22: Nadia Asparouhova - Ideas that Infect
Nadia Asparouhova (Website, X, Substack) is a writer and researcher who has spent much of her career in service of the question: 'what's happening here?' across various parts of the internet.Nadia recently published her newest book, Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading. She explores why consequential ideas, unlike memes and supermemes, fail to spread. She also recounts the last several years of online public and private life and how we're all less naive than we were in previous eras of the internet. Critically, she suggests a path toward poking our heads out of group chats and silos to engage in publicly discussing or promoting the ideas that matter most.Her first book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, was published by Stripe Press. Nadia also worked at Substack, Protocol Labs, and Github, and has written extensively on Silicon Valley Culture; the importance of ideas and institutions; consciousness, attention, and meditation; and more.Nadia's self-described sweet spot is when people respond to her writing by saying,"I read this piece and it gave me words for a thing that I didn't know how to express before." I can attest that is true, both for Antimemetics and for much of her other thinking. And as much as she writes about ideas, I admire how focused she is on how they might produce action.Nadia believes that important ideas infect us, and the reasonable response to that is to be tremendously thoughtful about our attention. I hope this conversation inspires you to put great care into where your attention goes.Transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/nadia-asparouhovaTimestamps:1:31: Why Ideas Matter9:33: The Last 10 Years of the Internet and Attention Collapse17:07: How The Internet Caused Attention Collapse19:59: Private Coordination in Public Spaces24:01: Legibility and Illegibility as a Tactic28:28: Ideas Are Not Created Nor Discovered; They Infect Us35:17: Defining Antimemes42:00: Ideological Black Holes: Supermemes49:13: Engaging in the Public Square vs. Opting Out54:16: Truth Tellers who Can Bring Anti-Memetic Ideas to Light1:05:06: Champions, or the Great Apostle Theory1:10:57: Institutions, Ideologies, and Movements1:24:51: Attention1:31:30: Jhanas1:38:42: Writing a Book1:46:19: Connecting the Dots in Reverse1:50:29: Lightning Round: Fighting (or Working With) Human Nature, Software as Passion Project, Democracy, Space Away from the Center of ThingsDialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms.Join the telegram channel for DialecticFollow Dialectic on TwitterFollow Dialectic on InstagramSubscribe to Dialectic on YouTube
21: Geoffrey Litt: Software You Can Shape
Geoffrey Litt (Website, X) is a designer, engineer, writer, and researcher at Ink & Switch, where he champions malleable software: the idea that ordinary people should be able to mold the digital tools they rely on every day. Ink & Switch is an independent research lab focused on how computers can help us think and work. While researching and writing, Geoffrey and team also build products and prototypes to explore how their ideas can exist in practice. Geoffrey got his PhD at MIT CSAIL, where he built on his inspiration around computational media like spreadsheets, hoping to push more software toward the ethos of end-user programming, but without the technical complexity. In a sense, why should using software and changing it be any different? Previously, he built software for teachers at Panorama Education, which he joined out of school as one of the first employees.Geoffrey and collaborators recently published a definitive piece on malleable software and we discussed it in detail. We dig into why most modern apps feel like sealed boxes rather than flexible tools and environments, and what changes when your app, document, or workspace, feels more like Lego than machinery. Geoffrey makes his case that we want software tooling to feel like a chef knife, not an avocado slicer, and we talk about how the best designed tools help users up a smooth slope of learning and ability. He argues in favor of deeper understanding, illustrated by one of my favorite ideas: The Nightmare Bicycle. We talk about how LLMs are enabling malleable software and how local tinkerers might be able to build systems for themselves and their team or communities that understand their needs more deeply than any professional designer could. Finally, Geoffrey lays out a call to arms for founders: build products that treat users as co-authors who understand their own needs, not just consumers.On one level, this is a conversation about software and design. But it is really about agency. I hope it inspires you to pop open the hood on various aspects of your life, look at what's inside, and trust yourself to tinker. As Steve Jobs said many years ago, "the minute you can understand that you can poke life, and if you push in, then something will pop out the other side; that you can change it, you can mold it—that's maybe the most important thing."All links and transcript: https://dialectic.fm/geoffrey-litt---This episode is brought to you by Hampton, a private, highly vetted membership for founders. Hampton surveyed over 100 members with net worths of $1M-100M to create its 2024 Wealth Report. They asked about financial goals, spending habits, how much founders themselves, investment portfolio breakdowns, risk tolerance, estate planning and philanthropy, and more. Visit https://joinhampton.com/community to access the report.---Timestamps2:12: Agency in a Digital World and Geoffrey's Creative Medium: Software12:17: Intro to Malleable Software20:42: "Popping Open the Hood" & The Nightmare Bicycle: A Case for Understanding How Systems Work27:47: Computational Media, Spreadsheets, and Digital Informality34:01: Legos and Home Cooking as Metaphors for Software42:30: Two Types of Malleable Software: Modular-by-Design and Hacking48:35: Hampton50:13: Designing for a Smooth Slope58:20: Unbundling Apps into Environments and Tools1:17:58: Why Do the Work at All When AI Can Do It? When Should We be in the Details?1:29:22: Empathy & Design: Enabling "Local Developers" Who Know Their and Their Community's Needs1:38:23: A Case for Optimism About Human Agency1:51:09: AI's Impact on Malleable Software1:59:03: Commercial Incentives and Ecosystem Change2:04:17: Research and Ink & Switch2:11:46: ChatGPT as a Muse2:15:34: Working at MUBI and Solving the "Too Many Things to Watch" Problem2:18:27: Japan's Culture of Care2:22:15: Mastery and Variety2:24:34: Joy and Clarity as a Parent2:25:30: Expressing Care Through What we Make
20: Yancey Strickler - Constellations of Creativity
Yancey Strickler is a writer, entrepreneur, creative, and founder of Metalabel, a network and platform that allows creative people to release work together. He is also a board member, co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter and is currently working on establishing a new kind of corporate structure, the Artist Corporation. Yancey's life and work has revolved around what it means to be a creative individual, and how to improve the cultural and mechanical forms that enable artists and creatives. We talk about how much of modern society is rooted in individualism, how that wasn't always the case, and how the internet is evolving our sense of self. We get into creativity, the term's surprisingly recent origins, and why Yancey believes the 21st will be the "Creative Century." Then, we go beyond the individual and discuss the deeply-rooted longing that all of us have to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Yancey suggests that is not simply about being subsumed by a collective, but by maintaining our individual star while becoming part of large constellations—like the labels that have empowered the distribution of ideas for centuries. Finally, we discuss the forms Yancey has or is helping to build and imagine a future where even more of the world creates professionally. May we all shine more brightly and find others who inspire us to make wonderful things. Transcript available at https://dialectic.fm/yancey-strickler Timestamps - 1:41: Individualism, Identity, and the Internet - 19:13: Creativity — Its Origins, Art, and Reaching Toward Something Deeper - 33:30: The Creative Century and a Case for the Continued Growth of Professional Creativity - 38:27: Hampton - 40:02: Something Bigger than Ourselves — The Post-Individual, Bentoism, Being a Star and a Constellation - 51:51: Labels & Conspiring Together in Practice - 1:07:15: New Forms & Kickstarter - 1:18:44: Metalabel - 1:31:56: Creativity and Commerce & A Brand New Form: The Artist Corporation - 1:46:22: The Long Game: Supporting the Artistic and Creative Life
18: Tom Morgan - Wisdom in the Woo
Tom Morgan is a "curiosity sherpa," writer, and podcaster who runs The Leading Edge, a community for leaders focused on personal transformation and authenticity. I first encountered Tom and his ideas during his talk at Sohn on Iain McGilchrist, left vs. right brain, and curiosity. Tom writes about complexity, curiosity, and consciousness, and wades into the deep end of various topics that most of us would place in "woo," mystic, and spiritual territories. He spent most of his career on Wall Street and brings a scientifically-inclined, rationalist approach to researching and amplifying some of the most surprising modern and ancient ideas about the nature of humanity and the universe. With this conversation, I aimed to create a primer on Tom's writing, approach, and the ideas he returns to most. We discuss following your energy, how curiosity is a guiding force, complexity and emergence, and why the world is overrated toward left-brain rationalism. We explore practical questions—How do you know your gifts? When should you pivot or persevere? What does real exploration look like when the world offers no safety nets? And then we wade into much stranger, or even heretical ideas—at least for a modern, intellectual, western audience—including the notion that consciousness is much vaster than what we've come to understand, and how we are just a small part of a much bigger whole. I hope you enjoy the conversation and consider some ideas that are much more fringe than you're used to. I definitely left it with more questions than answers. And more than that, I hope you are inspired to attune yourself to your curiosity. Perhaps, you may even have the faith to follow that thread pulling you toward what appears today only to be a wall. Transcript and all linked references available at https://dialectic.fm/tom-morgan. Timestamps - 2:03: Following Your Energy and Positive-Sum Games - 6:04: Curiosity and Complexity: Differentiation and Integration - 8:12: Entropy & Syntropy: Unpacking Curiosity, Love, and Desire - 12:34: Emergence and What All the Mystics Point to: Integration - 15:14: Left Brain & Right Brain: A Primer on McGilchrist's "The Matter with Things" - 28:58: Hampton - 30:34: Discovering Your Gifts - 37:35: Creativity and Sustaining Curiosity - 43:12: Life Pivots, Especially When You Aren't 22 - 50:24: A Challenge vs. A Grind: When to Keep Going or Try Something Else - 56:19: Synchronicities - 1:00:58: Openness and Wisdom - 1:04:19: Error Correction, or Something Else? - 1:06:02: Tom's Mission and The Meaning-Mortgage Question: Can you really do what you love? - 1:08:45: Fear, Faith, Love, and Seeing Reality - 1:12:59: "Minimum Viable Woo" and Exploring Out There Topics with a Pragmatic Lens - 1:16:10: Stories - 1:18:51: Love, Emergence, and Intelligence Beyond Us - 1:22:52: A Looming Meta-Crisis, Global Consciousness, and Earth School: Blowing Out the "Woo" Rating - 1:33:41: Lightning Round: Pseudoscience as the Streisand Effect, Mystics, What Would Rattle Tom’s Worldview Most, Joseph Campbell, Fred Again - 1:40:41: Tom's Encouragement for His 20 Year Old Self
17: Alex Danco - Innovation Begins with Gifts
Alex Danco is a writer and Product Director at Shopify. Alex rose to prominence while writing his *Snippets* newsletter while at VC firm Social Capital in 2015. He wrote prolifically—about markets and financial systems, venture capital, startups, cities, culture, the technology-driven shift to a world of abundance, to name a few topics—through 2020, when he joined Shopify. Since then, he's had his hands full with Shopify and young kids, but recently published a flurry of new pieces on his blog while on paternity leave. This conversation starts with one of Alex's most insightful ideas: that a culture of gift-giving underpins technology, innovation, and creative work, and is the key to solving many of capitalism's coordination problems. We then talk about what businesses will look like in a world of abundance: AI agents, massive and accessible infrastructure, and where moats might actually lie. Alex shares why AI-enabled creativity may resemble musicians finding their sound and how and where we might find internet-native subcultures in 2025. Then he explains what "the medium is the message" actually means across different content formats and why audio continues to thrive. We wrap up with Alex's thoughts on the U.S and Canada as someone who identifies with both places and by taking a peek into some of the books that have most influenced his thinking. I've read Alex for years and I've always been impressed by how generative he is. That comes through in this conversation and I hope you are inspired to—like Alex—be more curious, creative, and most importantly, generous. Transcript and all links available at https://dialectic.fm/alex-danco Timestamps - (0:00): Intro to Alex - (1:28): Hampton - (3:23): Steely Dan Intro - (5:31): Coordination Problems and Silicon Valley - (21:55): Girard, Taboos, Priests and Kings, and Magical Enzymes for Creating New Things - (32:22): How Gifts Underpin New Things — Crossing Thresholds and Listening to Each Other - (44:09): Gifts vs. Performance, Gifts vs. Slop - (53:58): Overcoming “The Market for Lemons”: How Gifts and Market Mix and How Silicon Valley Resembles a Music Scene - (1:02:29): Bubbles and Generosity - (1:07:07): Patronage & Alignment - (1:11:37): Coordination in Companies, O-Ring Problems, Michael Scott, and AI - (1:25:51): Agency vs. Accountability - (1:31:54): Wide vs. pointy businesses and What Makes a Platform - (1:39:11): Moats, Leverage, and Figuring Out Your Sound: What Could Sam Altman Not Copy? - (1:50:06): AI, Originality, and Creativity - (1:55:15): Subcultures on the Internet and Frictionless Discovery - (2:00:25): What Does "The Medium is the Message" mean?: Hot & Cool Mediums - (2:11:57): Nixon-Kennedy Debates, Trump, Podcasts, Fox News, and the Decline of TV - (2:25:21): Alex's Podcast Diet - (2:28:52): U.S, Canada, and National Myths - (2:44:23): The Most Influential Books on Alex - (2:56:47): Learnings from Being in a Band - (2:59:05): Scammers - (3:02:55): Being a Dad - (3:05:24): The Best Gift Alex Has Received and the Gift He Hopes to Give
11: Eugene Wei - Amusing Each Other to Death
Eugene Wei is a writer, product thinker, and cultural observer best known for his essays on technology, media, and social networks, including “Status as a Service”, “Invisible asymptotes”, and “TikTok and the Sorting Hat.” Eugene spent seven years at Amazon in its early days before following a brief detour to pursue filmmaking at UCLA. He then led product, design, editorial, and marketing teams at Hulu, co-founded Erly, and worked at Flipboard and Oculus. Today, he works on his own ideas at the intersection of media and technology while advising and angel investing. This conversation explores the evolving landscape of entertainment, social media, community, and humanity in our digital age—topics Eugene has examined deeply. We revisit some of Eugene’s greatest hits on how platforms like Twitter and TikTok shape society and also get into fresh ideas he’s yet to share publicly. We start by discussing how today’s social media world compares to the television-centric world that Neil Postman lamented in “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” and how entertainment-maximizing, adversarial, algorithmic social platforms might lead us to “Amusing Each Other to Death.” Eugene unpacks TikTok’s profound impact on our “digital nervous system,” differentiating between social networks and social media—highlighting the latter’s emphasis on frictionless positivity rather than meaningful connection. Amid rising nihilism among young people, Eugene analyzes how cultural and economic structures contribute to lost hope, exploring social media’s role in exacerbating these trends. We discuss power laws influencing tech, media, sports, and finance, and how that drives pervasive speculation across culture. Then, he traces these themes through American television, from 1960s-1990s sitcoms to shows like The Sopranos, Succession, and Industry, revealing how they reflect the erosion of community and purpose in late-stage capitalism. Throughout, Eugene offers nuanced observations on how technology’s removal of friction has paradoxically weakened our sense of meaning and connection. We wrap up with how AI might shape media and creativity, what elements of humanity may be valued in the future, learnings from Bezos and film school, and a movie recommendation for anyone trying to make sense of it all. Timestamps: - (02:10): Amusing Each Other to Death and "Frictionless Positivity": Neil Postman, TV vs. Social Media, TikTok's Impact - (14:35): Dunking, Quote Tweets, and Proximity to the Other - (19:09): Prisoner's Dilemma of Twitter: Concede or Dunk - (24:52): Is TikTok the Final Form of Social Media? - (31:02): Status Games in the Algorithm Era - (39:02): Technology's Reduction of Friction & Avoiding Confrontation with the Other - (48:45): The Internet's Reversal of Vita Activa and Vita Contempliva - (50:53): Growing Nihilism Toward Online Status Games: If You Don't Capture Attention, You Aren't Relevant Anymore - (55:54): Late State Capitalism's Disappointment, Gen Z Nihilism in US and China, Luigi Mangione, Death of Community - (1:03:01): Speculation Culture and Playing to the Power Law - (1:08:08): NBA, NFL, Netflix, Power Laws, and Distraction-Friendly Viewing - (1:15:55): Playing for Attention: the Only Goal - (1:18:43): Video and Image vs. Text - (1:20:57): The Subconscious of American Culture and the Decline of Community According - (1:32:31): Terminally Online Culture, Role Models, Evolving Search for Meaning - (1:45:23): Friction and the Internet's Impact on Communities - (1:50:50): AI, "The Most Human Human" and Creativity - (1:56:38): Lighting section: Invisible Asymptotes for Social Media and Eugene, and Writing - (2:02:08): Beginner's Mindset, Film School, What Technologists Could Learn from Filmmakers - (2:06:40): What Idea from a Book Would Be Most Compelling to "Transmute" into an Audiovisual Medium? - (2:08:56): Bezos and Removing Friction - (2:11:09): Left Brain vs. Right Brain, Engineering Problems vs. Human Problems - (2:15:07): Why Film is Meaningful and a Recommendation Episode transcript: https://bit.ly/DLCT11
12: Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy (CW&T) - Iterating Together with Time
Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy are the founders of CW&T, a Brooklyn-based studio creating products that exist somewhere between art, design, and engineering. The husband-and-wife team met at NYU ITP and shares a background across industrial design, architecture, computer science, film, including time at Pratt Institute and MIT. They won the 2022 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. They design and manufacture heirloom-quality everyday objects including clocks, pens, tools, and other strange objects that challenge our relationship with time, attention, and materiality. Their most recognizable products include the Pen Type-A, Pen Type-C (my favorite), Time Since Launch (a one-time-use, 100-year timekeeper), and Solid State Watch, a remix of the classic Casio F-91W. Our conversation explores their fascination with time, their commitment to creating heirloom-quality objects in a disposable world, and how they've built a sustainable creative practice on their own terms. We discuss their prototyping-centered approach, the tension between digital and physical creation, and how they navigate collaboration as both partners in life and work. Throughout, Che-Wei and Taylor reveal a philosophy that treats making as its own reward—they create what fascinates them first, trusting that others will connect with their vision. In a world increasingly dominated by disposable products and digital experiences, CW&T offers a refreshing counterpoint: a workshop where physical objects are thoughtfully conceived, meticulously crafted, and built to accompany us through life's journeys. Their work invites us to reconsider our relationship with the objects we use daily and the passage of time itself, offering a refreshing counterpoint to our increasingly digital, ephemeral world. Timestamps - (00:00): Time: a pattern across CW&T’s careers - (11:21): Time Since Launch: the idea of counting up instead of down, and creating personal epochs - (14:11): "Good design is long-lasting,” Durability of Electric Objects - (19:31): Balancing art, product, and design: CW&T's approach to creating strange (but useful) things - (23:51): First Word vs. Last Word Art: Michael Naimark's essay on innovation - (28:01): Death by consensus: Why Che-Wei left architecture, and the joy of creative collaboration - (32:52): Inspiration, Theory, and Self-Evidence - (38:40): Tools: iPhone world, what makes a great tool, and design that optimizes for joy - (44:21): The Hi-Tec-C pen cartridge and remixing what has come before - (48:01): Making physical objects: a case for prototyping and against rendering - (55:41): CW&T’s beloved products - (53:27): ITP, Electrified Objects, Software in Objects - (56:49): Dream Stem: Generative design, openness to new tools, AI's impact on the creative process, and intuition - (01:07:11): The value of friction, and what's lost and gained in the pursuit of efficiency - (01:09:46): CW&T the brand, contemplating CW&T's legacy and purpose - (01:15:24): Kickstarter, owning your audience, and what it would look like to start today - (01:19:35): Partners in life and work, the tension between merging identities and maintaining individuality - (01:25:02): Growth, explore vs. exploit, and learning, dream collaborators, and more resources - (1:33:56): Lighting round: great teachers, New York City focus & serendipity, creative inspirations, CW&T book, nature and green things, morphology and architecture, “form and force,” a gift for children or grandchildren, what to hang onto, - (01:52:07): Timelessness
13: Nabeel Qureshi - The Will to Care
Nabeel S. Qureshi (Website, X, Substack) is a writer, entrepreneur, and former Palantir product lead known for his writing on technology, AI, Palantir, culture, and learning. After a brief hiatus writing and researching and spending nearly a decade at Palantir working across government, healthcare, and intelligence, he's now founding a new company.The first half of the conversation focuses on two big ideas. First: the growth of "slop" across media and culture and how "care" is its opposite. Then: how to think, learn, and understand more deeply across domains over a lifetime. We discuss how both of these sit against the backdrop of AI's rapid challenging of what it means to make and what it means to think.Then we discuss Palantir and "grey areas" that many technologists avoid working on or thinking about, government bureaucracy and DOGE, and how technologists are pursuing and accumulating power. We also chat about Nabeel's idea maze ahead of the new company, art and what it is for, and a range of other topics that showcase how curious, polymathic, and considerate Nabeel is.As the world changes at a breakneck pace thanks to technology and AI, Nabeel embodies a deeply humanistic approach that also accepts change as the default. This conversation inspired me to embrace surprise and strangeness, especially in creativity; to push through the friction and temptation to accept the answers at face value and instead yearn to more deeply understand; and to pursue a life of growth, practice, and care.Full transcript with all linked references available here.Timestamps:(3:21): “The Opposite of Slop Is Care.”(4:15): Defining Slop (14:17): Do We Decide What We Care About? (20:16): Original Seeing and Intimacy as a Path to Care (24:05): Creativity, Craft, and Care in the Digital World and Physical World (28:24): The Human Moat and Practice (32:48): Can AIs Care? (35:52): Understanding Things Deeply and “The Will to Think” (39:52): School: Getting the Answer vs. Deeply Understanding (41:44): High-Dimensional Learning from Simulations (Games) and Reality (the Real World) (48:38): Moving Down from Abstraction: Be Specific (50:49): Karl Popper, Fallibilism, Tyler Cowen, and Fighting Intellectual Inertia (53:00): Slowing Down (56:00): Nabeel's Funnel for Information & Retention (59:18): Spaced Repetition (Flashcards) (1:01:09): Palantir, Duty, and Engaging in Political and Moral Gray Areas (1:07:06): Palantir's Culture of Independent Thinking: People Who Speak Their Mind but Aren't Douchebags (1:09:38): Government Bureaucracy, DOGE, Power (1:14:51): Why Can't Governments Be Better at Error Correction and Healthy Renewal? (1:17:02): Technologists and Power (1:23:47): Nabeel's Next Company and the Idea Maze: “Context Is That Which Is Scarce” (1:27:11): Scientist Brain vs. Founder Brain and Context vs. Details (1:30:17): Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and What Art Is For (1:34:02): Art for Defamiliarization (1:36:00): What Makes Film Special (1:37:15): Depth in Text and Other Mediums (1:40:32): Patterns Across Nabeel's Taste: The Unfamiliar (1:43:11): Lightning Round: Travel (1:44:37): Stories Nabeel Tells Himself (1:45:31): Agency and Being Told What to Do by AI (1:47:49): Negotiation and Creating Optionality (1:50:28): Palantir's Vocabulary (1:53:07): Lessons from Tyler Cowen (1:54:41): Fighting Inertia Key Links (all references available here)"We don't get a lot of things to really care about." (Pig, 2021)The opposite of slop is care. (Tweet Thread)PrinciplesHow To Understand Things Video Games are the Future of Education Notes On Karl PopperReflections on Palantir Dialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms.Join the telegram channel for DialecticFollow Dialectic on TwitterFollow Dialectic on InstagramSubscribe to Dialectic on YouTube
14: Alex Zhang - Curating Cultural Playgrounds
Alex Zhang (https://www.alexzhang.world/) is a cultural curator, community builder, and creative director. Currently, he's Chief Creative Officer of Powder Mountain (https://powdermountain.com/), a where he's working with Reed Hastings to create a globally unique ski experience that combines art, architecture, and lots of fresh tracks. Alex loves people and curating spaces and experiences for them: whether that means parties, music festivals, or mountain towns. He joined Summit Series out of school, throwing large scale events around the world and working on Powder Mountain, a Utah mountain resort the ownership group had acquired. He then joined one of the first social DAOs, Friends with Benefits (FWB) as Mayor/CEO, after being tapped by its founder Trevor McFredries to scale the tokenized social club beyond a Discord Server. He launched FWB Fest, an annual in-person music festival and crypto conference with past performers including James Blake, Charli XCX, and Caroline Polachek. Most recently, he joined Reed Hastings to return to Powder Mountain after [the Netflix co-founder acquired a controlling stake in the resort. Alex leads brand, art, architecture, and marketing. Blending culture, commerce, and "cool" is anything but a science, but Alex has made a career of it. I've known him for a decade and it's been a thrill to watch him continue to find strange intersections, blending worlds like music and tech, crypto and culture, and skiing and art. We talk about this, how to create spaces and events, living in the mountains, large scale art experiences, Christopher Alexander and Jane Jacobs, challenges in creating new cities, learning from Reed Hastings, and a life of deepening one's taste. I hope you enjoy and are inspired to life a more connected, playful, and present life. --- This episode is brought to you by Hampton, a private, highly vetted membership for founders. Hampton makes entrepreneurship less lonely by matching you with a core group of likeminded founders along with community, events, retreats, and more. Visit to learn more and apply: http://joinhampton.com --- Timestamps: - (0:05): Hampton: Dialectic's First Partner - (4:09): Commerce & Culture, Patronage, and Constraints - (12:17): Curating People, Spaces, and Art: "Host Energy" - (19:44): How to Throw a Party or Start a Scene - (27:05): Unlikely Intersections and Authentic Marketing - (35:36): Returning to Powder and Building a Unique Mountain Resort - (42:31): Utah and Mountain Living - (47:27): Randomness & Emergence: Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, and Cities - (52:24): Creating a Digital Feeling of Place - (55:15): Network States and New Cities - (1:00:42): "Community" - (1:08:27): Organic Leadership Opportunities, Partnership, and Trust - (1:15:12): Focused Leadership and The Power of Memetic Language - (1:20:02): Learning from Reed Hastings as a Leader - (1:29:09): Getting into Rooms and Finding Serendipity - (1:32:58): Playfulness and Elon - (1:36:25): Intuition and Career Decisions - (1:39:10): Curating Music and a Life Goal of Refining Taste - (1:42:56): Music's Role in Creating Great Spaces - (1:44:08): Photography - (1:46:02): Beginning, Learning to Ski and Scuba - (1:48:10): Improving Los Angeles and What Makes it Special Links - Powder Mountain: https://powdermountain.com/ - Friends With Benefits: https://www.fwb.help/ - Summit Series: https://summit.co/ - How Music Works by David Byrne: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13235689-how-music-works - Studio 54 (2018): https://letterboxd.com/film/studio-54/ - Storm King Art Center: https://stormking.org/ - Naoshima Island: https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/220/ - Marfa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa,\_Texas - "The world is a museum of passion projects": https://x.com/collision/status/1529452415346302976 - Roden Crater: https://rodencrater.com/ - Christopher Alexander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher\_Alexander - Jane Jacobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane\_Jacobs - The Network State: https://thenetworkstate.com/ - Edge City: https://www.edgecity.live/ - Edge Esmeralda: https://www.edgeesmeralda.com/ - WSA, a Manhattan Office Tower, Becomes an Unlikely ‘It’ Building: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/style/wsa-building.html - Remedy Place: https://www.remedyplace.com/ - WAREHOUSE: https://warehousemotorclub.com/ - Was That a James Turrell I Just Skied By?: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/16/arts/design/reed-hastings-art-park.html) Dialectic with Jackson Dahl is available on all podcast platforms. Join the telegram channel for Dialectic: https://t.me/dialecticpod Twitter / X: https://x.com/dialecticpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialecticpod/ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/40Po3pM Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4hpS4U7
15: D.A. Wallach - Serendipity & Systems
D.A. Wallach is an investor, musician, writer, and polymath. Today he co-runs Time BioVentures, backing frontier life-science and healthcare startups. Before that, he was an investor in in SpaceX, Spotify, Emulate, Beam Therapeutics, and Ripple, among others, and toured the globe as half of Chester French. He also released music as a solo artist and was Spotify’s first Artist-in-Residence. Our conversation moves from engineered serendipity—the art of a well-aimed cold email & surfing the web—to complexity science, the Santa Fe Institute, and what better systems might look like. We dive into markets and medicine: investing with a creative mindset; timing in biotech including CRISPR and GLP-1s; and the tension between free-market innovation and healthcare as a human right. D.A. unpacks how incentives shape everything from venture bubbles to hospital billing and how LLMs might move us closer to a universal standard of care. In the back half we talk creativity, beauty, art, and performance. We discuss whether AI makes us lazy or amplifies originality, DA's many lives across art, tech, and business, and end on his plea for artists to reclaim their throne of "cool". I hope you're inspired by D.A's combination of curiosity and depth and are reminded that you don't have to stay in one lane, regardless of how impressive it might be. Timestamps: - (0:04) Hampton - (1:56) Intro to D.A. - (3:29) Curiosity, Serendipity, and the Power of Cold Emails - (9:21) Web Surfing & D.A.'s Potential One-Man Show - (13:28) Learning to Go Deep: Explore vs. Exploit - (19:18) Complexity Science, EO Wilson - (29:20) What Makes Santa Fe Institute Special? - (33:13) Complex and Bureaucratic Systems: How do you design a good system? And how do you change entrenched systems? - (40:25) D.A.'s Attraction to Markets and the Fed Challenge - (45:19) What Makes a Good Investor? - (48:30) Creativity in Investing, Index Funds, Elon's Take on a Great VC, and Venture Capital's Real Customer - (58:45) What Makes for Commercially Successful Creatives: Doing - (1:05:24) Gene Editing & CRISPR, What "Early" Means in Biotech, and Isolating the Bet You're Making - (1:12:48) GLP-1, Slow Burn Technological Innovation, FOMO, and Bubbles - (1:18:49) Healthcare Incentives: The Tension between Free Market Capitalism and Healthcare as a Right - (1:24:53) Patient Agency, LLMs, and Shifting Away from Paternalistic Doctors - (1:29:02) Progress Toward a "Universal Standard of Care" - (1:32:58) Artificial vs. Natural Intelligence - (1:38:32) Should We Limit Technological Progress? D.A.'s Response to Alarm-Sounding: Focus on Today's Real Problems & Solutions - (1:43:32) How Do You Keep Technology from Making You Creatively Lazy? - (1:52:37) Performance, Fame, and Authenticity - (2:00:27) Beauty As the Primary Motivation - (2:06:17) Multiple Lives, Art vs. Tech & Business, and D.A.'s Plea for the Artists to Revolt - (2:14:04) What Would D.A. Not Stop Doing for $1B? - (2:15:41) Lightning Round: Anonymity, Tyler the Creator, Pharrell - (2:20:04) African Studies at Harvard - (2:22:08) Favorite Jazz Album - (2:23:40) Finding New Music - (2:25:08) LA: The Most Open-Minded City - (2:27:16) What He Hopes to Teach His Young Daughter
16: Anjan Katta - A Sunrise Over Computing
Anjan Katta (https://x.com/AnjanKatta) is Founder and CEO of Daylight (https://daylightcomputer.com/), a new type of computer company. Having a conversation with Anjan is a bit like trying reign in a wild animal: his horsepower, wide-ranging philosophical interests, and unbelievable depth in the areas he cares about make him one of a kind. Fortunately, all of that energy is being channeled into his life's work, Daylight Computer Company. Daylight's mission is to build a computer that amplifies our humanity. That starts with Daylight's first product: The DC1, a tablet that combines the power and functionality of an iPad with the screen of a kindle. Anjan has been building Daylight for seven years across extensive research on screens and hardware, many near deaths, and mission-driven motivation. Anjan sees computers as a "magical medium" that we're in relationship with, unlike other tools. Unfortunately, "optimization of the means, yet confusion of goals" has led the technology industry to building hardware and software that sits in what he calls a "messy medium." With devices that can do anything and everything, they often fail to empower us toward the vision Steve Jobs called the bicycle for the mind. Throughout, Anjan and I discuss a philosophy toward life, career, design, and creating meaning that I hope will inspire you, whether you work on technology or not. May we all aim to get closer to ourselves and our humanity. Transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/anjan-katta --- This episode is brought to you by Hampton, a private, highly vetted membership for founders. Hampton makes entrepreneurship less lonely by matching you with a core group of likeminded founders along with community, events, retreats, and more. Visit https://joinhampton.com/community to learn more and apply. --- Timestamps - (0:04): Hampton - (1:57): Anjan Intro - (3:54): A Bicycle for the Mind and The Computer: Tool or Medium? - (13:15): The Core of the Computer as a Magical Medium: Relationship - (16:39): The Waterslide/fall of Agency and Humanity as Nature's Generalists - (27:35): What drove Anjan to Computers - (33:00): Building the Non-Inevitable and Confronting Silicon Valley's "Optimization of Means, Yet Confusion of Goals" - (39:25): Wandering Toward Daylight: a Computer that Doesn't Feel Like Other Computers - (51:02): Is Daylight paternalistic? The messy middle and the Case Against "sporks" or Sh* tting Where You Eat - (59:51): The Ultimate Messy Medium: The Phone as Our Main Relationship to the World and Starting Over with a More Simple Tool - (1:08:04): A Magical Companion: The Primer, Dynabook, or "Hobbes" - (1:13:31): Starting with Light - (1:17:32): Daylight as "basically Just a Screen" & Applying "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology" - (1:28:18): High Resolution Decision Making: Designing with Intuition and Developing the Right Kind of "Feel" - (1:40:24): The Four Dimensions of Daylight's Vision - (1:58:08): Growing as a Person and a Leader - (2:07:08): Growing Daylight the Company/Organism: Three Principles - (2:12:42): Competition, Scaling Daylight, Why Someone Should Work There - (2:17:45): Lighting Round: Paravel – Interactive Fiction App Developed for Daylight - (2:19:54): The Evolution of Books - (2:21:20): Most Influential Books on Anjan - (2:23:43): Is AI making Us More Human or Less Human? - (2:29:38): Boredom, Authenticity, and Integrity - (2:32:06): Faith and Spirituality - (2:33:04): What Anjan Has Learned from His Parents and What He's Forgiven Them For - (2:34:38): Lilo and Stitch - (2:35:50): The Most Important Thing
