bother me early in my career. That was sort of a need to always be moving. But now I think that it's actually important to allow yourself to do that. That's actually how you find the problems, which really get, get you excited. If you don't sort of take those pauses, then you're not gonna find something that's really worth working on. I haven't actually answered your question. I think I know I've jumped to that other point because that's one thing that really matters to me and it was something that was hard to learn. DAVID: So one thing that I've been thinking a lot about recently is you sort of see it in companies. You see it in countries like Singapore, companies like Amazon and then something like the Long Now Foundation with like the 10,000-year clock. And I'm wondering to you in terms of learning, there's always sort of a tension between short-term learning and long-term learning. Like short-term learning so often is maybe trying to learn something that feels a little bit richer. So for me, that's reading, whereas maybe for a long-term learning project there are things I'd like to learn like Python. I'd like to learn some other things like that. And I'm wondering, do you set long-term learning goals for yourself or how would you think about that trade off? MICHAEL: I try to sit long-time learning goals to myself, in many ways against my better judgment. It's funny like you're very disconnected from you a year from now or five years from now, or 10 years from now. I can't remember, but Eisenhower or Bonaparte or somebody like that said that the planning is invaluable or planning plans are overrated, but planning is invaluable. And I think that's true. And this is the right sort of attitude to take towards these long-term lending goals. Sure. It's a great idea to decide that you're going out. Actually, I wouldn't say it was a great idea to say that you're going to learn python, I might say. However, there was a great idea to learn python if you had some project that you desperately wanted to do that it required you to learn python, then it's worth doing, otherwise stay away from python. I certainly favor, coupling learning stuff to projects that you're excited to actually see in the world. But also, then you may give stuff up, you don't become a master of python and instead you spend whatever, a hundred hours or so learning about it for this project that takes you a few hundred hours, and if you want to do a successor project which involves it, more of it. Great, you'll become better. And if you don't, well you move onto something else. DAVID: Right. Well now I want to dive into the thing that I'm most excited to talk to you about today and that's tools that extend human thought. And so let's start with the history of that. We'll go back sort of the history of tools and there's had great Walter Ong quote about how there are no new thoughts without new technologies. And maybe we can start there with maybe the invention of writing, the invention of mathematics and then work through that and work to where you see the future of human thought going with new technologies. MICHAEL: Actually, I mean before writing and mathematics, you have the invention of language, which is almost certainly the most significant single event in some ways. The history of the planet suddenly, you know, that's probably the defining feature of the human species as compared to other species. Um, I say invention, but it's not even really invention. There's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that language is in some important sense built into our biology. Not the details of language. Um, but this second language acquisition device, it seems like every human is relatively very set to receive language. The actual details depend on the culture we grow up on. Obviously, you don't grow up speaking French if you were born in San Francisco and unless you were in a French-speaking household, some very interesting process of evolution going on there where you have something which is fundamentally a technology in some sense languages, humans, a human invention. It's something that's constructed. It's culturally carried. Um, it, there's all these connections between different words. There's almost sort of a graph of connections between the words if you like, or all sorts of interesting associations. So in that sense, it's a technology, something that's been constructed, but it's also something which has been over time built into our biology. Now if you look at later technologies of thought things like say mathematics, those are much, much later. That hasn't been the same sort of period of time. Those don't seem to be built into our biology in quite the same way. There's actually some hints of that we have some intrinsic sense of number and there's some sort of interesting experiments that suggest that we were built to do certain rudimentary kinds of mathematical reasoning but there's no, you know, section of the brain which specializes sort of from birth in solving quadratic equations, much less doing algebraic geometry or whatever, you know, super advanced. So it becomes this cultural thing over the last few thousand years, this kind of amazing process whereby we've started to bootstrap ourselves. If you think about something like say the invention of maps, which really has changed the way people relate to the environment. Initially, they were very rudimentary things. Um, and people just kept having new ideas for making maps more and more powerful as tools for thought. Okay. I can give you an example. You know, a very simple thing, if you've ever been to say the underground in London or most other subway systems around the world. It was actually the underground when this first happened, if you look at the map of the underground, I mean it's a very complicated map, but you can get pretty good at reasoning about how to get from one place to another. And if you look at maps prior to, I think it was 1936, in fact, the maps were much more complicated. And the reason was that mapmakers up to that point had the idea that where the stations were shown on the map had to correspond to the geography of London. Exactly. And then somebody involved in producing the underground map had just a brilliant insight that actually people don't care. They care about the connections between the stations and they want to know about the lines and they want some rough idea of the geography, but they're quite happy for it to be very rough indeed and he was able to dramatically simplify that map by simply doing away with any notion of exact geography. DAVID: Well, it's funny because I noticed the exact same thing in New York and so often you have insights when you see two things coming together. So I was on the subway coming home one day and I was looking at the map and I always thought that Manhattan was way smaller than Brooklyn, but on the subway map, Manhattan is actually the same size as Brooklyn. And in Manhattan where the majority of the subway action is, it takes up a disproportionate share of the New York City subway map. And then I went home to go read Power Broker, which is a book about Robert Moses building the highways and they had to scale map. And what I saw was that Brooklyn was way, way bigger than Manhattan. And from predominantly looking at subway maps. Actually, my topological geographical understanding of New York was flawed and I think exactly to your point. MICHAEL: It's interesting. When you think about what's going on there and what it is, is some person or a small group of people is thinking very hard about how to represent their understanding of the city and then the building, tools, sort of a technological tool of thought that actually then saves millions or in the case of a New York subway or the London underground, hundreds of millions or billions of people, mostly just seconds, sometimes, probably minutes. Like those maps would be substantially more complicated sort of every single day. So it's only a small difference. I mean, and it's just one invention, right? But, you know, our culture is of course accumulated thousands or millions of these inventions. DAVID: One of my other favorite ones from being a kid was I would always go on airplanes and I'd look at the route map and it would always show that the airplanes would fly over the North Pole, but on two-dimensional space that was never clear to me. And I remember being with my dad one night, we bought a globe and we took a rubber band and we stretched why it was actually shorter to fly over the North Pole, say if you're going from New York to India. And that was one of the first times in my life that I actually didn't realize it at the time, but understood exactly what I think you're trying to get at there. How about photography? Because that's another one that I think is really striking, vivid from the horse to slow motion to time lapses. MICHAEL: Photography I think is interesting in this vein in two separate ways. One is actually what it did to painting, which is of course painters have been getting more and more interested in being more and more realistic. And honestly, by the beginning of the 19th century, I think painting was pretty boring. Yeah, if you go back to say the 16th and 17th centuries, you have people who are already just astoundingly good at depicting things in a realistic fashion. To my mind, Rembrandt is probably still the best portrait painter in some sense to ever live. DAVID: And is that because he was the best at painting something that looked real? MICHAEL: I think he did something better than that. He did this very clever thing, you know, you will see a photograph or a picture of somebody and you'll say, oh, that really looks like them. And I think actually most of the time we, our minds almost construct this kind of composite image that we think of as what David looks like or what our mother looks like or whatever. But actually moment to moment, they mostly don't look like that. They mostly, you know, their faces a little bit more drawn or it's, you know, the skin color is a little bit different. And my guess, my theory of Rembrandt, is that he may have actually been very, very good at figuring out almost what that image was and actually capturing that. So, yeah, I mean this is purely hypothetical. I have no real reason to believe it, but I think it's why I responded so strongly to his paintings. DAVID: And then what happened? So after Rembrandt, what changed? MICHAEL: So like I said, you mean you keep going for a sort of another 200 years, people just keep getting more and more realistic in some sense. You have all the great landscape painters and then you have this catastrophe where photography comes along and all of a sudden you're being able to paint in a more and more realistic fashion. It doesn't seem like such a hot thing to be doing anymore. And if for some painters, I think this was a bit of a disaster, a bit of dose. I said of this modern wave, you start to see through people like Monet and Renoir. But then I think Picasso, for me anyway, was really the pivotal figure in realizing that actually what art could become, is the invention of completely new ways of seeing. And he starts to play inspired by Cezanne and others in really interesting ways with the construction of figures and such. Showing things from multiple angles in one painting and different points of view. And he just plays with hundreds of ideas along these lines, through all of his painting and how we see and what we see in how we actually construct reality in their heads from the images that we see. And he did so much of that. It really became something that I think a lot of artists, I'm not an artist or a sophisticated art theory person, but it became something that other people realized was actually an extraordinarily interesting thing to be doing. And much of the most interesting modern art is really a descendant of that understanding that it's a useful thing to be doing. A really interesting thing to be doing rather than becoming more and more realistic is actually finding more and more interesting ways of seeing and being able to represent the world. DAVID: So I think that the quote is attributed to Marshall McLuhan, but I have heard that Winston Churchill said it. And first, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us. And that seems to be sort of the foundation of a lot of the things that you're saying. MICHAEL: Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, on the other side, you also have, to your original question about photography. Photographers have gradually started to realize that they could shape how they saw nature. Ansel Adams and people like this, you know. Just what an eye. And understanding his tools so verbally he's not just capturing what you see. He's constructing stuff in really, really interesting ways. DAVID: And how about moving forward in terms of your work, thinking about where we are now to thinking about the future of technology. For example, one thing that frustrates me a bit as a podcast host is, you know, we just had this conversation about art and it's the limits of the audio medium to not be able to show the paintings of Rembrandt and Cezanne that we just alluded to. So as you think about jumping off of that, as you think about where we are now in terms of media to moving forward, what are some of the challenges that you see and the issues that you're grappling with? MICHAEL: One thing for sure, which I think inhibits a lot of exploration. We're trapped in a relatively small number of platforms. The web is this amazing thing as our phones, iOS and whatnot, but they're also pretty limited and that bothers me a little bit. Basically when you sort of narrow down to just a few platforms which have captured almost all of the attention, that's quite limiting. People also, they tend not to make their own hardware. They don't do these kinds of these kinds of things. If that were to change, I think that would certainly be exciting. Something that I think is very, very interesting over the next few years, artificial intelligence has gotten to the point now where we can do a pretty good job in understanding what's actually going on inside a room. Like we can set up sufficient cameras. If you think about something like self-driving cars, essentially what they're doing is they're building up a complete model of the environment and if that model is not pretty darned good, then you can't do self-driving cars, you need to know where the pedestrians are and where the signs are and all these kinds of things and if there's an obstruction and that technology when brought into, you know, the whole of the rest of the world means that you're pretty good at passing out. You know what's inside the room. Oh, there's a chair over there, there's a dog which is moving in that direction, there's a person, there’s a baby and sort of understanding all those actions and ideally starting to understand all the gestures which people are making as well. So we're in this very strange state right at the moment. Where the way we talk to computers is we have these tiny little rectangles and we talk to them through basically a square inch or so of sort of skin, which is our eyes. And then we, you know, we tap away with our fingers and the whole of the rest of our body and our existence is completely uncoupled from that. We've effectively reduced ourselves to our fingers and our eyes. We a couple to it only through the whatever, 100 square inches, couple hundred square inches of our screens or less if you're on a phone and everything else in the environment is gone. But we're actually at a point where we're nearly able to do an understanding of all of that sufficiently well that actually other modes of interaction will become possible. I don't think we're quite there yet, but we're pretty close. And you start to think about, something like one of my favorite sport is tennis. You think about what a tennis player can do with their body or you think about what a dancer can do with their body. It's just extraordinary. And all of that mode of being human and sort of understanding we can build up antibodies is completely shut out from the computing experience at the moment. And I think over the next sort of five to ten years that will start to reenter and then in the decades hence, it will just seem strange that it was ever shut out. DAVID: So help me understand this. So when you mean by start to reenter, do mean that we'll be able to control computers with other parts of our bodies or that we'll be spending less time maybe typing on keyboards. Help me flesh this out. MICHAEL: I just mean that at the moment. As you speak to David, you are waving your arms around and all sorts of interesting ways and there is no computer system which is aware of it, what your computer system is aware of. You're doing this recording. That's it. And even that, it doesn't understand in any sort of significant way. Once you've gained the ability to understand the environment. Lots of interesting things become possible. The obvious example, which everybody immediately understands is that self driving cars become possible. There's this sort of enormous capacity. But I think it's certainly reasonably likely that much more than that will become possible over the next 10 to 20 years. As your computer system becomes completely aware of your environment or as aware as you're willing to allow it to be. DAVID: You made a really interesting analogy in one of your essays about the difference between Photoshop and Microsoft Word. That was really fascinating to me because I know both programs pretty well. But to know Microsoft word doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a better writer. It actually doesn't mean that at all. But to know Photoshop well probably makes me pretty good at image manipulation. I'm sure there's more there, but if you could walk me through your thought process as you were thinking through that. I think that's really interesting. MICHAEL: So it's really about a difference in the type of tools which are built into the program. So in Photoshop, which I should say, I don't know that well, I know Word pretty well. I've certainly spent a lot more time in it than I have ever spent in Photoshop. But in Photoshop, you do have these very interesting tools which have been built in, which really condense an enormous amount of understanding of ideas like layers or an idea, different brushes, these kinds of ideas. There's just a tremendous amount of understanding which has been built in there. When I watch friends who are really good with these kinds of programs, what they can do with layers is just amazing. They understand all these kind of clever screening techniques. It seems like such a simple idea and yet they're able to do these things that let you do astonishing things just with sort of three or four apparently very simple operations. So in that sense, there are some very deep ideas about image manipulation, which had been built directly into Photoshop. By contrast, there's not really very many deep ideas about writing built into Microsoft Word. If you talk to writers about how they go about their actual craft and you say, well, you know, what heuristics do use to write stories and whatnot. Most of the ideas which they use aren't, you know, they don't correspond directly to any set of tools inside Word. Probably the one exception is ideas, like outlining. There are some tools which have been built into word and that's maybe an example where in fact Word does help the writer a little bit, but I don't think to nearly the same extent as Photoshop seems to. DAVID: I went to an awesome exhibit for David Bowie and one of the things that David but we did when he was writing songs was he had this word manipulator which would just throw him like 20, 30 words and the point wasn't that he would use those words. The point was that by getting words, his mind would then go to different places and so often when you're in my experience and clearly his, when you're trying to create something, it helps to just be thrown raw material at you rather than the perennial, oh my goodness, I'm looking at a white screen with like this clicking thing that is just terrifying, Word doesn't help you in that way. MICHAEL: So an example of something which does operate a little bit in that way, it was a Ph.D. thesis was somebody wrote at MIT about what was called the Remembrance Agent. And what it would do, it was a plugin essentially for a text editor that it would, look at what you are currently writing and it would search through your hard disk for documents that seemed like they might actually be relevant. Just kind of prompt you with what you're writing. Seems like it might be related to this or this or this or this or this. And to be perfectly honest, it didn't actually work all that well. I think mostly because the underlying machine learning algorithms it used weren't very clever. It's defunct now as far as I know. I tried to get it to run on my machine or a year or two ago and I couldn't get it running. It was still an interesting thing to do. It had exactly this same kind of the belly sort of experience. Even if they weren't terribly relevant. You kind of couldn't understand why on earth you are being shown it. It's still jogged your mind in an interesting way. DAVID: Yeah. I get a lot of help out of that. Actually, I’ll put this example. So David Brooks, you know the columnist for the New York Times. When he writes, what he does is he gets all of his notes and he just puts his notes on the floor and he literally crawls all around and tries to piece the notes together and so he's not even writing. He's just organizing ideas and it must really help him as it helps me to just have raw material and just organize it all in the same place. MICHAEL: There's a great British humorist, PG Boathouse, he supposedly wrote on I think it was the three by five-inch cards. He'd write a paragraph on each one, but he had supposedly a very complicated system in his office, well not complicated at all, but it must have looked amazing where he would basically paste the cards to the wall and as the quality of each paragraph rose, he would move the paragraph up the wall and I think the idea was something like once it got to the end, it was a lion or something, every paragraph in the book had to get above that line and at that point it was ready to go. DAVID: So I've been thinking a lot about sort of so often in normal media we take AI sort of on one side and art on another side. But I think that so many of the really interesting things that will emerge out of this as the collaboration between the two. And you've written a bit about art and AI, so how can maybe art or artificial intelligence help people be more creative in this way? MICHAEL: I think we still don't know the answer to the question, unfortunately. The hoped-for answer the answer that might turn out to be true. Real AI systems are going to build up very good models of different parts of the world, maybe better than any human has of those parts of the world. It might be the case, I don't know. It might be the case that something like the Google translate system, maybe in some sense that system already knows some facts about translation that would be pretty difficult to track down in any individual human mind and sort of so much about translation in some significant ways. I'm just speculating here. But if you can start to interrogate that understanding, it becomes a really useful sort of a prosthetic for human beings. If you've seen any of these amazing, well I guess probably the classics, the deep dream images that came out of Google brain a couple of years ago. Basically, you take ordinary images and you're sort of running them backwards through a neural net somehow. You're sort of seeing something about how the neural net sees that image. You get these very beautiful images as a result. There's something strange going on and sort of revealing about your own way of seeing the world. And at the same time, it's based on some structure which this neural net has discovered inside these images which is not ordinarily directly accessible to you. It's showing you that structure. So sort of I think the right way to think about this is that really good AI systems are going to depend upon building and do currently depend on building very good models of different parts of the world and to the extent that we can then build tools to actually look in and see what those models are telling us about the world, we can learn interesting new things which are useful for us. I think the conventional way, certainly the science fiction way to think about AI is that we're going to give it commands and it's going to do stuff. How you shut the whatever it is, the door or so on and so forth, and there was certainly will be a certain amount of that. Or with AlphaGo what is the best move to take now, but actually in some sense, with something like AlphaGo, it's probably more interesting to be able to look into it and see what it's understanding is of the board position than it is to ask what's the best move to be taken. A colleague showed me a go program, a prototype, what it would do. It was a very simple kind of a thing, but it would help train beginners. I think it was Go, but by essentially colorizing different parts of the board according to whether they were good or bad moves to be taking in its estimation. If you're a sophisticated player, it probably wasn't terribly helpful, but if you're just a beginner, there's an interesting kind of a conditioning going on there. At least potentially a which lets you start to see. You get a feeling for immediate feedback from. And all that's happening there is that you're seeing a little bit into one of these machine learning algorithms and that's maybe helping you see the world in a slightly different way. DAVID: As I was preparing for this podcast, you've liked a lot to Brian Eno and his work. So I spent as much time reading Brian Eno, which I'm super happy that I went down those rabbit holes. But one of the things that he said that was really interesting, so he's one of the fathers of ambient music and he said that a lot of art and especially music, there will sort of be algorithms where you sort of create an algorithm that to the listener might even sound better than what a human would produce. And he said two things that were interesting. The first one is that you create an algorithm and then a bunch of different musical forms could flower out of that algorithm. And then also said that often the art that algorithms create is more appealing to the viewer. But it takes some time to get there. And had the creator just followed their intuition. They probably would have never gotten there. MICHAEL: It certainly seems like it might be true. And that's the whole sort of interesting thing with that kind of computer-generated music is to, I think the creators of it often don't know where they're gonna end up. To be honest, I think my favorite music is all still by human composers. I do enjoy performances by people who live code. There's something really spectacular about that. So there are people who, they will set up the computer and hook it up to speakers and they will hook the text editor up to a projector and they'll have essentially usually a modified form of the programming language list a or people use a few different systems I guess. And they will write a program which producers music onstage and they'll just do it in real time and you know, it starts out sounding terrible of course. And that lasts for about 20 seconds and by about sort of 30 or 40 seconds in, already it's approaching the limits of complex, interesting music and I think even if you don't really have a clue what they're doing as they program, there's still something really hypnotic and interesting about watching them actually go through this process of creating music sort of both before your eyes and before your ears. It's a really interesting creative experience and sometimes quite beautiful. I think I suspect that if I just heard one of those pieces separately, I probably wouldn't do so much for me, but actually having a done in real time and sort of seeing the process of creation, it really changes the experience and makes it very, very interesting. And sometimes, I mean, sometimes it's just beautiful. That's the good moment, right? When clearly the person doing it has something beautiful happen. You feel something beautiful happen and everybody else around you feel something beautiful and spontaneous. It's just happened. That's quite a remarkable experience. Something really interesting is happening with the computer. It's not something that was anticipated by the creator. It arose out of an interaction between them and their machine. And it is actually beautiful. DAVID: Absolutely. Sort of on a similar vein, there's a song called Speed of Life by Dirty South. So I really liked electronic music, but what he does is he constructs a symphony, but he goes one layer at a time. It's about eight and a half minute song and he just goes layer after layer, after layer, after layer. And what's really cool about listening to it is you appreciate the depth of a piece of music that you would never be able to appreciate if you didn't have that. And also by being able to listen to it over and over again. Because before we had recording, you would only hear a certain piece of music live and one time. And so there are new forms that are bursting out of now because we listen to songs so often. MICHAEL: It's interesting to think, there's a sort of a history to that as well. If you go back, essentially modern systems for recording music, if you go back much more than a thousand years. And we didn't really have them. There's a multi-thousand-year history of recorded music. But a lot of the early technology was lost and it wasn't until sort of I think the eighth, ninth century that people started to do it again. But we didn't get all the way to button sheet music overnight. There was a whole lot of different inventions. For instance, the early representations didn't show absolute pitch. They didn't show the duration of the note. Those were ideas that had to be invented. So in I think it was 1026, somebody introduced the idea of actually showing a scale where you can have absolute pitch. And then a century or two after that, Franco of Cologne had the idea of representing duration. And so they said like tiny little things, but then you start to think about, well, what does that mean for the ability to compose music? It means now that actually, you can start to compose pieces, which for many, many, many different instruments. So you start to get the ability to have orchestral music. So you go from being able to basically you have to kind of instruct small groups of players that's the best you can hope to do and get them to practice together and whatever. So maybe you can do something like a piece for a relatively small number of people, but it's very hard to do something for an 80 piece orchestra. Right? So all of a sudden that kind of amazing orchestral music I think becomes possible. And then, you know, we're sort of in version 2.0 of that now where of course you can lay a thousand tracks on top of one another if you want. You get ideas like micropolyphony. And these things where you look at the score and it's just incredible, there are 10,000 notes in 10 seconds. DAVID: Well, to your point I was at a tea house in Berkeley on Monday right by UC Berkeley's campus and the people next to me, they were debating the musical notes that they were looking at but not listening to the music and it was evident that they both had such a clear ability to listen to music without even listening to it, that they could write the notes together and have this discussion and it was somebody who doesn't know so much about music. It was really impressive. MICHAEL: That sounds like a very interesting conversation. DAVID: I think it was. So one thing that I'm interested in and that sort of have this dream of, is I have a lot of friends in New York who do data visualization and sort of two things parallel. I have this vision of like remember the Harry Potter book where the newspaper comes alive and it becomes like a rich dynamic medium. So I have that compared with some immersive world that you can walk through and be able to like touch and move around data and I actually think there's some cool opportunities there and whatnot. But in terms of thinking about the future of being able to visualize numbers and the way that things change and whatnot. MICHAEL: I think it's a really complicated question like it actually needs to be broken down. So one thing, for example, I think it's one of the most interesting things you can do with computers. Lots of people never really get much experience playing with models and yet it's possible to do this. Now, basically, you can start to build very simple models. The example that a lot of people do get that they didn't use to get, is spreadsheets. So, you can sort of create a spreadsheet that is a simple model of your company or some organization or a country or of whatever. And the interesting thing about the spreadsheet is really that you can play with it. And it sort of, it's reactive in this interesting way. Anybody who spends as much time with spreadsheets is they start to build up hypotheses, oh, what would happen if I changed this number over here? How would it affect my bottom line? How would it affect the GDP of the country? How would it affect this? How would it affect that? And you know, as you kind of use it, you start to introduce, you start to make your model more complicated. If you're modeling some kind of a factory yet maybe you start to say, well, what would be the effect if a carbon tax was introduced? So you introduce some new column into the spreadsheet or maybe several extra columns into the spreadsheet and you start to ask questions, well, what would the structure of the carbon tax be? What would help you know, all these sorts of what if questions. And you start very incrementally to build up models. So this experience, of course, so many people take for granted. It was not an experience that almost anybody in the world had say 20 or 30 years ago. Well, spreadsheets data about 1980 or so, but this is certainly an experience that was extremely rare prior to 1980 and it's become a relatively common, but it hasn't made its way out into mass media. We don't as part of our everyday lives or the great majority of people don't have this experience of just exploring models. And I think it's one of the most interesting things which particularly the New York Times and to some extent some of the other newsrooms have done is they've started in a small way to build these models into the news reading experience. So, in particular, the data visualization team at the New York Times, people like Amanda Cox and others have done this really interesting thing where you start to get some of these models. You might have seen, for example, in the last few elections. They've built this very interesting model showing basically if you can sort of make choices about how different states will vote. So if such and such votes for Trump, what are Hillary's chances of winning the election. And you may have seen they have this sort of amazing interactive visualization of it where you can just go through and you can sort of look at the key swing states, what happens if Pennsylvania votes for so and so what happens if Florida does? And that's an example where they've built an enormous amount of sort of pulling information into this model and then you can play with it to build up some sort of understanding. And I mean, it's a very simple example. I certainly think that you know, normatively, we're not there yet. We don't actually have a shared understanding. There's very little shared language even around these models. You think about something like a map. A map is an incredibly sophisticated object, which however we will start learning from a very young age. And so we're actually really good at parsing them. We know if somebody shows us a map, how to engage, how to interpret it, how to use it. And if somebody just came from another planet, actually they need to learn all those things. How do you represent a road? How do you represent a shop on a map? How do you represent this or that, why do we know that up is north like that's a convention. All those kinds of things actually need to be learned and we learned them when we were small. With these kinds of things which the Times and other media outlets are trying to do, we lack all of that collective knowledge and so they're having to start from scratch and I think that over a couple of generations actually, they'll start to evolve a lot of conventions and people will start to take it for granted. But in a lot of contexts actually you're not just going to be given a narrative, you know, just going to be told sort of how some columnist thinks the world is. Instead, you'll actually expect to be given some kind of a model which you can play with. You can start to ask questions and sort of run your own hypotheses in much the same way as somebody who runs a business might actually set up a spreadsheet to model their business and ask interesting questions. It's not perfect. The model is certainly that the map is not the territory as they say, but it is nonetheless a different way of engaging rather than just having some expert tell you, oh, the world is this way. DAVID: I'm interested in sort of the shift from having media be predominantly static to dynamic, which the New York Times is a perfect example. They can tell stories on Newyorktimes.com that they can't tell in the newspaper that gets delivered to your doorstep. But what's really cool about spreadsheets that you're talking about is like when I use Excel, being able to go from numbers, so then different graphs and have the exact same data set, but some ways of visualizing that data totally clicked for me and sometimes nothing happens. MICHAEL: Sure. Yeah. And we're still in the early days of that too. There's so much sort of about literacy there. And I think so much about literacy is really about opportunity. People have been complaining essentially forever that the kids of today are not literate enough. But of course, once you actually provide people with the opportunity and a good reason to want to do something, then they can become very literate very quickly. I think basically going back to the rise of social media sort of 10 or 15 years ago, so Facebook around whatever, 2006, 2007 twitter a little bit later, and then all the other platforms which have come along since. They reward being a good writer. So all of a sudden a whole lot of people who normally wouldn't have necessarily been good writers are significantly more likely to become good writers. It depends on the platform. Certainly, Facebook is a relatively visual medium. Twitter probably helps. I think twitter and text messaging probably are actually good. Certainly, you're rewarded for being able to condense an awful lot into a small period. People complain that it's not good English, whatever that is. But I think I'm more interested in whether something is a virtuosic English than I am and whether or not it's grammatically correct. People are astonishingly good at that, but the same thing needs to start to happen with these kinds of models and with data visualizations and things like that. At the moment, you know, you have this priestly caste that makes a few of them and that's an interesting thing to be able to do, but it's not really part of the everyday experience of most people. It's an interesting question whether or not that's gonna change as it going to in the province of some small group of people, or will it actually become something that people just expect to be able to do? Spreadsheets are super interesting in that regard. They actually did. I think if you've talked to somebody in 1960 and said that by 2018, tens of millions of people around the world would be building sophisticated mathematical models as just part of their everyday life. It would've seemed absolutely ludicrous. But actually, that kind of model of literacy has become relatively common. I don't know whether we'll get to 8 billion people though. I think we probably will. DAVID: So when I was in high school I went to, what I like to say is the weirdest school in the weirdest city in America. I went to the weirdest high school in San Francisco and rather than teaching us math, they had us get in groups of three and four and they had us discover everything on our own. So we would have these things called problem sets and we would do about one a week and the teacher would come around and sort of help us every now and then. But the goal was really to get three or four people to think through every single problem. And they called it discovery-based learning, which you've also talked about too. So my question to you is we're really used to learning when the map is clear and it's clear what to do and you can sort of follow a set path, but you actually do the opposite. The map is unclear and you're actually trailblazing and charting new territory. What strategies do you have to sort of sense where to move? MICHAEL: There's sort of a precursor question which is how do you maintain your morale and the Robert Pirsig book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He proposes a university subject, gumptionology 101. Gumption is almost the most important quality that we have. The ability to keep going when things don't seem very good. And mostly that's about having ways of being playful and ways of essentially not running out of ideas. Some of that is about a very interesting tension between having, being ambitious in what you'd like to achieve, but also being very willing to sort of celebrate the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest successes. Suddenly a lot of creative people I know I think really struggle with that. They might be very good at celebrating tiny successes but not have that significant ambitions, but they might be extremely ambitious, but because they're so ambitious, if an idea doesn't look Nobel prize worthy, they're not particularly interested in it. You know, they struggle with just kind of the goofing around and they often feel pretty bad because of course most days you're not at your best, you don't actually have the greatest idea. So there's some interesting tension to manage there. There's really two different types of work. One is where you have a pretty good goal, you know what success looks like, right? But you may also be doing something that's more like problem discovery where you don't even know where you're going. Typically if you're going to compose a piece of music. Well, I'm not a composer, but certainly, my understanding from, from friends who are, is that they don't necessarily start out with a very clear idea of where they're going. Some composers do, but a lot, it's a process of discovery. Actually, a publisher once told me somebody who has published a lot of well-known books that she described one of her authors as a writing for discovery. Like he didn't know what his book was going to be about, he had a bunch of kind of vague ideas and the whole point of writing the book was to actually figure out what it was that he wanted to say, what problem was he really interested in. So we'd start with some very, very good ideas and they kind of get gradually refined. And it was very interesting. I really liked his books and it was interesting to see that. They looked like they'd been very carefully planned and he really knew what he was doing and she told me that no, he'd sort of come in and chat with her and be like, well, I'm sort of interested over here. And he'd have phrases and sort of ideas. But he didn't actually have a clear plan and then he'd get through this process of several years of gradually figuring out what it was that he wanted to say. And often the most significant themes wouldn't actually emerge until relatively late in that whole process. I asked another actually quite a well-known writer, I just bumped into when he was, he was reporting a story for a major magazine and I think he'd been working, he'd been reporting for two weeks, I think at that point. So just out interviewing people and whatever. And I said, how's it going? And he said, Oh yeah, pretty good. I said, what's your story about? He said, I don't know yet, which I thought was very interesting. He had a subject, he was following a person around. But he didn't actually know what his story was. DAVID: So the analogy that I have in my head as you're talking about this, it's like sculpture, right? Where you start maybe with a big thing of granite or whatnot, and slowly but surely you're carving the stone or whatnot and you're trying to come up with a form. But so often maybe it's the little details at the end that are so far removed from that piece of stone at the very beginning that make a sculpture exceptional. MICHAEL: Indeed. And you wonder what's going on. I haven't done sculpture. I've done a lot of writing and writing often feels so sometimes I know what I want to say. Those are the easy pieces to write, but more often it's writing for discovery and there you need to be very happy celebrating tiny improvements. I mean just fixing a word needs to be an event you actually enjoy, if not, the process will be an absolute nightmare. But then there's this sort of instinct where you realize, oh, that's a phrase that A: I should really refine and B: it might actually be the key to making this whole thing work and that seems to be a very instinctive kind of a process. Something that you, if you write enough, you start to get some sense of what actually works for you in those ways. The recognition is really hard. It's very tempting to just discount yourself. Like to not notice when you have a good phrase or something like that and sort of contrary wise sometimes to hang onto your darlings too long. You have the idea that you think it's about and it's actually wrong. DAVID: Why do you write and why do you choose the medium of writing to think through things sometimes? I know that you choose other ones as well. MICHAEL: Writing has this beautiful quality that you can improve your thoughts. That's really helpful. A friend of mine who makes very popular YouTube videos about mathematics has said to me that he doesn't really feel like people are learning much mathematics from them. Instead, it's almost a form of advertising like they get some sense of what it is. They know that it's very beautiful. They get excited. All those things are very important and matter a lot to him, but he believes that only a tiny, tiny number of people are actually really understanding much detail at all. There's actually a small group who have apparently do kind of. They have a way of processing video that lets them understand. DAVID: Also, I think you probably have to, with something like math, I've been trying to learn economics online and with something like math or economics that's a bit complex and difficult, you have to go back and re-watch and re-watch, but I think that there's a human tendency to want to watch more and more and more and it's hard to learn that way. You actually have to watch things again. MICHAEL: Absolutely. Totally. And you know, I have a friend who when he listens to podcasts, if he doesn't understand something, he, he rewinds it 30 seconds. But most people just don't have that discipline. Of course, you want to keep going. So I think the written word for most people is a little bit easier if they want to do that kind of detailed understanding. It's more random access to start with. It's easier to kind of skip around and to concentrate and say, well, I didn't really get that sentence. I'm going to think about it a little bit more, or yeah, I can see what's going to happen in those two or three paragraphs. I'll just very quickly skip through them. It's more built for that kind of detailed understanding, so you're getting really two very different experiences. In the case of the video, very often really what you're getting is principally an emotional experience with some bits and pieces of understanding tacked on with the written word. Often a lot of that emotion is stripped out, which makes can make it much harder to motivate yourself. You need that sort of emotional connection to the material, but it is actually, I think a great deal easier to understand sort of the details of it. There's a real kind of choice to be to be made. There's also the fact that people just seem to respond better to videos. If you want a large audience, you're probably better off making YouTube videos than you are publishing essays. DAVID: My last question to you, as somebody who admires your pace and speed of learning and what's been really fun about preparing for this podcast and come across your work is I really do feel like I've accessed a new perspective on the world which is really cool and I get excited probably most excited when I come across thinkers who don't think like anyone who I've come across before, so I'm asking to you first of all, how do you think about your learning process and what you consume and second of all, who have been the people and the ideas that have really formed the foundation of your thought? MICHAEL: A Kurt Vonnegut quote from his book, I think it's Cat's Cradle. He says, we become what we pretend to be, so you must be careful what we pretend to be and I think there's something closely analogously true, which is that we become what we pay attention to, so we should be careful what we pay attention to and that means being fairly careful how you curate your information diet. There's a lot of things. There's a lot of mistakes I've made. Paying attention to angry people is not very good. I think ideas like the filter bubble, for example, are actually bad ideas. And for the most part, it sounds virtuous to say, oh, I'm going to pay attention to people who disagree with me politically and whatever. Well, okay, there's a certain amount of truth to that. It's a good idea probably to pay attention to the very best arguments from the very best exponents of the other different political views. So sure, seek those people out, but you don't need to seek out the random person who has a different political view from you. And that's how most people actually interpret that kind of injunction. They, they're not looking for the very best alternate points of view. So that's something you need to be careful about. There's a whole lot of things like that I enjoy. So for example, I think one person, it's interesting on twitter to look, he's, he's no longer active but he's still following people is Marc Andreessen and I think he follows, it's like 18,000 people or something and it's really interesting just to look through the list of followers because it's all over the map and much of it I wouldn't find interesting at all, but you'll find the strangest corners people in sort of remote villages in India and people doing really interesting things in South Africa. Okay. So he's a venture capitalist but they're not connected to venture capital at all. So many of them, they're just doing interesting things all over the world and I wouldn't advocate doing the same thing. You kind of need to cultivate your own tastes and your own interests. But there's something very interesting about that sort of capitalist city of interests and curiosity about the world, which I think is probably very good for almost anybody to cultivate. I haven't really answered your question. DAVID: I do want to ask who were the people or the ideas or the areas of the world that have really shaped and inspired your thinking because I'm asking selfishly because I want to go down those rabbit holes. MICHAEL: Alright. A couple of people, Alan Kay and Doug Engelbart, who are two of the people who really developed the idea of what a computer might be. In the 1950's and 60's, people mostly thought computers were machines for solving mathematical problems, predicting the weather next week, computing artillery tables, doing these kinds of things. And they understood that actually there could be devices which humans would use for themselves to solve their own problems. That would be sort of almost personal prosthetics for the mind. They'd be new media. We could use to think with and a lot of their best ideas I think out there, there's still this kind of vision for the future. And if you look particularly at some of Alan Kay's talks, there's still a lot of interesting ideas there. DAVID: That the perspective is worth 80 IQ points. That's still true. MICHAEL: For example, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, right? He's actually, he's got a real gift for coming up with piddly little things, but there's also quite deep ideas. They're not two-year projects or five-year projects, they're thousand year projects or an entire civilization. And we're just getting started on them. I think that's true. Actually. It's in general, maybe that's an interesting variation question, which is, you know, what are the thousand year projects? A friend of mine, Cal Schroeder, who's a science fiction writer, has this term, The Project, which he uses to organize some of his thinking about science fictional civilizations. So The Project is whatever a civilization is currently doing, which possibly no member of the civilization is even aware of. So you might ask the question, what was the project for our planet in the 20th century? I think one plausible answer might be, for example, it was actually eliminating infectious diseases. You think about things like polio and smallpox and so many of these diseases were huge things at the start of the 20th century and they become much, much smaller by the end of the 20th century. Obviously AIDS is this terrible disease, but in fact, by historical comparison, even something like the Spanish flu, it's actually relatively small. I think it's several hundred million people it may have killed. Maybe that was actually the project for human civilization in the 20th century. I think it's interesting to think about those kinds of questions and sort of the, you know, where are the people who are sort of most connected to those? So I certainly think Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay. DAVID: Talk about Doug Engelbart, I know nothing about him. MICHAEL: So Engelbart is the person who I think more than anybody invented modern computing. He did this famous demo in 1968, 1969. It's often called the mother of all demos, in front of an audience of a thousand people I believe. Quite a while since I've watched it and it demonstrates a windowing system and what looks like a modern word processor, but it's not just a word processor. They're actually hooked up remotely to a person in another location and they're actually collaborating in real time. And it's the first public showing I believe of the mouse and of all these different sorts of ideas. And you look at other images of computers at the time and they're these giant machines with tapes and whatever. And here's this vision that looks a lot more like sort of Microsoft Windows and a than anything else. And it's got all these things like real-time collaboration between people in different locations that we really didn't have at scale until relatively recently. And he lays out a huge fraction of these ideas in 1962 in a paper he wrote then. But that paper is another one of these huge things. He's asking questions that you don't answer over two years or five years. You answer over a thousand years. I think it's Augmenting Human Intellect is the title of that paper. So he's certainly somebody else that I think is a very interesting thinker. There's something really interesting about the ability to ask an enormous question, but then actually to have other questions at every scale. So you know what to do in the next 10 minutes that will move you a little bit towar

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast | Click Here to Keep Up with the North Star Podcast Our guest this week is Kevin Kwok and this episode is a special treat. Kevin was an investor at Greylock Partners, where he mainly focused on marketplaces, cryptocurrencies, and autonomous vehicles. Kevin is particularly interested in understanding the underlying structures that shape industries and the core loops that drive companies. And among other things is currently working on a class on loops, network effects, and growth models. In this wide-ranging conversation, Kevin and I jump between various topics such as A/B testing cities in China, Saudi Arabia and the future of democracy, and why we have democracies in countries and dictators in companies.  Then, Kevin distills lessons from five extremely long biographies — four of them about US President Lyndon B. Johnson and one of them about Robert Moses, the “master builder” of New York City. Drawing on those Caro biographies, Kevin talks about power, where it originates, and how to think about systems. Kevin has an in-depth knowledge of political history, governments, technology and growing a company in the internet age. Today, we’ll weave all of those threads together. Links Kevin on Twitter Kevin’s Website The Power Broker, Robert Caro Lyndon B. Johnson Biographies, Robert Caro Time Stamps 1:27 Kevin talks about Robert Caro and his biographies on Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson 3:08 How systems are the underlying reason for power in governments and companies 6:49 Kevin’s observations on the significant similarities between governments, religions and companies  10:27 Kevin defines his theory of loops and how they are a pattern that can be seen in the most successful businesses 14:03 Kevin’s observation on how successful governments and businesses use loops to scale 17:34 The two ways Kevin sees legibility, why it’s so important in creating synchronization  between founders and employees, and how it’s the reason for Uber’s success 22:32 Kevin’s fascinations with Stripe’s thoughtful leaders and their transparency in growing the company 28:26 Why the outcome of loops is a leverage effect and how leverage can remove constraints and compound systems for more gain and less effort 34:49 Kevin talks about China’s goal to urbanize more of its country through A/B testing and his opinion on the pros and cons of their strategy 40:35 A brief history of Saudi Arabia, and its implications about whether democracy is declining. 46:25 Kevin’s opinion on the future of currency and how cryptocurrency is reshaping markets and their functions 51:32 Kevin talks about how infrastructure shapes how residents interact with their cities and the underlying problems that can arise 57:44 Kevin’s take on the new trend of contrarianism, how we’ve seen this pattern before and how to be most effective with a contrarian view 1:00:20 How Steve Jobs was a perfect example of contrarianism followed by impact 1:01:58 Kevin talks about his current focus on loops and his hope that humans continue pushing and testing this frontier Quotes “It’s too easy to see what other people are doing. It’s so easy to raise capital if you can paint a compelling case for why there’s a good return. The best companies are companies that have these internal compounding proprietary advantages that get better and are impossible for anybody else to do other than them. That’s what I mean by loops. There’s different ways this can look. For example, network events as people come and talk about them is an example of a loop. The value of the user increases as more people join the network and that’s an internal loop that other people, who don’t have your network and don’t have your users, can’t benefit from.” “People try to figure out how to build these systems that are independent from their hours put in. Fundamentally, your scarce resource is your hours. There’s just some finite cap and the level of productivity you can get. You can get more productive but there’s a finite cap to how much more productive you can get on your hours. As long as your output is contrast by your hours, there always is some cap to it. The question is, how do you get increased leverage on that and, how do you keep increasing the leverage on that at some point? Ultimately, capital is actually less of a constraint if you have a working business model than just the cognitive load and your ability to actively work on different things.” “Think about how much has been shaped structurally, without even realizing it, by the decisions that were made by people crafting the Internet standards. All of those decisions people made have had huge downstream impacts on every layer that has been built on top of them. I don’t think we regret that. I think that we look at it and we say, let’s make sure we do all of the good things there. Let’s also think about the mistakes we’ve made as we create other industries, whether that’s the current waves of finance, or the current waves of tech, or whatever. When you’re in these nascent periods of new industries, how do we make sure that we help the people who we trust to be making those decisions be there at the end.” “I think that a lot of people talk about contrarianism as being against the grain, and having views that other people disagree with. Of course, the challenge is the decision of, ‘I have this view that people disagree with. Is that actually a good view or a view that people disagree with because it’s a bad view?’ Similarly, it’s hard to judge the people around you because it could be that you have a view that is mainstream in your community, but it’s actually a contrarian view in the larger view of people. My view of contrarianism is that the important part isn’t in having this view that everybody else disagrees with. The important part is bringing it to everyone else, taking that view and causing it to become non-contrarian.” “The people we should be most excited about that have contrarian views are the people who don’t just have them, they then go make sure that those views stop being contrarian and we all believe them. In fact, it’s the people who we look back and say, was that even that contrarian of a view? Actually, we all believe it. And I think that there is too much of a focus on the standing apart and being the one with the unique insight versus the part which is, ‘how do you educate everybody else and bring that back into the mainstream consciousness?’. That is a lot of work and proves that what you were thinking about was actually valuable and important. That’s the part of it that I wish was more focused on, not the part where you just feel hipster.” TRANSCRIPT DAVID: Kevin Kwok, welcome to the North Star. KEVON: Thanks for having me. DAVID: So you absolutely loved Caro biographies and I thought that would be a fun place to begin this podcast. KEVON: I'm glad I get to do my paid advertisement for Caro now. So Robert Caro has written five biographies right now, one of which is on Robert Moses who is kind of the person who built all of New York City. And then the other four are kind of four biographies of Lyndon Johnson who is probably everyone's least interesting president when they don't know about him. And then after reading the biographies, he’s by far the most interesting I think. The craziest thing about the biographies is that they are extremely long and so they're just these huge tomes that if you try to get someone to read, nobody will because they kind of look at it and then they are like, I would much rather go and read 10 books instead of reading one of those. And so it's super hard to get people to start with it. And Caro has certainly done himself no favors on that, but they're just the best books I think about understanding power, where it originates, structuralism, and how you think about the kinds of systems and people who understand how to figure them out and make them work for good or for bad. Which both, I think, you know, Moses in New York, then Lyndon Johnson and the Senate, and then the White House are both kind of the peak examples. DAVID: What is it about power that interests you so much? And is there a story that you can tell from one of the biographies that illuminates your interest in power? KEVON: Yeah, for sure. I think power is less the thing that interests me about the biographies as much as understanding systems. For most people, it's hard to understand the companies they work at or how the government functions or why New York grows and the way that it grows is something that feels too complex to kind of be legible and be understood. But then you look at, you know, someone who does it and you don't understand why they're able to do it. And unpacking that I think is just super useful to get people down the road of saying, wait, actually how do all of these systems work? And can I figure out the kind of thing in either the company I work at to make it work better or in the kind of why the government operates in the way it does. And so to give you one example though, we could go on for infinite examples on this. I think if you look at Senate history, there really wasn't, you know, we now look at the Senate as kind of this dysfunctional organization that doesn't really ever produce meaningful bills, has a large impact. Uh, and that's not actually a recent phenomenon. I think that in general is actually how the Senate has always operated. But there's this brief period when Lyndon Johnson enters the Senate and then becomes majority leader where the just sheer volume of important bills that pass is ridiculous. Like most of the progressive bills we now look at whether that's kind of !medicare related or whether that's a punch of the public works or whether that's the civil rights act, all are kind of ones that Lyndon Johnson shepherded through and shepherded it through at a time where the southern senators had tremendous amounts of power. And where they were not interested in civil rights or anything like this kind of being passed through. And so a lot of it is kind of him going into this sub 100 person organization understanding at both the kind of personal level, but also kind of where there a centralization of power, whether that was how to raise money better and funnel that to government. Whether that was how to set up the subcommittees that actually had the organizational power and had the kind of power to shape what moved down the pipeline of bills or whether that was kind of setting up a structure where he decided had people in all of the subcommittees and helped both expedite bills. And eventually, people went to him to kind of make sure that their bills will get passed. But then that also gave him a tremendous amount of insight and knowledge and control what bills were getting passed and having leveraged with all the other senators. And so I think, you look at a bunch of those examples and then they're not dissimilar from how we look at companies now, right? Or how we look at any type of organization now of where are the natural places, where the constraints on the system are and where are the places where power resides and I think Lyndon Johnson certainly did not always do things for the greater good. He did things for his own personal power which sometimes was aligned with the greater good but oftentimes was not. And I think the interesting thing is how do you understand those systems? And then how do you hopefully have people who care about building good things out of those systems, understand them and use them. DAVID: Building off of that, even in that answer, you talked about companies, you talked about government and you strike me as somebody who looks at models and frameworks that sort of may be representing a lot of different domains with the world. How do you think about that? KEVON: Yeah. The thing that always strikes me about organizations is that whether you look at governments or religions or companies, all of them are kind of topologically equivalent. Like they're all kind of the same thing. There are organizations of people that have some set of rules for who's in the group. Some set of rules for how the group makes decisions and come to a consensus, some sort of rules for how they allocate resources and all of these things. And so you can look at them on a bunch of different factors and they vary right, for example, you looked at a lot of companies and companies kind of allow both the company and the employee to unilaterally decide if they want to be part of the company. Whereas governments, for example, kind of have this rule that says, hey, as long as you don't commit treason, if you're a citizen, you're a citizen. And so they vary on different things. But actually, once you account for that, at similar orders of magnitude they're very similar. And so I think as an example, one thing I think about a lot with companies is are companies today are more similar to a companies a thousand years ago or are they more similar to city states a thousand years ago and what are then the lessons you can draw if you look at all the different things that are similar in some regard but different in others that you looked at and say, hey, you can actually learn some interesting lessons about how religions organize and structure themselves for crypto projects. Are there lessons for how the Senate operates for decisions within companies or things like that. DAVID: So how do you think about balancing the similarities between different structures but also the reality that as things grow and scale, begins to change the properties of something. Right? Because you could see similarities between different companies for example. But also there's an inherent tension between growth and wanting to sort of rest on those models, but things change as they scale. KEVON: Yeah. That's, that's a great question. I think the thing that always confuses people is that as their companies grow or as any organization grows by an order of magnitude on any dimension, whether that is customers or employees or a number of purchases or anything, it's just a fundamentally different company and a different system. And the things that you've built and the processes you have that work great when you're 10 people, stop working when you're 100 people and definitely don't work when you're 100,000 people. And so a part of it is that you have to be comfortable saying, how do I understand that even just being successful at the same thing, we are successful, that will by definition obsolete our competence at it because it will grow by order of magnitude and will be fundamentally different. And how do you understand what are those ecosystems and loops that you have? And you know, as they get to a new scale, how they change and what they need to transition to and what that looks like, that might be very different. DAVID: So we were at dinner about a month ago and we were talking about loops and you have some really interesting ideas in terms of the relationship between loops, sales, network effects, maybe even careers. So just gonna let you run with that. KEVON: Yeah. It's funny because I feel like I talk about loops with a bunch of people or on !twitter. And then I realized that everyone just asked me what loops are and I don't have a great explanation because I feel like it's not discussed super often. I think to kind of start from the beginning of it. I think one of the things that I've thought about a lot is if the two of us were going to start a company a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, the best way to start a successful company would be to get the government to give us exclusive trade routes between the US and India and guarantee that anyone else using those routes, the military or the navy would go stop them. And you could build a hugely successful business there. And then in the 1800s or 1900s, the best way to do it would be to find some area, maybe a natural resource or building railroads or something like that and go build this business that is economy of scale after you have a bunch of proprietary relationships. And it'd be hard for people to both copy that or raise the capital to compete with it. But now you look at the most successful companies and certainly the tech companies and it's too easy to see what other people are doing. It's so easy to raise capital if you can paint a compelling case for why there's a good return on it. And so the best companies are companies that have these internal compounding proprietary advantages that get better and are impossible for anyone else to do other than them. And I think that's what I mean by loops and there are lots of different ways that can look. For example, I think that, you know, network effects as people commonly talk about them, are an example of a loop where the kind of value to the user increases as more people join the network and that's an internal loop that other people who don't have your network and don't have your users can't benefit from even if they know that it's true. But I think that network effects are one subset, but there are lots of them and they're all over companies. And actually the interesting way to think about companies or sectors or any of these ecosystems is kind of the loops around them and what is compounding and not only what is compounding but what's constraining them, because when you look at something that's a loop the and keeps compounding, the thing that hurts it the most is wherever it is most constrained and is dropping off, right? So I think that both for individuals and for companies, we don't currently track things like this. In fact, many of our metrics today are more geared around either funnels or other types of ways of looking at companies. But really as you think about how do you build companies and understand the sequencing of what compounds and why does it keep getting bigger. It's all about what are the loops you have and how do you strengthen them? And then what are the constraints on them and how do you remove those frictions, right? Whether that's financial capital or social capital or knowledge or having more employees or whatever it is. DAVID: What changed about the world that made loops super relevant? KEVON: It's a good question. I think that loops were always relevant, but the thing is the less data and iterations and the less at bats you have the less loops matter because if you look at an enterprise company and you know they need to land the government and they land the government and they're a public company and that's the entire business. Then you know, these loops don't really matter. What matters is, can you build a great relationship with the buyer at the whatever department in the government and can you get them on board, but then you look at the other extreme and you look at consumer marketplaces and it's not enough to say, I got dinner with that one buyer and they bought $25 thing on my website and now I'm golden. You have to say, hey, can I get 10 million people to go do that? And it's just not possible for me to hand go to them and get to know them personally. I have to build a system that aligns them with me and causes them to engage with me and then retain and then keep buying and then be happy and then keep spreading the word to other people. And so the more we have things that have greater amounts of data or customers, the more we have things where you have more interactions with the customers, the more that you have things where you can't just have the government dictate that you win or have one or two people decide who's the winner in the market. The more we get to a world where you have to build these internal systems that compound. And I think that's why we're still in the early days of it. I think we'll look back in 10, 20 years and a lot of how we track things in companies, a lot of how we look at things will have shifted towards this because one model of companies or model of venture I look at is at one end of the extreme is enterprise sales where it is more knowable, what makes a company successful and which people could start a successful company and who are the customers. And then on the other side is consumer social or consumer marketplaces where even for the best investors, it's super hard to predict which one will figure out the loop and get traction with customers. But you know, the whole point of tech as an industry and venture as an industry to some degree is taking these things that are not yet understood about how we should think about metrics or how we should think about company building or loops and then making it understood and benefiting from that. But hopefully, the things that are the frontier of our understanding today about company building, in 20 years, kids in college, will just look at you like you're dumb for even thinking that that was ever not understood in the same way that we look back at companies 20 years ago and we say, you know, of course. I think that exactly like that, you go back enough years, it wasn't in the mainstream consciousness about how to think about that. Now it's almost overused, right? Everyone kind of knows that's how they should think about that. And I think the question is how do you keep pushing all of these views that are usable and useful of how to think about companies or just how to think about any system forward collectively. Right? DAVID: And on that theme of pushing forward and pushing to the frontier where we were talking a bit about pushing the frontier of legibility. Can you do a quick background on legibility and illegibility and talk about what you mean by pushing the frontier of legibility? KEVON: Yeah, for sure. So I think that there are two ways I think about legibility, which I'll go into. I think the first is that legibility in companies, which I view as kind of two things I've been kind of thinking about are legibility and synchronicity and companies. And so I think legibility to me and companies is, does each person at a company understand why the company works the way it does and what's important to the company and what are the loops that matter to the company? And I think that's super important because a lot of times people do their job well and then the company or their manager or whoever kills the project and they don't understand why and they don't understand why even though they did the thing that they were told to do, it didn't fit into the larger system of what the company wanted. And the same is true for founders. You know, a lot of times founders have to figure out legibility of the market, right? And understanding where they fit into that. And I think that it's hard to measure and we don't really measure this but it's interesting to me to what degree does each person within a company understand the loops and the rest of the company so that they always know how they should kind of act and the things they should do that are most beneficial for the company. I think if you think about legibility as kind of everyone at the company trying to understand the company, synchronicity is kind of the flip of that, which is if you're the founder of a company, what is your ability to have everyone at the company synchronized with the things you want and on the same page and of kind of how you think about it and what actions are important and working towards those. And I think that these are the kind of the two feedback loops in both directions within companies that are their own system and loop, right. That when you have it really well, it's just significantly more productive and for better or worse. For example, I think that Uber had tremendous synchronicity, more so than many, many companies and it allowed them to act with super distributed teams in every city. DAVID: Almost a balance of their central headquarters, but also the local units that would go into every city, work with local government, understand the local dynamics of the market and they had good synchronicity between the two. KEVON: Exactly. You need the legibility of understanding what is actually what should be different for each market and having the teams on the ground there, but then you also need them to understand kind of what is actually the most important things that Uber as an entity cares about. Right. And those are things like liquidity and having a driver available within x minutes from anytime you call or having pricing that looks within a certain range and these kinds of metrics that you need to have kind of synchronicity across all of the groups on. I think that also is just as we talked about with Caro, I think that goes in both the benefits and the cons, right? Because it also means that if you have issues, those can get synchronized across the entire companies too. But I think that one thing that Silicon Valley has done significantly better than many other industries is how to think about the internal structure of organization and how do you actually get leveraged. So instead of just adding more and more humans and hoping that it works well, but inevitably kind of falling over because it becomes harder and harder to coordinate. How do you actually figure out these systems so that you can coordinate people both on the team, or a lot of marketplaces if you look at Uber, Airbnb for example, I think that they don't have direct control over the hosts or the drivers, but they still need to have synchronicity and legibility with them of figuring out how to coordinate with them and have them act in ways that are beneficial for both them and the platform. And that's even tougher when you don't have direct control because they're your employees. All of the tech companies have been figuring out a lot of advancements in how do we think about company structure and you look at how Amazon or Stripe or all these companies very intentionally think about it and you know, there's a lot of mistakes made, but it also is kind of pushing forward a bunch of this, right? DAVID: Talk about Stripe, I'm really interested in stripe and I think that in terms of its impact on the world, it's very under-covered and definitely understudied. KEVON: Yeah, absolutely. I certainly think that there are many people who know Stripe much better than me and I definitely don't know all the details of it. But I think there are a few things that are fascinating about Stripe. I think certainly one of them from a company organization standpoint is that the Collison brothers, even from afar, are just very clearly thoughtful leaders who are consciously thinking about knowledge. It's baffling to me given the demands of their jobs, how they have the cognitive time and any of the ability to spend the amount of time they do just soaking up knowledge and thinking about how to kind of structure their company better and structure or their system better. But you just look at them and they're super intentional about it. Right? And I think that whether that's the internal tooling they built out for kind of improving communications internally, which they've blogged a bit about or whether that's kind of how they think about the emails being open and shared and having a default to that so that people can have as much information as possible. Whether that's just kind of seeking out the best practices from other companies and always kind of trying to figure out how to improve. I think that one thing you look at is that people talk about A players and B players and C players and companies and there's always the adage of kind of you want people who are not afraid to hire the best people to join them versus afraid that people will kind of replace them. But I actually think there's another accede to that, which is how much do you bias towards people who will build things in the same way that they have been built versus people who will rethink how to build these systems. And don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of times the best practices that have been established are great and so in a lot of places you do want to hire the person who has built out with VP sales at the company that was the last generation of what you're building and can immediately bring you to all of those best practices. And so that's kind of one accede to me. And then there's another accede which is, are people willing to look at kind of the situation of your company in particular and say, hey, actually should we rethink how it's done and would it be more beneficial or should we obsolete this business unit entirely and would that actually be beneficial? And then am I not afraid to do that. And I think the harsh truth is that most companies, getting to the best practices is kind of a baseline requirement. And if you can't do that at some speed, you don't really earn the right. You just don't have the time or the money or the ability to experiment with new models that might not work. And the payoff could be much higher, but you might not find out whether it worked or not for a while. Then you look at companies like Stripe that kind of do operate at a great level, and then still are able to find the time and say, hey, actually we should still rethink these systems and figure out if there are ways to build it better. And that's how you build very special companies. Because I think that as an example if you look at marketplaces and you look at Uber, it wasn't common knowledge to think about network effects at a local level when Uber started and when Lyft started, people didn't do city teams in the same way. They kind of launched nationally and both of those companies kind of really pioneered, at least for the mainstream consciousness, this idea that actually it might be advantageous to launch city teams because there might be these loops that are better done at the city level versus at the national level. Now, you look after Uber and Lyft and there were so many marketplaces that all kind of created city teams and launched. Actually, it's not obvious that was always beneficial. I think you look at a lot of these teams and they kind of copied this new norm that kind of became standard instead of also thinking for their sectors, hey, actually if you looked at it, what is the correct scope of my network effect and what's the best area, whether that's the city level or the state level or just the local neighborhood or even one block and saying what actually makes the most sense. And so for example, if you look at the scooter companies that are popping up everywhere in the US and whether they'll be successful or not, what's fascinating is that their natural zone is not quite cities. They work much better on the Venice boardwalk. Then they work in the middle of some suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles. DAVID: Wouldn't work in Houston. KEVON: Right, right. So the question is if you look at that, how do you figure out how you deploy the people in your organization, how do you think about the metrics and what scope you should be tracking them and how do you think about what are those loops and what is the natural scope of them so that you can best build the business and have it compound. And I think that, you look at companies that are just super thoughtful about it and it's incredible and you know, part of the challenge is, how do you find people who have that bias, but also how do you have a cadence of shipping and progress that is fast enough that you know, have the time and ability to spend those resources thinking about it. DAVID: It seems like leverage, is sort of the outcome of loops. So loops keep spinning. Perhaps as the network effect grows, they spin faster and faster and over time you're building leverage. And that's something I think about in terms of building a career. I've been thinking about maybe we're moving from a world of career ladders to actually spinning different loops and going where which ones are spinning faster and faster, and then that's where we direct our attention. So how would you think about this in terms of a personal career? KEVON: Yeah, a few things on that. So the first is, I think the way I've thought about careers, which I think is very much to your point, is there is compounding and unconstraining. And so I think unconstraining is that the reality is most of us, probably all of us are constrained on different things. In fact, most people think that money is the constraint because for most people money is the constraint, right? And if you're living paycheck to paycheck, money is the thing that is kind of constraining your ability to decide what you want to do and to pursue or to optimize for the long-term or all sorts of decisions. And then for a bunch of us, not that money is not a constraint to some degree, but then you get passed some point where you're worried about paying rent or paying for food and money becomes less the constraint. And then there are other things that might be the constraints such as knowledge and learning about things or who you know or all sorts of other areas. And so I think one way I look at it is that you should always have a view of what are the constraints on you. And that's kind of you as a loop, right? What are the constraints that are kind of blocking you? And if they were unconstrained you would act meaningfully different and you would feel like you had more autonomy to decide what you wanted to do. And then I think the second half of that is compounding. And so how do you build out these loops and how do you build out loops that actually have the ability to compound for you? So for that, I think there are two ways I look at it. One way is for you doing whatever you like, whether that's your podcast or whether that's your business, how do you build it so that you doing it today versus you doing it a year from now, it's better, easier, higher quality, lower costs, all of these good attributes a year from now versus today because otherwise it's kind of, there's been no progress. Right? And it's kind of finitely limited. DAVID: It's like the red queen effect of always trying to spin faster and faster. One thing I'm always thinking about is how do I build leverage so that I can achieve, it sounds obvious, but the goal is how to achieve more without running faster and faster and that sort of by building that leverage so that once something comes, you can just automate or have the connections to see something and make it happen. KEVON: For sure. The red queen effect is a good way to put it because I think that the natural state of most things in the world is default and tropic and so the natural state of things is that, you find a successful business, competitors will see that and come to challenge it that the things that you've been doing eventually they will degrade slightly over time. And so that's why it's important to find the things that are naturally compounding because actually, the default is that things will naturally kind of revert to the mean. Right? And so you have to find these areas that compound, whether that's on your time or whether that's building out systems around you that kind of will help scale up your work, whether that's with people or with the kind of products you build because otherwise the natural status for them to kind of all revert to the mean. DAVID: It was funny, we were with some friends last week. I was in Austin and we were talking about the spectrum of typers to tappers and typers are hardcore workers, hands-on-keyboard people and they are the workers of an organization. They generally have less leverage, but then my buddy, he was with the CEO of a sixty-billion-dollar of a Japanese firm and he said that his biggest insight from spending a bit of time with him was that he was a tapper and that he had so much leverage on his time that his career could all be done by tapping on a smartphone screen. And the fundamental insight was that he's not doing work. Rather he's directing the flow of a gushing river and he's directing the flow of water. KEVON: Yeah. That's interesting. I think that there's a lot of truth to that. There's also, not to take away from the former, there's a lot of just how does work get done? Right. And the reason I think eventually people will think about how to build these systems that are independent from their hours put in is that fundamentally your scarce resource is your hours. And so there's just some finite cap and the level of productivity you can get more productive, but there was a finite cap to how much more productive you can get on your hours. And so as long as your output is constrained by your hours, there always is kind of some cap to it. And so the question is how do you get increased leverage on that? Right? And how do you keep increasing the leverage on that at some point because ultimately capital is actually less of a constraint if you have a working business model than just the kind of, not even hours, but just your cognitive load, right? And your ability to how many things you can really kind of keeping your mind and be actively working on. And so I think everyone eventually either intuitively struggles with it or tries to explicitly build out these systems of how do I build systems around me or my company so that I can kind of get more leverage on this and be able to keep scaling it up without it being affected by the fact that I only have x hours to work per day even if I cut into my sleep. DAVID: Gonna change directions here. I think both of us are pretty interested in cities. And personally, I'm fascinated by city-states. Actually, one of the things sort of on my long-term bucket list is I'd really like to travel to Singapore and Hong Kong to Dubai and compare and contrast the different city-states from culture to economics to politics. And I know you've talked a lot about city-states, but also from sort of an A, B test perspective. What do you mean by that? KEVON: Yeah, so I think one of the areas on cities, and this is specific to China. When I was talking about this in good ways and bad ways, I think that China seems to A, B test cities in the same way that companies in the US A, B test features. And look, there's a lot of bad about that too, right? I mean, I think that when you A, B test cities, whichever is the B test that did not work out that well has a lot of people's lives affected. On the other side though, it means that they're integrating a bunch on experimenting with how should you structure cities and how do you improve cities the most? And so I think that if you look at China right now and I think China's plan is to urbanize more people in the next few decades in China than people who live in the United States. And if you think that the, the best way to improve human well-being is actually urbanization, which I think a lot of the data points to, of all the network effects of cities. Then it makes a lot of sense, but it also is a insanely daunting thing to say, how do I intentionally manufacture over 300 million people moving into cities that do not exist today. I think that when you think about that challenge and how, how you build that, it's a lot of different experiments that they've done on a scope that in a lot of other countries we don't do for better or worse. And you contrast that to a lot of the debates people have in San Francisco on housing policy for example. It's just a much higher both centralization of power and bias to action, which has a lot of downsides but also has a lot of upsides. And so I think the contrast to that to me is if you look at democracies, I think that one of the, kind of weak points of democracies, the one that people commonly talk about is majority rule. I think that's discussed a lot and because it's discussed a lot of people think about how to mitigate it a bunch, which is good. I think that one of the less commonly discussed ones is that democracies don't represent future stakeholders. And so democracies are greater representing all of us who are around today, but they don't represent the people who will be affected 10 years from now by our decisions or 50 years from our decisions because they don't vote. Sometimes they're not alive. And the way in governments we deal with this is that for the most part, we think that the people today it's their children who will be the future stakeholders. And so it's okay because they'll kind of think about the interests of their children. So even then, if you look at a lot of how we make funding decisions for a lot of government institutions, we don't seem to account for kind of how it's handled down the road. But when you look at a lot of the areas that there's a lot of disagreement on such as housing policy or immigration or areas like this, I think that a lot of the problems come down to the fact that a lot of the people who care about those decisions are not part of the process of deciding those decisions. And so it's not the immigrants, it's not the future citizens who are currently living in other countries who get to weigh in on what immigration policy should be and it's not the people who don't live in San Francisco but would live in San Francisco if housing was cheap enough, who'd get to weigh in on that. And that creates this misaligned incentives where people aren't being irrational. They're actually representing their interests. Right? And you know, people who own houses should want their houses to increase in value. People who live in a country, at least some set of them would not want other people to come in. And I think that in so far as you think that those kinds of things are important. There is a question which is how do we kind of fix these issues or mitigate these issues in our democracies so that we do represent these stakeholders and I think historically two ways we've done is we've either said, hey, here's why it obviously is economically beneficial even for the people who are already there to have San Francisco grow in size and more people move here and grow the economy or another way we've done it as we've had cultural norms or we've said, hey, you know, America is built on this norm of being built by immigrants and welcoming immigrants. And I think both of those and other strategies are powerful, but both of those seem to be weakening. And as they weaken, then the question is how do you make sure, as long as you think these are good things for cities to have, how do we get these benefits? So without the downside so that we can get the benefits that countries like China have with kind of growing their cities without the downsides of kind of totalitarian rule or pollution or a bunch of centralized control that's not representing the interests of the people. Right. DAVID: So we've talked about America, we've talked about China, but I see that you're really interested in Saudi Arabia. Why? KEVON: Yeah, yeah. I feel like over the last few years, certainly there's a handful of countries that I feel like I've just personally and certainly for no professional interests, spent a lot of time thinking about and researching and Saudi Arabia is one of them. I think Saudi Arabia is fascinating right now because it kind of hits on a lot of trends that are happening in the world right now. And so for example, one trend is that Saudi Arabia is this fascinating country where, people, most people don't quite know what to make of it. It sort of is, you see a lot of reports and you say on one hand it looks like they're cracking down on corruption or improving women's rights or opening up to foreign investment. And then, on the other hand, you also look at it and you say it looks like it's centralizing power and becoming less democratic. Not that it was entirely democratic at all ever, but it's becoming even more centralized in power and actually trending towards kind of a dictatorship and cracking down and imprisoning political enemies. And so you look at these two sides and I think it's hard for a lot of people to weigh what's happening. But I think, you dig into it a bunch and what's happening kind of also then explains a bunch of kind of structurally what's been happening in the Middle East. And so one example is over the last five, 10 years, MBS, who is the current ruler, has kind of been involved in a tremendously done coup of the other royal families in Saudi Arabia. And you look at that and one part of it is a lot of the conflicts in the Middle East, a bunch of them can be traced back to the fact that MBS was kind of in command of the external facing parts of Saudi Arabia. Whereas the other sides of this internal coup were in charge of the internal facing government organizations. And so having a bunch of conflicts happen in the Middle East actually make it more important to centralize power with the external facing side of this government. And helped him gather power, build relationships with the military, cement those relationships as he then went to kind of cement his power in the throne. A lot of the movements on both liberalizing externally but solidifying rule internally or are very interconnected, right? And you need to have the external allies aligned with you as you kind of deal with a bunch of the internal conflicts. And then finally, I think that it also is just an interesting data point on this trend where I think a lot of us, if you think about the core things that you believe in and if at the top of that heap of things that you believe in but don't hold very strongly is kind of what's your favorite breakfast food. And then at the bottom of that heap is your belief in maybe for some people democracy or their religion or free speech or whatever areas they care most about. I think that one of the questions we're dealing with today is, is there a reason democracy is structurally trending away as the dominant form of government? Because if you look around the world empirically and Saudi Arabia, China included are good examples of this. It feels like there was a time years ago where it felt like the world was getting more democratic. It actually feels like the world is getting less democratic now. And there was a question of why that's happening. You know, for example, I think one reason you might say it's happening is that it's actually becoming more possible for countries to understand the needs and what is going on at a local level in their countries. And you look at China for example, and you go back a thousand years in China. It was impossible for people in the central government to truly coordinate with all of the local provinces at any reasonable time-frame. And so there's just a natural decentralization that happens there where you need. We're even if we say it's under one ruler, you have to let local officials decide things because it'll take eight weeks to hear word back for any decision. Whereas you look at China now and because of all of the information technology that has been created and because of all of these things, it's more possible than ever for a government to understand what's going on and all of the local provinces and in the best form of that say, hey, actually what are the things they want and what are the things they need? And so it's become easier and easier for centralized authoritarian governments to both control, but also provide for and understand what they should provide for, of people around their countries. And that has made democracy seem to trend downward, which I think for a lot of us as a pretty frightening thing, but it's a thing that I think you should always assess whether the thing that you don't want to happen. Is it a temporary blip that it's fading away or is there some structural reason? And if so, how do you either try to mitigate that or how does that influence your views on it? DAVID: My question to you is sort of a meta question, but there is this sort of this spectrum from people in crypto land who say this time is different, things will never be the same to people often in finance. A lot of the literature is, this is just a cycle, we go in cycles of the market is going well, the market drops, the market goes well, the market drops. How would you think about the words this time is different in terms of something like government and democracy? KEVON: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that also in the crypto point, I think that that is also a super fascinating question because, on the crypto side, I think that it's exactly as you say, right? People who are involved in crypto say well we reshape a bunch of the markets of how things function. This will be fundamentally different. And then people in both tech and finance say, actually, there may be some changes, but it will kind of reconverge back on the same thing. And to some degree, I think both are correct. I think that the way things work is you can change a lot of things. Now eventually people will recentralize as they figure out where are the dominant places to centralize power within these ecosystems. And so we don't yet know where that is in crypto. I think eventually people will figure those out. But to the point, and part of the reason I think a lot of people, myself included, are interested in crypto right now is that the decisions made in this kind of formative early part of these industries. If you think these industries will become important, which I think we don't know if certainty, but there is a decent likelihood that crypto could, a lot of decisions made. Whether consciously or unconsciously in the kind of days where this is kind of still wet clay end up having huge downstream effects. So for example, if you look at privacy norms in the US, I think that a lot of decisions that were made by both the CEOs of companies like Facebook or Snapchat or other companies that are at the forefront of kind of both the communication mediums that people use for this as well as kind of a video recording or other areas, the decisions they made and the people who influenced them kind of had an outsized impacts on social norms around those areas. Now, not to say that the government doesn't help get involved in it and not to say that the people don't, you know, in some ways regulate and socially regulate their decisions, but they have a lot of impact. And so if you care about those impacts, then what's important is kind of being in zone of those decisions and how those decisions are made or being able to impact the people making those decisions so that they do think about the consequences of them and they think about what the downstream impacts are and you look at the Internet today and the, there's many volumes of kind of debates that were had on internet standards and for the most part, we don't remember them now at all, but you think about how much has been shaped just structurally without even realizing it by the decisions that were made by people kind of crafting the internet standards. And all of those decisions people made have had huge downstream impacts of every layer that has been built on top of them. And so I don't think we regret that per se, but I think that you look at it and you say, hey, let's make sure we do all the good things there. Let's also think about the mistakes that we've made as we've created other industries. Whether that's the current waves of finance or whether that's the current waves of tech or whatever. And say, hey, when you're in these nascent periods of new industries, how do we go make sure that we help the people who we trust to be making those decisions be there at the end. Right? And I think that's not unique to crypto. I think that's also the same if you look at governments, you look at AI, you look at a lot of these areas, a lot of us personally won't be able to affect a bunch of those, but to the degree you can, you want the people who you trust to be making the decisions that you think are most aligned with how you think decisions should be made to be the ones at the table who have a say. And the reality is the table stakes for being at that table in many of these industries is building the companies that have the dominant loops and are the dominant companies of their industries because they're the ones who get to kind of have a seat at that table to decide what our norms will be for AI or what are norms will be for crypto or any of these areas. DAVID: Even something as simple as the words we use shape how we act and whatnot. And also we were talking about cities earlier and when you think about building the infrastructure of a city, a city that depends on highways operates very differently from a city that depends on public subways and whatnot, which operates then again, very differently from a city that has roads designed for bikes and people who are walking, right? So the infrastructure that we build at the beginning will then shape the topology, the culture, and basically the modes of action that arise later. KEVON: 100 percent. And maybe that's a good reroute to the beginning of a Robert Caro because I think his first book about Robert Moses who kind of built out much of what people look at in New York City is a really good example of this because Robert Moses, he basically was unchecked in his power in building things in New York, which has a lot of downsides. And I think that the flip side of the critique of a lot of things going on in San Francisco right now where people say, hey, I wish we built more is what happens after Robert Moses where for decades after Robert Moses, people. I think Jane Jacobs is the most known among these said, a lot of things that he built weren't great. And some of that was terrible views and decisions he had. And I think there's a lot of things we can point to there. And then part of it was also areas where he was one man and didn't have full legibility on what the city needed or wanted or how to prepare for the future. And so to give you some examples of this, he built the highway systems in and around New York City and at the time there were very few people driving on highways or in cars and he kind of was one of the first people. And then a lot of the people who then ended up building a bunch of the highway systems for Eisenhower across the US where people who worked for him and he built these highways and he refused to put public transit lines along them. And his view was why would you need this? 1. The highways you can more than handle the capacity of cars that are driving. And 2. Another view he kind of had or people suspect he had, which is he was slightly elitist. And he said, cars are the rich and public transit is the poor. And actually, I want to make it much easier for the rich to get out to these places and not have the poor able to do it. And so you look at these decisions and they had huge impacts for a bunch of reasons. So one reason, one impact they had is that a bunch of these decisions he made that were either racist or discriminatory against the poor, just created ghettos within New York, made it impossible for people who are poor to afford to go out. And the same way that people who were rich were, they had real impact on real people's lives. And Robert Caro, I think he does a great job of both capturing how Robert Moses accumulates power and understanding it while also capturing the real stories of the people whose lives were affected by it in terrible ways. So that you understand that we shouldn't just love this. We should understand that these decisions have very real impacts. And you know, there's one section of the book where he goes through one block that was affected by the decisions that Robert Moses made and talks to the children and grandchildren of people who lived on this block that was raised for one of Robert Moses' project and how their lives were affected by that and how crushing it was to their families and how much it impacted even two generations later, their children and your grandchildren. And so I think that there's that side of it. And then on the other side, you look at it and his refusal to build public transit lines along the highway has kind of still, we are feeling the impact of that because obviously now cars are ubiquitous and everywhere and the highways he built to handle that. And the reality is highways period can handle that without building public transit, LRT systems which just can handle significantly more people. And so you look at a lot of these decisions people make around how we structure our cities or structure of companies. And these decisions have huge downstream impacts and so I think it's fascinating to see all these decisions being made a lot of times without the full understanding of the downstream impacts and without other people understanding that these are very important decisions. And that's kind of why I think the Caro books are just great at this because they make, you realize that once you take the time to understand how these ecosystems develop and the downstream impacts of them, you understand why all of these things are important and they show how one person can have a huge impact on it. One person who understands the system and kind of where the vulnerabilities of it are and where the weaknesses are in it can have a huge impact on it. And you know, hopefully, that will be people who have good intentions doing that. Right? And using that. And that's why I kind of want a lot of my friends and other people to read the Caro biographies to kind of understand that and be able to be in position for those. But it also means that it helps you understand when you see people who are making bad decisions about it, right? And whether intentionally or not and kind of understanding that the importance of things like housing policy or things like public transit, whether that looks like bike lanes or highways or LRT or whatever because they have a just huge impact on everything else within these cities. DAVID: The last question before a couple of quick ones at the end, you had a thought about contrarianism a couple of weeks ago that I've been thinking a lot about. I think perhaps we've gone a bit too far with it and often in the name of contrarianism we miss the mark about what it's really about. So I'd love if you could riff on that for a bit. KEVON: Yeah, for sure. I think that contrarianism has become obviously a very mainstream area where ironically everyone wants to be contrarian now and what's interesting is that I think I've always been fascinated by these concepts where everyone is a big fan of them, but we don't unpack them further. And so for example, I think network effects is another example of these areas where everyone knows that they should say they are contrarian or they have network effects, but then you really push on kind of like, what do you mean by that other than just I have good things. So I think that a lot of people talk about contrarianism as kind of being against the grain and kind of having views that other people disagree with. And of course, the challenge is the decision if I have this view that people disagree with. Is that actually a good view or is it just a view that people disagree with because it's a bad view. And similarly, I think it's hard to judge if you're contrarian enough from the people around you because it could be that you have a view that is mainstream in your community, but that view is actually a contrarian view in the larger view of people. But my view of contrarianism is that the important part of it is not about having this view that everyone else disagrees with. The important part is bringing it to everyone else and actually taking that view and causing it to become non-contrarian because a contrary view that stays controlled forever. It's just something that is- DAVID: It's all intellect, no action. KEVON: Yeah, it's useless, right? It's useless both for you and for the world. And so the interesting thing is actually having views that are not the consensus views of the world, but then doing your work to make sure they become consensus to the world if they are better, and don't get me wrong, I think that part of that is getting rewarded for it, right? And figuring out how to generate value from that, whether that is in building a company or whether that is in finding people who are like-minded. DAVID: I think a great example of that is Steve Jobs. His vision for the future of computing, a contrarian that many people doubted. There are all the stories that we know, but then he goes out and profits from it by giving his vision to the world. And I think that to your point, that's why he's revered in society. KEVON: Absolutely. And I think that the best thing to look at in contrarianism is how successfully they obsoleted their view from being contrarian, right? Because the people we should be most excited about who have contrarian views are the people who don't just have them, they then go make sure that those views stopped being contrarian and we all believed them. In fact, it's the people who we looked back and we say, hey, was that even that contrarian of a view? Actually, like we all believe it, right? I think that there's too much of a focus on the kind of standing apart and, and being the one who has the unique insight that nobody else has versus the part which is how do you go educate everyone else and bring that back into the mainstream consciousness and actually that is a lot of work and that is the thing that proves that what you were thinking about was actually valuable and of importance. And when I think about contrarianism, that's the part of it that I wish was more focused on versus the part where everyone can kind of feel hipster and feel that they're the special person with special thoughts on it. DAVID: Totally. So a couple of questions about you. The first one I'm going to steal from Tyler Cowen (my episode with Tyler here), he and his interviews saying what is your production functions? So what helps you stand out, be different, and have these ideas that you've shared with us today? KEVON: I don't know to what degree I stand out or have done well or I'm different. The view I care about is in understanding how systems work and the structuralism of that and I find that the people who I get along super well with and could talk for hours with are people who share that curiosity about trying to understand systems. When I think about on a kind of 50 year time horizon, what are the bets that I would want to take and would want to live by and then when you're retired and 50 years later if you're wrong, you're like, well, I'm still glad I took that bet. But it could have been wrong. I think the first one is kind of a on this idea that there is value in understanding systems and actually part of what we all should be doing is pushing this frontier of understanding the world and understanding why things work the way they do and then actually testing it and seeing if it is true in our theories on that were true. And so I think that is a bet I'd take any day of the weekend and I think is just natural gravity I have. And then I think the second one, which is tied to that on the people side, it's just finding people you resonate with who kind of are interested in thinking about the same types of things you do. Because at the end of the day, just like companies have loops and network effects. I think that people are ultimately the loop and network effects for each other. And the reality is we write biographies about companies and people and because of how we write biographies, we always view them as kind of the start of the company is when the company was incorporated and then it was built from there. When the reality is that the companies were all started 20 years before that of the set of people who how the founders knew each other, the people who they bounce their ideas off of the people who they would go then and higher. And so all of the compounding companies and governments and organizations to me seems to stem from the people you surround yourself with and how you resonate with them. And so I think that also is kind of how I both draw most of my ideas is from those discussions and also kind of how I stress test my ideas is kind of pushing on those with people who are curious about those same things or who are in other fields and you find the consilience between the fields. DAVID: Well Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the North Star. KEVON: Yup. Thank you so much. Hey again, it’s David here one more time. At North Star Media, we help companies build brands on the internet, and through content, we help them build trust and generate attention. And we do it through blog posts, books, videos, and podcasts like this one. You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Albert Wenger, a partner at Union Square Ventures. In this conversation we talk about Albert’s fourth coming book, World After Capital, and how technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers it was food that was scarce, during the Aquarian age it was a fight for land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digi

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast Keep Up with the North Star Podcast Introduction My guest today is Sara Dietschy, a YouTuber and content creator based in New York City.  With more than 300,000 subscribers, Sara’s created a docu-series, a daily vlog and recently launched a new podcast called The Creative Exchange. Sara is one of the most inspiring people I know. Before she moved to New York, Sara grew up in Dallas, went to college to study computer science, dropped out, and moved to Nashville. Through her work, Sara explores the intersection of technology and creativity. Sara rocks the YouTube scene with her sincerity and a contagious zest for life.  The internet spells the end of oppressive creative regimes, the death of gatekeepers and the fall of Hollywood. On the Internet, agility is essential. In this day in age, vlogs showcase the everyday experiences of real people with real stories that exist in real life.  We live at a time where people have deep and intimate relationships with their favorite YouTubers — people they’ve never met before that feel like their best friends. Millennials and Gen Z have the luxury to ask what is my passion and use the internet to build a career. On the internet, people want to connect with individuals, not massive companies or a bland television ad. They want to connect with people, not companies, and it’s influencers like Sara that are leading the charge. In this episode, Sara explains how she rose to Youtube stardom and the characteristics she’s noticed between herself and other successful influencers.  Sara and I go back to her time as a musician — an on-stage performer who played in front of large audiences. We talk about all the Sundays Sara spent at a local Megachurch in Dallas, where she played in a band and was blown away by top-notch production quality.  We discuss what it means to do work you love, and the power of staying busy, how Sara’s built a career around the vlogosphere. Finally, we talk about her first viral moments, how she forced herself to become extroverted and the takeover of new media.  Links Sara’s Youtube Channel Sara’s Podcast, The Creative Exchange Sara’s Instagram Sara’s Twitter Sara’s Facebook Sara’s Website Sara on Medium Time Stamps 1:27 Sara talks about who she is and what to expect from her Youtube channel 2:14 How Sara turned from a basketball-loving tomboy into a musician 6:39 Sara’s first love and how it gave her the most creative highs of her career thus far 7:28 Her transition from music to videography and how her church was the driving factor for her moving behind the lens 10:08 Her move to Nashville and how she leveraged value in turn for artist’s time for her first docu-series called Creative Spaces 11:35 Sara’s belief that the harder you work the luckier you get and how she notices serendipity in her life the more she works towards her goals 12:50 Sara’s, very calculated, first viral moments featuring TWO shoutouts from Casey Neistat 17:01 Sara talks about her passion for creativity and what motivates her throughout the process 18:20 The one characteristic Sara has found in common amongst all of her passionate friends and interviewees 24:36 The three pillars Sara believes makes a good Youtube channel 26:26 Sara’s Youtube career, from 0 to over 300,000 followers 33:09 Sara talks about why audiences relate to an individual over a brand 36:22 The clear divide between Hollywood and new media, as proven by the Cannes Film Festival 39:52 Sara’s rule to always be working on something or learning about topics outside of her job in order to have that essential escape 45:40 The changes happening in New York City and Sara’s prediction that Hudson Yards is becoming the next Midtown 50:32 How our ecosystem is built around cars and how storytellers may impact the sharing economy 51:41 Where Sara’s inspiration comes from and how she works with deadlines 55:53 How Sara trained herself to become more extroverted so she could meet more creatives 58:32 Sara’s vision for the future and her perspective to see it as a never-ending journey 1:00:24 How Sara sees her future on Youtube Quotes “Serendipity I think is huge. Being in a place where things are happening is a big deal. If you want to make music videos for country stars for the rest of your life, you have to be in Nashville. If you want to be a creative business type and you want flavors from different industries, be in New York. If you want strictly entertainment and acting, you have to be in LA. I fully believe in location helping tremendously.” “Everyone who is doing something that they love, and it’s never all rainbows and butterflies, but to the people who are doing what they love-it’s because they have gone through so many things before that to figure out what they want to be doing now. I think a lot of people wait around, and wait for something to hit them. They wait for their passion to hit them and it so doesn’t happen that way.” “I myself, as much as a person who creates it and consumes it, am so much more motivated by people in the real world. Instead of watching Wolf of Wall Street, I’m going to watch a couple of Gary Vaynerchuk Vlogs. I am way more inspired by seeing the behind the scenes of a CEO in real life than a fabricated story of this crazy Wall Street dude.” “I think if you just have these huge massive goals-like one massive goal every five years-I don’t think it’s the healthiest thing. If you don’t achieve it, you’re destroyed. If you do achieve it, you’re going to be empty inside and be like, what’s next? I always have these miniature things in my head, I want to meet these five people, I want to do these five things. If they happen sick, if they don’t, move on to the next thing. It’s taught me to be stoked on the journey because you’re never going to arrive.” Conclusion You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Kyle Chayka, who writes about the intersection of art, architecture, and how the internet is transforming society. We also talk about Kyle’s time in Beijing, the co-evolution of fashion and internet culture, and the present, past and future of minimalism.

Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man might earn three roubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three roubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials—he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. In this episode of Made You Think, we discuss The Jungle by Upton Sinclair It is a novel that portraits realistically the life at the time of immigrant families. Aimed to promote socialism, it ended conceiving the first laws of consumer protection in the United States after the scandal created by the revelation of meat packing malpractices. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder. Jurgis.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: The 3-day weekend A list of malpractices in the meatpacking industry that ended Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain Children labor in tech startups Monstrous sized apples and food stamps diets Businesses taking advantage of illegal immigrants Fiverr ads in NY and the Gig economy And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, counterpoint to The Jungle, a book that vows for Capitalism, as well as our Recap episode, where we summarize our first 20 books, all under the effects of alcohol :). Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.   Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Lacroix [0:41] Pure Food and Drugs Act [2:46] Meat Inspection Act [2:46] Kettle & Fire [48:26] Food stamps don’t cover the cost of healthy eating [49:01] Costco [50:43] Peter Attia at the Joe Rogan experience - Cocaine Revolutionized Surgery [59:19] Snus – Chewing Tobacco [1:01:28] Lindy Effect [1:02:34] Verizon AT&T-Time Warner Trust [1:14:17] Interstellar [1:15:52] North Star Podcast [1:17:29] Foxconn [1:19:50] Nike [1:19:50] Patreon [1:38:19] Distracted Boyfriend meme - Socialists vs. reality [1:42:17] Uber [1:50:25] Fiverr Ads in NY [1:50:25] UpWork [1:51:28] Hinge [2:01:55] Books mentioned The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Nat's notes) Uncle's Tom Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe [3:20] Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott [3:52] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [4:11] The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [24] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis [25:] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [37-42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [1:03:18] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Leverage Points by Donella Meadows [1:22:15] (article episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [1:23:32] Animal Farm by George Orwell [1:44:49] The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell [1:48:12] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [1:49:38] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Das Kapital by Karl Marx [2:04:37] War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [2:05:22] Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [2:05:35] People mentioned Upton Sinclair Adil Majid [37:42] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [56:01] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Chris Christie (sports betting in New Jersey) [56:52] Neil deGrasse Tyson [1:17:02] David Perell from the North Star podcast [1:17:29] George Orwell [1:44:21] Jordan B. Peterson [1:45:16] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Warren Buffet [1:46:23] Elon Musk [2:04:05] (on this podcast) Jeff Bezos [2:05:06] Show Topics 0:00 – The Jungle It is a book commonly read in High School, but probably the intention gets missed when read young. The content of the story is very dark. At first it seems to be a book about the terrors of the meat industry, but Sinclair aimed at the perils of Capitalism. It shows the problems with pure Laissez-faire economic systems (while other books as Atlas Shrugged critique Top-Down economies). 4:28 –  Sinclair was upset that his book didn’t meet the goal to promote socialism, all it had was the effect of changing how the US regulates the meat industry.  The value of safety nets and consumer protection laws. 7:14 – We didn't had weekends as we know them today. Some people suggest we will be able to mitigate some of the effects of automation by shortening the work week even more. Some startups and companies already offer Summer Fridays, where employees take Friday off. This is backed by noticing that does not affect productivity. 11:47 – Sinclair disavowed Socialism, he said it was not well implemented. Also, that Unions are an equally corrupt part of the system too. However, the book seems quasi religious, as lacks critics to Socialism. 14:39 – The book tells the story of Jurgis, who decides to move from Lithuania to Chicago with his family. He first feel betrayed with his friend, which he thought was rich. At that time, moving was one-way, people didn't have the money to travel back. The experience to moving to a completely extraneous place you never saw and with different language. Practically there is no culture living in complete isolation today, given the spread of the Internet and the English language. 20:02 – Jurgis gets his first job is sweeping guts and parts of cattle into a pit. The joy of having a job and the feeling of being settled. Not being paid for partial clock ours or waiting ours. Investment banking seems like a modern upper middle class version of the same problem. 25:44 – No security. Jurgis get injured and rests at home, without being paid. Hard work spirit. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder.” 26:05 – Sinclair attacks meritocracy. It's not those who work hard that are the ones who are wealthy. The people who had made it are not the people who'd done a good job, it's the people who'd figured out how to rig the system. Meritocracy, honesty (or dishonesty), conditions at birth and luck as the shapers of one's future. Reconciling the victim mentality with the meritocratic attitude. 28:45 – White privilege is probably true, but people started very poor and developed wealth through generations. The leap from "making money to stay alive" to "making money and build wealth". College funds compounding. 32:52 – Part of why we create wealth is to pass it to our children. Taking out inheritance plus giving immigrants upper-middle class quality of life from the start, as Socialism suggest, would take out incentives to create wealth. Socialism as the evolution of King-and-Serve model, in the way that somebody else take care of you once you pay the access to the system. 35:30 – Parents that bring their kids to America but want them to maintain their customs of origin. Contingencies buying a house. Having to send the kids to sustain the mortgage payment. Our senses ignore the static, concentrate on changes. 38:45 – Child labor was common 100 years ago. Is it OK to forbid child labor? Imposing modern values to pre-modern societies. China negating climate protocols. What if children work in tech positions at startups? 43:36 – How bad the meat packing industry was in terms of what went into the final product. A list of malpractices in the meat industry. Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain. Poisoned bread for rats. Sausages diluted with potato flour. Diluted or doctored food. The bargain of the peasant and hunter-gatherer lifestyle vs modern society. 49:01 – Optimizing food stamps to get the best diet. Why produce are not nutritious any more. Charging crops by weight as a bad incentive to produce nutritious crops. Size difference between wild and domesticated fruit species. Comparing fruits with candies and soda. Coca tea good for altitude sickness. 56:00 – Drugs and gambling becoming ubiquitous in the US. Libertarian trend legalizing gay marriage, suicide, drugs, poker and weed, MDMA. Cocaine and marijuana schedules for trials for medical treatments. Consuming opioids and tobacco in natural form, reducing cancer and other unwanted long term effects. Overdosing sugar. 1:03:18 – Jurgis back to the job market at Packagetown, finds a job in the fertilizers plants. 1:05:27 – Scentbird: monthly subscription for premium perfumes and colognes, delivered at your door in convenient packaging and at incredible rates! Nat's favorite is Blue by Chanel, Neil's using Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue. Use our code to get 50% off the first month. 1:08:43 – Jurgis passes through jail. Spoiler alert! Jurgis is blacklisted from all jobs and becomes a bum. Parallel between the beef trust and the communications trust. Jurgis finally gets a better job in Downtown. 1:18:09 – When the supply of work is much greater than the demand. Working by the day. Immigrants taking US jobs working in illegal conditions. Unfair systems that can't be fixed by just replacing the pieces at the top. Businesses aren't much penalized, individuals are, when talking about illegal immigrants. 1:24:24 – The Government job to protect citizens. Markets can take care of most of their problems, but sometimes rules are needed. GMOs at Walmart. 1:26:24 – Jurgis loses all his family and becomes a bum, a modern version of the hunter gatherer. Jurgis gets into the underground. Suggestion that the only way to get rich in America is by breaking the law. 1:32:52 – Jurgis gets back in a meat packing business, but in a better position. Finally gets out of Chicago. 1:35:35 – The book slides down into Socialism. Blind political speeches. Distinguishing Socialism from Communism. Free associations and Patreon. Degrees of Libertarianism. Anarchism. Countries not implementing Socialism properly argument. 1:42:17 – Is Socialism impossible because of Human nature? Strong man arguments for and against Socialism. Orwell and Peterson common background at the Socialist Party. Socialism as a satisfying and seductive system for the intellectual part of our brains. 1:46:00 – Top-down beats Bottom-up messy chaos on paper, but the opposite happens in reality. We tend to give more importance to things that can be measured, but that doesn't mean unmeasured things doesn't exists. Argumentative tactics. The miss of a Socialist hero in the plot. The Gig economy. 1:53:14 – Sinclair shows that each individual who is involved in the system is following the incentives they have. Seeing a true need for government. 1:54:08 – Sponsors! Scentbird. Only $7.50 for your first month subscription using our code. Kettle & Fire’s grass fed bone broth to reconstitute your gut health, up to 28% discount plus free shipping using our code. We highly recommend the mushroom chicken and mushroom flavor. Get 20% off for your keto related products on Perfect Keto. Exogenous ketones supplements, and MCT oil to supplement your good fat needs. Drink Four Sigmatic, delicious mushroom coffee. Try their new Golden Latte Mushroom Mix with shitaki and turmeric, and the Chai Latte Mush with turkey tail and reishi. None of these have caffeine, ideal to drink them the whole day. Get 20% off your first order from Cup & Leaf. Try the Cream Earl Grey and the Lopson su chong, the whiskey of black teas. Get the black tea sampler to try all black teas. De-fund Bezos' rocket company by using our Amazon affiliate link. Hit us up on Twitter (Neil, Nat). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

LISTEN HERE: ITUNES | OVERCAST My guest today is Paul Cooper, who spends his days exploring ancient and modern ruins.  I’m going to begin this introduction with a hot take: Paul has one of the best Twitter accounts in the world. Ruins are special. They freeze a moment in time forever. They remind us of the shortness of life and the inevitable entropy of history. Paul's book, River of Ink, is predicated on the idea of bringing ancient cities back to life in a fictional context. In this episode, we talk about the academy in the internet age, compare functional and sacred architecture, and dream about time travel. We explore the strange and perplexing history of the Roman Colosseum and investigate letters written on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia. And now, I invite you to enjoy this journey through space and time, as we explore the many shades of human history. Note: Since I enjoyed this podcast so much, I wrote a short blog post about it. Useful Links Paul’s Book, River of Ink    Find Paul Online Twitter  Facebook Instagram  Paul’s Website   Learn More About Paul The Timeless Allure of Ruins, Paul’s BBC Feature Paul’s The Atlantic Articles   Show Notes   1:00 How Paul’s childhood, surrounded by castles in South Wales, inspired him to study ancient ruins   1:53 Paul’s first novel, River of Ink, depicts a fictional story of the events that could have taken place during a real thirty-year gap in Sri Lankan history    3:31 Paul’s most surprising takeaway from his year living abroad in Sri Lanka   4:07 Paul is captivated by the spark in imagination that occurs when walking through ancient ruins, a passion he shares with his 39,000 Twitter followers   5:29 Paul questions the transition a building undergoes from functioning structure to ancient ruin   7:26 Why are there flowers in the Colosseum that don’t exist anywhere else in Europe? Paul explains the answer botanist Richard Deacon discovered explaining the ancient mystery   10:38 Ruins: A place where the future is spontaneously canceled. Paul’s observation on ruins and their story as a place where the future was spontaneously canceled   12:34 Paul explains the tension between a building’s first few years and the inevitability that one day it will have to be torn down   15:14 Paul asks: "At what point can you say a ruin is "finished" and it’s permitted to destroy it?"   25:32 Paul talks about the invention of writing and how it has shaped ancient architecture, philosophy, and mathematics   28:24 Get a short peek into Paul’s second book, set in the Assyrian Empire   29:33 If Paul could travel back in time, what would he see? These are his top three choices   31:29 Paul explains the similarity between ancient ruins and ghost towns   39:32 Paul talks about the interplay between ruins in time and what they represent today, explaining how these structures feel oddly static when you enter them   41:40 Paul’s eerie story of a haunted church in Norfolk and why he believes these stories exist   43:55 Paul’s realization that for thousands of years, each person visiting a ruin has brought a different perspective, causing a continuous variation from the truth of ancient structures and historical stories   45:42 Paul’s opinion on what people in the year 5,000 will find the most interesting about today’s civilization   49:57 How the Internet is reshaping academia   53:03 Paul’s observation of the new self-education movement You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Tyler Cowen, a columnist at Bloomberg who writes about economics, history and culture. In the Two Blundering Fools episode, Tyler shares seriously counterintuitive points on travel, the millennial generation and how he thinks about the future. Quotes “Every ruin is a place where a physical object was torn apart and that happened because of some historical force. If a building is ruined, an economic ruin, a closed down factory, it’s been blown up by a bomb, or it’s been abandoned because people moved away-It’s because huge historical forces have washed over it. Each ruin shows a place where the future was just suddenly cancelled. The next day didn’t happen, it was just a ruin. So, each one is a window into a particular historical moment where something changed. That’s what really fascinates me everyday about them.”  “Writing is such an incredible thing. It restructures the way we think. Once you know how to read, it’s impossible not to. If I showed you a page of words and said don’t read this, you wouldn’t be able to. Your brain has been forever changed by being taught the ability to read. The ability to store information outside of our brains suddenly frees us up to do a whole load of incredible things. A pre-literate society has a certain amount of knowledge passed down from the ancestors, who have gathered that knowledge very carefully. And we have to expand so much effort to keep that knowledge together. We have to put it in lists, make it rhyme, do it in patterns. All of these things simplify and help us remember the knowledge passed down from the ancestors. Once we can write down on clay or paper and make the material remember for us, we’re freed up to do a whole load of interesting things like examine philosophy or mathematics.” “When people in previous ages have looked at ruins, what they see is what we’ve been describing. There was a cataclysmic event, something went wrong here, and they try to tell stories about why that might have happened…Ruins don’t mean anything by themselves. They seem like a kind of place that slightly resists meaning. People try to give meaning to them. They try to tell stories about them that make sense about what must have happened.” “Everyone who comes to a ruin brings a different perspective and a different story and a different meaning. And all the time, the ruin is just sitting there, kind of meaning nothing. It doesn’t mean anything by itself. It needs somebody to come along and give it meaning. And so in that way, the ruin forms a battle ground. Everybody is in this five way tug of war about what this crumbling mass of bricks in the desert means and that’s what makes them incredible places to study.”  

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast | PlayerFM Keep Up with the North Star Podcast Summary Today’s guest is Kyle Chayka, a Brooklyn based writer who has been published in New York Times, Verge, Business Week and more. His studies in International Relations at Tufts University led him to live in Beijing, where he initially noticed the impact social platforms were having on internationalization. In 2015 he wrote his essay, Welcome to Airspace, dissecting the effect of the growing decentralized geography born from technology and digital platforms. Kyle Chayka regularly questions the future of society as the internet becomes commodified through brand ecosystems. His article archive can be found on his website, as well as information on his upcoming book regarding the allure of minimalism, The Longing for Less. Aside from his writing endeavors, Kyle is the founder of Study Hall, a freelance journalist collective coordinating office space and live events for independent writers while promoting a digital community.  In this conversation, we talk about the dangerous impact social platforms are having on cultures around the world and how living in the future has become a daunting lifestyle. Why can we visit coffee shops on opposite sides of the world with the same ambiance and aesthetic? We talk about the effect of the digital nomad movement on cultures, countries and politics and the future impact of this lifestyle on the world. And finally, we discuss how the internet has created a commodified identity, where humans are failing to interact successfully within this so called utopian future. You can read Kyle’s essay, Welcome to Airspace, and search his article archive on his blog, linked below. Related Articles That I've Written Naked Brands: The Future of Fashion Equinox is the New Church Wearable Brands Quotes “The problem is that all the coffee shops look the same no matter where you go.” “There’s a decentralized geography in the world now that exists mostly because of technology and digital platforms. The coffee shop theory of Airspace is that all these coffee shops look the same because all of the same people are going to them, no matter what country they are in.” “The way you game the system is by trying to look like everything else that has a good rating.” “Beauty to me is different ways of aesthetic appreciation and not just looking for beauty in things that aren’t stereotypically beautiful.” “The future is this catastrophe.” “People are moving into places they don’t understand or don’t engage with the local community and that can be super destabilizing.” Links Find Kyle online: Kyle’s Blog Medium Twitter Instagram   Read Kyle’s articles:   Welcome to Airspace (1:37) Reign, Supreme (31:15)     Mentioned in the show: Kinfolk (2:28) Brian Eno Music for Airports (26:05)  Rent The Runway (28:49) Airbnb (43:39) Bleep (44:39) Neo Yokio (48:35) Everlane (57:19)  Gucci (59:05) Lot (1:00:41)   Show Topics 1:40 The inspiration behind writing Welcome to Airspace, his essay about the decentralized geography occurring in the world as a direct effect of technology and digital platforms.   4:13 Kyle’s connection between Airspace and rating based platforms like Foursquare and Airbnb   5:10 How Kyle’s initial passion for aesthetic and art was established and how he fell in love with the idea of different perspectives inventing new ways of looking at the world   8:03 Kyle’s definition of beauty and how he gained his appreciation for things that aren’t stereotypically beautiful   9:28 How architecture has shaped Kyle writing career and his opinion on humans’ inability to avoid being impacted by architecture as an art form   11:28 Why Kyle’s writing focus is on architecture and how it encompasses the entirety of the human experience   12:15 Kyle’s take away from medieval art as a representation of the same globalization happening today   15:50 How fashion is the fastest moving cultural form as a direct result of digital platforms instantly exposing what is fashionable to cities on the opposite side of the globe   17:42 How national identities are becoming more blurred as cosmopolitan cities in different countries become more and more like each other and distinct from the conservative cities surrounding them   19:40 Kyle on the reason why the digital nomad has become a global trend   21:08 Kyle’s opinion on the long term consequence of the digital nomad lifestyle as it gentrifies countries and promotes political agendas and urban spaces to be built around long term tourists instead of the local population   22:30 How social media is the driving force behind decentralized geography and how the cro-nut can be invented in New York and sold in Beijing within the same week   27:30 Why social platforms are an intersection between identity and ambiance and how users are taking advantage to brand themselves and their companies   31:15 Kyles thoughts on Supreme and how it’s a constellation of markets and experiences   33:14 How the internet has become a commodified place where things aren’t accessible and systems are implemented to exchange identity for monetization   34:16 Kyle’s observation of what was the future ideal and what is the future reality   38:03 How humans are interacting with these future needs and where the next step is for understanding and fixing the problems they are creating, such as the Bitcoin trend   40:20 The new dystopian idea of getting into brand ecosystems and staying in them for years by having one company sell a consumer everything they need to live and commodifying another person’s identity   43:47 Kyle’s experiences in Bejing, China and how it shaped his futuristic perspectives on internationalization within new communities and artistic influence   47:03 Kyle’s opinion on how digital platforms are manipulating identities yet giving users the most freedom they have ever had to express themselves   52:36 Kyle on the shift from TV and radio programs controlled by one CEO to on demand platforms that removed the boundaries    53:53 Kyle on his book Longing For Less and the shift behind minimalism across lifestyles, music, architecture and philosophy You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook.   To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like Geoff’s Manaugh’s perspectives on how technology is changing architecture in the Burglars, Buildings and Blueprints North Star episode. Keep Up with the North Star Podcast

LISTEN HERE: ITUNES | OVERCAST Today’s guest is Matt Levine, a columnist at Bloomberg covering finance, Wall Street and the broader business world. Before blogging, Matt spent four years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, structuring and marketing corporate equity derivatives. Before that, he worked as a mergers & acquisitions lawyer and a high school latin teacher. He’s also a graduate of both Harvard and Yale Law School. Matt’s newsletter, Money Stuff is always fresh and I admire Matt’s ability to discuss complex topics in fresh and engaging ways. In this episode, we talk about Matt's career shift from banking to blogging — from Goldman Sachs, huge and famous, to DealBreaker, teeny and scrappy. Matt shares the ideas that have shaped his worldview and his process for writing. We talk about the books that have influenced him the most, both inside and outside the financial sphere. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Iliad. “The tech startups are like the great laboratories for these questions now because what has happened weirdly is that the people with the best tech startup ideas have what seems to be enormous leverage over the people with the money.” Links: Find Matt online: Bloomberg Twitter Linkedin Matt’s newsletter   Mentioned in the show: DealBreaker [2:55] Bloomberg [3:17] Cravath [6:27] Gawker [30:17] BlackRock [37:52] Vanguard [37:55] State Street [37:56]   Books mentioned: The Iliad [6:08] Barbarians at the Gate [8:06] The Bramble Bush [18:38]   People mentioned: Carl Llewellyn [18:42] Bess Levin [30:36] Tyler Cowen [30:50] (episode with Tyler) Felix Salmon [32:54] Matt Yglesias [33:00] Show Topics 1:00 - Introduction to the episode and a bit of background info on Matt. 2:32 - Matt detailing his financial background, his general background, and where he comes from. 4:19 - How Matt got into classics, a bit on his experiences in college, and his job out of college. 7:00 - The books that have shaped Matt’s perspective and worldview the most and bit on what took him into the world of finance, marketing, and accounting. Also, what some of his experiences were in that field. 11:21 - The aspect of puzzles in these fields of M&A and Matt detailing his journey from investment banking to blogging. 13:40 - How Matt’s day is structured to write, read, do deep work, and not be exhausted afterward. Also, a bit on Matt’s way of writing and learning. 15:55 - Matt detailing how he has learned to easily sift through a lot of the false information that’s commonly found and find true information. Discussion about the reality of financial investing that’s commonly mis-portrayed in the media. 20:14 - Which sorts ideas and life experiences beyond the bank that come up all the time that have been foundational for Matt’s way of approaching the world. Some discussion on law in general, lawyers, and contracts. “You get a certain amount of legal realism baked into you in law school I think and a certain amount of skepticism about the magic functions and words in contracts.” 24:59 - Matt’s partial background in academic finance and how this has helped him understand more in the field of investing. Discussion on shareholders, share buy-backs, and running companies. “The tech startups are like the great laboratories for these questions now because what has happened weirdly is that the people with the best tech startup ideas have what seems to be enormous leverage over the people with the money.” 31:44 - The people that have influenced Matt the most and some discussion on how blogging has changed over the years. 35:30 - What some of the main goals are that Matt tries to accomplish everyday and a bit on the writing that he does.   37:49 - Topics and things that Matt finds the most fascinating to write about and figure out. Discussion on shareholders, index funds, writing, and investing. Hey again, it’s David here one more time. You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving us a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Tyler Cowen, another columnist at Bloomberg who writes about economics and culture. In the podcast, Tyler shares counterintuitive insights on travel, the millennial generation, and how he thinks about the future. Thanks again for listening.

LISTEN HERE: iTUNES | OVERCAST Today’s guest is Geoff Manaugh, who explores the intersection of architecture, technology, and landscapes. As a professor, he’s taught classes in both the United States and in Australia on topics such as blackouts, the future of cinema, geo-engineering, and the possibility of a San Andreas fault national park. In the episode, we talk about how the geography of Los Angeles influences bank heists, the new subterranean structures in Singapore and Hong Kong, caves, and how technology is changing architecture. This conversation will have you exploring new ideas, underground tunnels, sneaking through subway systems, and using blueprints to escape a prison. You can find Geoff online at his blog, BLDGBLOG. “All of the buildings that we interact with every day tend to be completely overlooked and treated as something that isn’t even worth discussing, and yet that’s where we spend most of our lives.” “The real world is so much more interesting than people think it is. There’s no reason to be bored — the world is cooler and more futuristic than you might think.” Links: Find Geoff online: Website Linkedin His book’s site Mentioned in the show: Heat film [8:00] Gangs of New York film [8:37] Prison Break show [19:35] Books mentioned: A Burglar’s Guide to the City [0:49] People mentioned: Geoff Manaugh Michael Mann [8:00] Show Topics 1:53 - Introduction to Geoff and discussion on how he got into the architectural field. 3:15 - Diving into anthropology, ancient civilizations, and Geoff’s interest in both ancient structures and architecture. 5:10 - Some discussion on our current architecture and some speculation on us often being surrounded by a built environment. “All of the buildings that we interact with every day tend to be completely overlooked and treated as something that isn’t even worth discussing, and yet that’s where we spend most of our lives.” 7:50 - Discussing how the infrastructure and landscape of a city influence heists and crime. How our environment is much less passive than we think, and how it actively plays a role in influencing the way that we think and what we do. 11:12 - Figuring out how police view a city, taking advantage of various get-away routes, and the grey-areas often found in get-away routes. 12:55 - How burglars think differently about underground structures. Some discussion on tunneling and its relation to different types of landscapes under a city (sandy soil, bedrock, etc). 16:03 - How advances in technology influence architecture, security in the architectural world, and land boundaries. 18:55 - Speculating how well burglars actually know the building that they’re breaking into, how to easily find out the blueprints for a place, and discussion on burglars exploiting vulnerabilities within cities. 23:32 - How Geoff managed to get in touch with several burglars and learn from them. Also, how we unconsciously act like burglars in our lives. 28:19 - The emerging aspect of digital burglary and some discussion on this, as well as a bit on cryptocurrencies and investments. Also, thoughts on the actual definition of burglary and its relation to architecture. 32:14 - Discussing graffiti artists, people riskily exploring of architecture, and a bit on how we pay for city infrastructures, but yet we aren’t allowed to visit some of them. 34:35 - Geoff explaining various subterranean structures, caves, and underground tunnels. Also, how Singapore has begun to excavate outwards beneath the ocean for storage and other uses, architects designing artificial caves, Hong Kong’s future plans with underground infrastructures, and the powerful sense of awe that we can attain from architecture. 41:54 - Further discussion on the many things that we see, but do not consciously appreciate or really notice. Also, a bit of talk on the mysterious places left behind due to architecture evolving. 43:55 - The future of cities and architecture, and what Geoff is most excited about within these fields. The huge possibilities of technology merging with architecture. Also, a bit on quarantining people, isolating people, and relating both of these to architecture. 47:52 - Discussion on the architectural way of thinking and being efficient as a writer. 49:39 - Geoff’s connection to cinema and his perspective on cinema. A bit on what he’s done for cinema as an architect, as well. 51:12 - What has surprised Geoff while working in the television industry about bringing his book into the media network. Also, Geoff’s thoughts on transferring abstract ideas into a filmable scene. Hey again, it’s David here one more time. You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving us a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Eugene Wei, a film editor who has worked in some of the worlds largest tech companies, as well as directly under Jeff Bezos. We discuss merging media with technology, company building, his lessons from Bezos, and more.

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast Today’s guest is Eugene Wei, who's spent his career working at some of the world’s best technology companies including Amazon, Hulu, and Facebook. He joined Amazon in 1997 after graduating from Stanford and it was at Amazon that he watched Jeff Bezos turn a small little internet bookstore into “The Everything Store” that were all so familiar with. After leaving Amazon, Eugene moved to New York to become a film editor before moving to Los Angeles to become a director. That summer he joined the company that would become Hulu, leading the product, design, editorial, and marketing teams. And since then, he founded and sold a startup called Erly, and worked as the head of product for Flipboard before joining the Facebook as the head of video at Oculus. In this conversation, we talk about the spiritual significance of the second law of thermodynamics and its impact on movies, company building, and personal growth. We talk about the principles of communication and draw lessons from Jeff Bezos on how to communicate clearly and memorably. And finally, we take lessons from Eugene’s time living in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley and explore the ever-fascinating intersection of media and technology. And before we begin, you can find links to his blog, Remains of the Day, along with my favorite posts below.  Links: Find Eugene online: His blog Eugene’s most popular posts Linkedin Mentioned in the show: Amazon [0:38] Hulu [0:38] Facebook [0:38] Erly [1:10] Oculus [1:17] Eugene’s Iliad discussion [9:35] (couldn’t find this one) Eugene’s Second Law of Thermodynamics discussion [9:35] UCLA Film School [22:17] Reddit [36:57] Twitch [58:02] Tree of Life film [1:06:53] Interstellar [1:08:15]   Books mentioned: Born to Rebel [14:15]  The Complacent Class [48:55] The Rise of Superman [59:14] The Iliad [1:02:27] The Odyssey [1:02:27] The Sound and the Fury [1:06:27]   People mentioned: Jeff Bezos [1:32] Daniel Day-Lewis [16:55] Mike Tyson [47:24] Tyler Cowen [48:52] (podcast episode with Tyler) Gary Vaynerchuk [53:19] Malcolm Gladwell [1:03:07] Neil Degrasse Tyson [1:03:30] (podcast episode with Neil) William Faulkner [1:05:54] Virginia Wolf [1:05:54] Terrence Malick [1:06:51] Christopher Nolan [1:08:22] Show Topics 0:32  - Some information on the episode guest, Eugene Wei and a bit of background on his career.   1:58 - Introduction to Eugene, what life was like for him early on, and what he got into as a kid. Also, a bit on how he got into the filmmaking scene.   3:32 - Eugene on some of the biases from his parents that he faced regarding a career choice, and a bit on him convincing them to move out west and away from Chicago.   4:56 - What Stanford was like back when Eugene was growing up, how his parents felt about his choice to go there, what things he ended up exploring while there, and what he majored in.   6:55 - How learning with both sides of the brain influenced Eugene after college and how it has been useful for him in the professional context. “I think the general idea of following your interests so that you have an inherent sort of motivator for learning is just super-critical.”   7:54 - Thoughts on underestimating the advantages of a somewhat generalist education compared to an education in a specific field. How having a broad set of skills and a general education has helped him more than if he were to specialize in one field.   9:50 - Eugene on the importance of being deeply intellectually interested in his work.   10:32 - Eugene’s journey towards receiving a job with Amazon in 1997, the choices he made regarding college, and him realizing the growing wave that was the internet back then.   14:11 - Eugene discussing Born to Rebel, an influential book that he read while in high school, and how this impacted him. Also, Eugene discussing fighting the conformist nature that comes with being an older sibling, and some discussion on how the younger sibling likely has a rebellious nature.   15:40 - Further discussion on challenging the conformist nature, pushing yourself into new and challenging areas to grow, and Eugene talking about his decision to leave Amazon and go to film school. “To start over and be a student again forces you into a different frame of mind.”   17:35 - How leaving Amazon to start over and go to film school taught Eugene valuable lessons and positively impacted him.   18:28 - What the second law of thermodynamics is and how it played a role in Eugene’s journey. Some more on him pushing out of equilibrium for growth, as well.   22:01 - What Eugene did for work when he first got into filmmaking and some more thoughts on what the journey did for him. Also, a bit on his next job, which was working for the company that eventually became Hulu.   24:18 - Eugene’s thoughts about the different streaming platforms around that time that he began working for the company that eventually became Hulu.   25:45 - What Eugene learned about how the media and technology industries operate and where they intersect. Some thoughts on media and tech companies in general and thoughts on their futures, as well.   30:16 - Eugene describing the free agent model and its contrast with vertical integration. A bit more on how various media companies have changed and some of the strategies that they use. “In 2013, 18 of the top 25 films were sequels, prequels, or extensions of existing stories or popular streams.” “In box office earnings, sequels make 8 times as much as originals.”   35:10 - The self-perpetuating platforms that a majority of movies are now and a bit on how media companies look to buy story optionality to promote future stories.   37:49 - What it was like working for Amazon in 1997 and working close to Jeff Bezos. Also, what it was like watching a company like that grow and why Amazon originally started with selling books.   41:40 - What Eugene learned from Jeff Bezos himself and a bit of insight on how Jeff worked. Also, the importance of thinking based on first principles, and some guidelines necessary for developing these first principles. “To derive first principles, you need access to raw data or you'll forever be getting secondhand principles from other people.”   43:33 - Eugene further discussing developing first principles, accessing raw data necessary for developing them, and the necessity for failure.   44:58 - The unique ways that meetings are run at Amazon, why Jeff banned the usage of Powerpoint, how Powerpoint distorts people’s thinking, and some more things that Jeff did to improve various aspects of the company and its employees.   49:47 - Eugene on what you should do as a CEO once your company grows larger and more successful, and some thoughts on a few things that make successful and effective companies.   52:04 - How language is encoded in various media, the immense communicative aspects of visual media compared to literal, and some thoughts on us being visual learners. Also, how watching someone do their job is much more effective compared to reading about how to do that job.   1:02:08 - Story and narrative being a very powerful way to encode information in addition to media, and some more thoughts on visual and narrative mediums being the most effective ways to learn.   1:04:12 - The positive benefits that countries gain from gaining widespread TV for the first time and some thoughts on how TV can be beneficial to us.   1:05:49 - What Eugene’s favorite writers have in common and why they are his favorites. Also, a bit on the different style of directing by Terrence Malick. How Terrence uses the visual medium in unique ways to get closer to consciousness and what it’s actually like to perceive the world.   You can support the North Star Podcast by leaving a review on iTunes. Or you can share the podcast on Twitter or Facebook. To listen to other episodes or learn more about the North Star, you can connect with me directly at perell.com and you can always reach out on Twitter at david_perell. And if you enjoyed this episode, you’ll like the episode with Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason with deep interests in food, music, art, and travel.

In this episode, Mike, Daryl, and I review Fist of the North Star -- quite possibly the Greatest Movie EVER!