"The person who writes down the thing has tremendous power. Why are hyperlinks blue? Because I like blue. You are kind of a meme lord. You're your best when you're a little bit of a rage. It's actually..."

"in an interview that I thought was fascinating that you're talking about your, it's time to build peace. And you said that you wrote it in a rage. You wrote it in a rage. Tell me about that. So, so th..."

"Was it Hemingway, was it Hemingway said writing, writing is the process of opening a vein and letting the blood spread out of the page. So what happened? Where were you? This is my, my version of that..."

"And then I get the sense that that piece wasn't really edited. I get the sense that like you write it and then you ship it. Really shortly thereafter. Yes. Hopefully, when you say it wasn't edited, ho..."

"Well you're your best when you're a little bit of a rage. I think, I think, I, I believe that's the case. Yes. Like I feel that. I, I feel that. Yes. A little bit of energy. Yes, exactly. Yes. No, a l..."

"And so I try to put it all down. And then I just, and then I try to have that be in some sort of sensible order. And then did you start with it's time to build or was that an emergent property as a ca..."

"So tell me about this reading all day, talking all day, where do you fit that in? Because I was looking at your calendar, at least the one that you published most recently. Yeah, like 30 minutes for r..."

"What's your podcast? To audiobook ratio. So it goes back and forth If I'm going down the rabbit hole on something that I'm, that I'm kind of hoovering up podcasts and YouTube interviews. And, and then..."

"that, I can really go deep on it. Do you have a sense for the kinds of books that you like doing on audio books versus when you're actually reading them? Or are you fairly indifferent to the trade off..."

"I'm either listening to like a book on usually history or biography or something like that. Or some new demand that I'm trying to learn, or I'm like, up to the minute, here's what's happening in AI to..."

"in which every discussion could happen fully in public. Um, and you know, and actually I, you know, I went through my own transformation on this, along with a lot of people. So where Quran would have ..."

"best people together? Yeah. Well, so I think that's part of it. And then I maybe put an orthogonal thing on it also, which is, um, there, there is this well known sort of concept of group polarization..."

"You know, it's funny if I take like a meta view, uh, Yeah. Yeah. The last 10 years of reading your writing, I find this, like this stutteriness between this deep drive that you have to be prolific and..."

"process, for example. So the current arrangement that I have with my partners who love me and I respect them enormously, uh, for helping me with this, um, you know, I, I'm not like an active tweeter, ..."

"Um, was that was the, that was sort of in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. And, you know, we, we had just started the firm and we're working with all these companies and we're looking around and it's ..."

"um, and it was actually a catalyzing moment for me, which is it was because, you know, I, like everybody else, I had tracked the sort of rising hostility on the part of the kind of mainstream press to..."

"that's, that's what they're there for. There are certain like just atomic units of media that just seem to recur over and over in history. Yeah. And it's funny cause they go in and out of fashion, rig..."

"know, primary means of communication. What was the motivation behind your personal blog? It was the same thing. I was like, I had a lot to say. Well, actually a lot, a lot of that. Okay. Frustration. ..."

"to write some of this stuff down. What'd you learn from having Venkatesh Rao around? Breaking Smart is so good. Breaking Smart. He was our first and only philosopher in residence. Uh, which is actuall..."

"why people don't do more. It's the group. It may be a good idea. It's the group dynamic thing. It's like, okay, now you've got more people in the room. Fine, then have three of them. I know, but like,..."

"of a single instance of anybody doing that. They all could be doing that today. Yeah. You know, actually voice, voice recognition is getting really good and what they call disambiguation is getting re..."

"that has ever shipped in the history of the world has bugs. Right. Move fast and break things is not what you want to do for the Brooklyn Bridge. Exactly right. So it's not civil engineering. It's not..."

"of higher level abstractions. Um, that let the programmer basically become more productive. And now you've got a giant change happening in real time, which is the new coding, the old coding interface ..."

"of outlines, um, it's because code effectively takes the form of an outline. Did you teach yourself to go to learn the code? I taught myself to code. I taught myself to code out of a book before I own..."

"So what's the binding constraint on you writing more? Don't tell me time because that, no, no, no, no, I'm telling you, actually, that's not true. Okay. Because you wrote software's eating the world r..."

"living, he's one of the best living fiction writers. Um, and I spent the day with him and, um, and he, at the end of the day, he's, he, he gave me one of those looks. Um, and he's like, you should be ..."

"Exactly. Well, this is funny because this picks up on one of the paradoxes that I've noticed about you. Which is, on one hand, an intense privacy, and on another hand, a desire to be prolific and in p..."

"you know, it's just like every say, it's just like, you know, we, we now intersect in every area of human life and all the big issues that people are worried about. Two things. One quick comment. Some..."

"that once in a while. So that's like an internal version of the essays. Tell me more about your actual writing there. Do you have a process for that, that's similar as you're writing, take a different..."

"is the kind of thing where I feel like everybody knows this and yet nobody, very few people actually act on it, or maybe people don't know it, which is like, the person who writes down the thing has t..."

"is low status. I think if I, yeah, if I were, I don't know if I had this in my career planning or not, but yeah, this is part of my standard reviews to part of my standard advice to kids, which is jus..."

"entire lives in every genre. So the other side of it is like. Where's all the good stuff? Yeah. Like where are the, where are the, you know, super genius, brainiac authors, screenwriters, novelists wh..."

"What's your read on why there's been such stagnation in the quality of comment sections? At this point, you're asking very fundamental questions about human nature. You sort of invented the internet. ..."

"the bad stuff, the missing feature that doesn't exist on the web that we almost got in, but didn't weren't able to get in. So the missing feature was going to be a writing, a writing layer, the commen..."

"there is a on earth too. Um, there are, there's an, there's, there's an entirely different writing environment. How has. Online writing morphed in a way that's different from what you would have expec..."

"believe it was happening when it was happening just because I was so used to the older model. Do you ever read for style or do you only read for content? Um, in practice, I would say I only read for c..."

"is a lot more common artists, right? Like there are at the top of their game, right? Like there are just certain people who are at the top of their game. What, uh, James Elroy. Who's that? James Elroy..."

"into like an incredible, like a, just like complete like paranoia, II. Um, and so that was the, you know, that was their origination of like the Japanese. That was when the Japanese internment camp pr..."

"decisions. Another good thing that David Milch doesn't do along these lines is like everybody's drunk all the time. Right. And, and it's, and if you go back, it's actually been worked on on this. It t..."

"And so the classic example of this was the cutover, actually started I think in England, the cutover from alcohol to tea and then coffee. Caffeine was like, basically that was the catalytic event. The..."

"ever seen Hunter S. Thompson's daily routine? Yes, exactly. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's crazy. It's like wake up at three 15, you know, drink, have whiskey, snort cocaine. And he just, and ..."

"continuous. So how many of these do you have a day? I don't know. All the time. Oh really? Yeah. Nice. Tell me about your office. It seems like you love this place. And the funniest thing about it is ..."

"called Future Garage. Uh, or low or low five. So like trying to get music that is like the right level of interest in this where it gets the buzzing part of the brain to be stable but is not distracti..."

"think we could learn from your partner, Ben, about writing? Oh, so he's an actual, unlike, he's an actual successful A real writer here. He's an actual successful Professional writer. Okay. So now we ..."

"done the whole arc. Um, and so Ben's, Ben's, Ben's reaction to that has been in two forms. One is Ben is as non political as you can possibly get. Uh, Ben's conclusion from watching his father is stay..."

"be good. So I took that as a compliment. What would your writing be missing right now? Oh, so for this one, for this one, I'm trying to have it, this one's, this one is like, this one's like, this one..."

"skipping it or not paying attention to it. So, walk me through the process of how you thought about writing a big piece. Well, it's not done yet, so. Yeah. So, this one is, uh, yeah, so this is the bi..."

"it, it, It was sort of political, um, except references like the glory of war in there and things like that. But, you know, he, of course, had no way to predict, you know, again, it's like 1910 or 191..."

"going for. Like, I'm not, I'm not trying to be like an objective observer. You know, I'm not trying to be the sort of, you know, 30, 000 foot observer of things that are happening. I'm trying to like,..."

"do pretty well. Well, and again, it's the circulation of mediums over time, like short films have always been a thing, but they're not. Have you ever been to a film festival where they do short films?..."

"those people. So I mean, I say Twitter is the most wonderful and horrible thing in the world, right? Like, and, and, you know, everybody always talks about how horrible it is, but it's equally wonderf..."