42: Celine Nguyen - Nurturing Your Mind in Public

[00:00] People want to make things, the more things they consume. I think fan fiction, which I have a deep love for, it's like people read this work that inspires them so much. They feel so moved by it that they're just like, I have to write about this. A lot of fan fiction writers end up becoming novelists themselves. You say, as a human being, intellectual discovery and gratification are your birthright. The term birthright for me indicates that it is something that everyone should do. Like, not just if you're a scholar, not just if you're an academic or a critic or a journalist, [00:30] worldview.

This newsletter titled No One Told Me About Proust, and it was my argument for [00:35] There's this great work with modernist literature. It's 3,000 pages long. I think this is one of the best books I've ever read. And I want to make a case for it that is not like, oh, this is a very important book. This is very long. This must be read. And what I want to do is transmit a love for literature, but kind of in a new market context or to people who are socialized with different values.

So I was kind of like, you know what people love today? They love gossip. They love understanding the weird intricacies of people's sexual and romantic lives. Proust has that. [01:05] 3,000 pages. I think there are certain things where it's like the reason you put them off is because you have overthought them or they are so kind of like psychologically load-bearing. You're afraid of failure. You're afraid of getting things wrong. And so sometimes the only way you can start those things is by seizing the moment and being very impulsive. Being impulsive and being spontaneous is actually a skill.

And also like you might choke up if you try to plan it out more. So it's like you're understanding your own psychology and you're like the only way I will do this thing, [01:35] Welcome to Dialectic episode 42 with Celine Nguyen. I discovered Celine by way of her writing. She wrote a piece at the tail end of last year called Writing is an Inherently Dignified Human Activity. And in it, she makes the case that writing, reading, cultivating a life of the mind is something that all of us should aspire to.

[02:05] for developing almost a personal curriculum of sorts to spend her nights, weekends, mornings, studying literature, writing, and persuading people to spend more time paying attention to it. Celine also takes criticism very seriously, and the way she writes about [02:21] literature, whether it be lighter things or very heavy things like Proust, as an example, is amazing. I'm not sure I'm ready to take the plunge just yet, but I was fairly persuaded. Celine has a great piece on the idea of research as a leisure activity. It's sort of this self-developed curriculum for growing, for learning, for expanding yourself.

We had a conversation about all of this, both the consumption side and also the writing and the persuading side of things. We had a fun [02:51] She is parasocially convincing people to care more about writing and reading and to do so with... [02:57] rigor and with intensity. And she makes a strong case that you can expand the market for the things you care about, especially if they are more virtuous. It's exciting to imagine a world where more of us, whether or not you create content about it or not, are taking our intellectual developments as seriously as we might take other hobbies or professional life or personal life.

And what I really love about Celine's approach is she writes about it and talks about it in a way [03:27] hour or 10 in a week to spend time on things like this. I feel quite grateful that I get to do this with Dialectic. And even so, I think I was quite inspired by Celine that I can be much more deliberate about my own intellectual growth. And that, by the way, this can be really fun as much as it can be important too. I hope you're inspired to, first of all, read more of Celine's writing.

She writes her sub-stack, Personal Canon, as well as literary criticism all over the place. And I [03:54] dive deeper into the amazing richness that comes from exploring great writing and exploring great ideas. Whether they are 3,000 word novels written 100 years ago, or simply whatever you can get your hands on to start exploring. As always, the transcript and all the links will be available on my website, fm, in this case, slash Celine-Nuin. And if you enjoyed the episode, please give it a like, thumbs up, five stars, wherever you are, and please subscribe.

All that [04:24] receive new episodes in the future. I'd also like to thank Notion, who is the presenting partner of Dialectic. There's a cool moment in this episode where Celine brings up Notion, her former employer, she was a product designer there, and is doing so in the context of sort of my criticism that technology actually, technologists tend to lack historical context or attunement to that, to references to what came before. And she rightfully points out that there are technologies and technology companies who do, Notion certainly being one of them. I think the way that Ivan and the team [04:54] to a lineage of everyone from Alan Kay to other folks exploring how these tools can be a bicycle for the mind, how they can expand us.

And it was really cool to have Celine bring that up. I think it's worth calling out that Celine and I spent some time in the conversation talking about tools and note-taking and systems. And she rightfully points out that the most important thing is the actual work, whether that's your published output of a blog post you're writing or an essay or something. And I think it's been cool to see how Notion as a tool has evolved in the right direction [05:24] their Notion databases as remarkable, encyclopedic, super complex note-taking systems. But I also appreciate how Notion has really leaned in in the past year, year and a half or so, focusing on helping you do the most important work and expand on it, get it published, get it shipped, whatever that might be, and spend a little less time with all of the tinkering.

Thanks to Notion AI and Notion Agents, as well as redesigns like the new Sidebar, they've really made it a lot easier to [05:54] As much as I love to tinker and explore tools like this, it's really great to use a tool that has, from a value standpoint, an orientation towards actually helping me focus on things. [06:04] the real work and not all of the infinite ways I might be able to optimize things. If you haven't explored Notion in a while, I would highly recommend you check it back out. You can find more at

com slash dialectic. With that said, here's my conversation with Celine Nguyen. [06:19] Celine Wynne. [06:21] Thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm very excited. Live in London. Many things to speak with you about today. I think I want to start with... [06:29] Something that we chatted about the first time we met and that people [06:32] one is one of the things I really admire about the way you have created this kind of [06:37] thing you do online and in your life, which is for lack of a more precise term, cultivating a life of the mind.

I have a quote from you to start us off. You say, as a human being, [06:51] Intellectual discovery and gratification are your birthright. Nothing is more worthy and more self-actualizing than taking your interests seriously and pursuing them as far as you can go. So I want to ask, what is so virtuous about pursuing this life of the mind? [07:11] Uh, [07:11] It's so interesting to hear you read that back, because I remember when I wrote those words, I had this feeling of like, maybe there's something pretentious about the lofty language of saying like intellectual activity, intellectual fulfillment is your birthright.

But I think I also feel very strongly that. [07:28] I don't know how to describe it. It is so meaningful to draw from your own subjective experience and draw from all the things you've learned and encountered in the world and kind of construct a worldview. Like I think with everyone has within them some kind of philosophy for what they think is right about how they treat others, how they treat themselves, what meaningful work is. And I think that kind of constructing a life, you're constantly taking in inputs to learn more about your own point of view.

And then articulating that out is just, [07:57] maybe the most meaningful thing people can do. And I also think it's something that, I mean, the term birthright for me indicates that it is something that everyone should do, like not just if you're a scholar, not just if you're an academic or a critic or a journalist, or these people who are conventionally seen as intellectuals, but everyone has a right to participate and kind of produce their intellectual worldview. [08:20] Why is the, I think almost everyone would relate to the [08:25] again, for lack of a better way of putting it, like consuming art, like, or some kind of, [08:30] whatever.

Um, [08:32] cultural information or intellectual information, whatever. But you added that second part, and I think that's obviously something that you seem to care a lot about. In your context, reading and writing. Why is adding something back so important? [08:46] Well, I think some of it is... [08:50] Well, I have this kind of instinctual explanation, which is just I think people want to make things the more things they consume. So I think fan fiction, which I have a deep love for as a kind of genre of work, it's like people read this work that inspires them so much.

They feel so moved by it that they're just like, I have to write about this. I'm full of ideas. I'm like, what if this character did this? Or like, what if, you know, what if this thing happened instead? [09:20] because I think people see them as lesser forms of creativity, but I see it as like, someone is responding to this work, and then kind of like doing this like small accessible thing. And then that builds the framework for them doing these bigger things. Like a lot of fan fiction writers end up becoming novelists themselves.

A lot of people who just start by tweeting like, oh, I love this essay. It really spoke to me. Eventually, they're like, wow, I really liked all these essays. Like, I really love this quality. Yeah, yeah. And [09:48] I think like when you find things in the world that you admire or even things where you're like, this could be a bit better. At some point, you're like, what would it mean for me to actualize my standards and for me to produce something? So I think very naturally people. [10:00] consume things than they try to create and i generally feel that people need more encouragement to go from the kind of like tentative bits of creation to the like okay no i'm taking it seriously i'm not just going to like doodle something or like draw something uh that's inspired by someone else i want to create my own new work and they kind of grow their ambitions that way i love that you brought up fan fiction too because it's one of the most um

[10:26] like egalitarian or like, um, accessible forms of creation or like, or like wide forms of creation. And I also think there's something telling that like, [10:36] it usually is plugged into these incredibly popular immersive worlds, you know, Harry Potter, whatever, Star Wars, that, [10:43] to your point, are just so enamoring to people that they... [10:49] Like, [10:49] are they're, they're sucked in to use that metaphor again. I want to, I want to talk about a specific kind of cut on a lot of what you just said, which is, [10:57] Creating a scaffolding for yourself.

First, you say this is the about page of your newsletter. Personal Canon. This is a newsletter about trying to live a meaningful, intellectually engaged, self-actualized life. It's about how to take your intellectual, artistic and literary aspirations seriously, as we were just talking about, especially when you're no longer in school or academia, but have an urgent, unstoppable desire to keep on learning, making growing. [11:22] There's a second quote you have on autodidacts, which I liked what you say. I truly think that autodidacts are responsible for all that is good and great about alternative culture or in the discourse of our times, people with, quote, autistic special interests.

But I kind of hate that term as it implies the desire to autodidactically develop expertise in a field and share it with others is an unusual desire instead of a deeply human one. And there's two, I think. [11:46] thread from each of those. First, the comment about academia, which is obviously everyone has a version of quote unquote, a life of the mind, or at the very least a kind of a structured learning for some amount of time. And then they graduate high school or they graduate college or they graduate grad school and they're spat out and like, it's kind of over.

And you're like, oh, I'm in the real world. And the real world is not constructed around pure intellectual fulfillment. Correct. There's no curriculum. And so I think the thing I'm quite interested in is [12:16] and how he writes about the early lives of geniuses. This is something Henrik writes about, too. I've talked about with him, where they have this, a lot of things. They have crazy tutors, and they have all these things. But a huge part of it is actually their sort of self-directed exploration and study. And... [12:30] You seem to be really, however implicit or explicit, [12:34] Deliberately creating somewhat of a curriculum for yourself to become the intellectual person you want to be.

[12:42] I'd love to just hear you talk about [12:45] what you've learned about doing that. Obviously, it's not always super explicit. And sometimes it's just you have the newsletter as a container. But what is it like to kind of think about creating something like a curriculum for yourself? [12:56] Mmm. [12:58] Okay, I... [13:00] I feel like it was not a very structured process. So this is sort of me trying to [13:04] maybe reflect over the last five to ten years and be like how did i get started with this [13:09] I think a lot of it came about because...

[13:12] So I remember right after undergrad, [13:14] I had a really long train commute. I was on the train like two hours a day, and I needed some way to fill out the time. And this is really silly, but I didn't want to pay for a more expensive phone plan. So I had four gigabytes of data for a month. And so I was like, I can't spell on Instagram all the time. Okay. So this was... [13:30] This is like 2016? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I was like, I need to do something that's like loads data.

Could be data limited. Like I haven't thought about being media. Anyway. Yeah. So out of constraints arise creativity. It was like text very, very cheap. I can just download a bunch of Kindle books and spend my train commute that way. Wow. But I think I also felt this. [13:52] I think a lot of my early learning experiences were driven out of insecurity, frankly, where I had kind of left undergrad feeling like feeling the strong sense that there are so many things I didn't understand that were unfinished that I, you know, I hadn't had this kind of fully realized intellectual experience I wanted to have.

[14:10] You also notably did not study literature or English. No, I did not. So I studied computer science and communication design. But yeah, my courses were very focused on the craft side of it and the technical side of it. I was obsessed with the history side of things, like the history of computer science and programming languages, the history of graphic design, aesthetic theory. But I hadn't gotten that much into those areas in undergrad. [14:40] Thank you. [14:40] This was also, you know, when Trump was running for president the first time.

And so there are a lot of conversations happening around like, what is the nature of American democracy? What is the nature of political polarization? And I had this strong desire to kind of historicize those things a little bit and understand like, what is new about our time versus like, what is maybe this continuous kind of like thrust of like political change and discourse happening over the course of the 20th century to the present. [15:10] as much as they wanted to about the world. I want to stop you for a second.

A lot of people had a swell around something like Trump is a great example. And most people... [15:19] were [15:21] incredibly reactive and like very like trapped in the, [15:25] present for lack of a better term and freaking out on Twitter and all like obsessively following everything. [15:34] Why do you attribute that impulse to be like, I want to contextualize this in like that is a much, much wiser perspective to have when you were 23 or 22 or whatever. Like, I'm curious if there is anything, maybe that's just something you've always done.

And you've always had an inclination towards the historical. Yeah. [15:53] I don't know. I think I... [15:56] I think I feel really, I feel an internal discomfort if I don't fully understand something. So I feel like when people invoke terms like totalitarianism or fascism, I'm like, wait, what does that mean? And when people do these debates where like this is or isn't fascism, I'm like, how do you tell? [16:12] So I think there's this kind of like... [16:14] Maybe like meticulousness or anxiety. You do the reading. I mean, there's a meta theme that will come up over and over again, but you are definitely someone who does the reading, actually.

But I think even in a non-political domain, it's like I am really obsessed with like runway and like high fashion stuff. And then when I read, people say things like, oh, this designer just took over at Christian Dior and he's kind of remixing the codes from the early Christian Dior culture collections. And like, what are those codes? What do they look like? [16:44] website where they have a lot of the Met Museum publications from the Costume Institute. They're researching fashion designers and their early histories, and you can download PDFs. And I remember scrolling through them just to understand what was happening.

[16:58] in the post-war era that influenced fashion design today. So I think I'm always obsessed with like going back and understanding what people are referencing. [17:06] This is a theme that's come up with a few people that I maybe have talked about with other guests is – [17:11] I think technology and fashion are interesting on this axis to compare because they're opposite ends of the spectrum of how much they have to innovate or how much innovation is happening. And so what I mean by that is like technology. [17:26] largely new to new science.

It's just like new innovation is just coming out of the faucet. And as a result, [17:32] you don't really have to look backwards very much because there's just like truly useful new novelty. And fashion is the opposite of the spectrum where like there's very little actual innovation. And thus everyone in fashion is like deeply ingrained with references and historical context and going back to the Dior thing from the 60s or whatever. And I do think that's something that... [17:52] you [17:53] is in shorter supply on the internet now broadly and certainly in shorter supply in the like technology kind of circle end of the world.

[18:01] Okay, this is Billy... [18:03] This is interesting because I actually I almost disagree with you. And OK, here's here's my reason for why. One is that I think some of the best technologists working today are actually very saturated in historical references. I think that Notion, for example, I know this is like a sponsor, but I also work there. Yeah. [18:22] I don't know, I have a deep affection for the company and its origin story. I think so much of Notion's history was shaped by the fact that the founders really cared about understanding, like early computing ideas and understanding, you know, what are all these visions of technology and computers and the Internet and how they shape our way of thinking that were not realized in the past?

And can we use new technological opportunities now to actually realize them? So I think some of the best technologists actually really understand the past and really understand it as a source of innovation. [18:52] And I would say with fashion, I mean, one of the interesting things about fashion is that there's this built in structure for novelty where like classically every fashion house has to produce two runway collections a year. It's the fall, winter and the spring, summer. So everyone who works in fashion, they're truly on the grind. [19:10] You know, they have to constantly come up with new ideas and they have to constantly figure out this tension of like, we're supposed to like, you know, maintain something about the brand DNA, the house DNA.

We need to continue things forward. But then also we need to come up with a new idea. [19:24] This is a great point. I think we probably agree... [19:29] I appreciate you checking me. First of all, I think we probably actually agree more than, [19:33] it may sound like. I also think like, I guess part of what I'm really trying to drive at is that, um, [19:39] Maybe I just don't know enough about fashion, but... [19:41] Uh, uh, [19:43] Coming up with new things typically involves archive diving. Yeah. Because you can't, maybe Gore-Tex happens or whatever, but there's actually very little new substrate in there.

[19:55] in fashion. I think you're right, by the way, about some of the best technologists doing this, but I don't think it's... [20:00] super culturally embedded like p and part of what i mean is even just like maybe we're going way too off track here but like even just um [20:09] in terms of how people talk about things. Yes, there is certainly a class of human-minded lineage of Alan Kay, whatever. And I'm really gravitated. There's people I've talked to a lot of product designers, but like, I don't think that's common.

And I certainly don't think most technologists are running around talking about all their references. And I do think maybe it's a little bit almost surface level, but I do think that's much more common in other things, whether it be fashion or art or so on. I think to your point, [20:37] Technology would really benefit if there were more people like Ivan or whatever. Yeah, maybe to try and synthesize. There's almost this sense of like the default mode in technology is you're only looking at the future. And the default mode in many other domains.

Like I think literature is definitely that. Like fashion is definitely that. You kind of privilege the past and you privilege tradition by default. Yes. Like in... [21:00] In fashion, if you say like, oh, our brand has been around for 100 years, that's assumed to be good. In technology, if you're like, this company has been around for 100 years, people are like, so they were probably better in the past. You're so it's so right. And they're irrelevant now. Right. So I think maybe like. [21:16] Whatever discipline you're in, it's always worth figuring out almost what is the default orientation towards the past, present and future?

And like, where can I find this edge? Is the edge in like finding the historical references? Is the edge actually being really optimistic about the future when everyone else is kind of afraid of it? And it's like, let's sit down. I love that frame a lot. [21:33] It's also so true. It's like, yeah, literally, brand in general, like areas that prize brand, it's like the more Lindy, the better. Totally. Anyway, I diverged us, but you were talking about kind of like... [21:49] building the early beginnings of being able to sort of maybe in an unstructured way form this curriculum for yourself.

You were talking about kind of post-college. [21:58] Oh, yeah. I don't know if there was another thought there. Oh, yeah. So I put myself on this grind of like, I was commuting for two hours a day, five days a week. I was just like churning through Kindle books. The San Francisco Public Library was just full of really, really good books. And oh, the other thing about a lot of public libraries is that you can request the books that they don't have. You can just submit a little form. So I feel like I was constantly looking around and like, I'd read a book.

I would go into the notes. [22:28] referencing and be like, okay, maybe I should read these people and these people and these people. So you start with a single entry point, which is maybe a book that someone tweets about, and maybe they're doing this kind of condescending way. It's like, everyone would understand the world better if only they understood this book. Because I am very easily chastised as a person. And I'm so like, I don't know, I think I have this positive form of intellectual insecurity where I'm always, or maybe epistemic humility, where I'm always like, okay, I don't know [22:58] on that.

I have to understand what's happening. And then I'll read that book. I'll read the books that [23:02] You're like nerd snipeable in this domain. Maybe it's a way. Pretty much so. Yeah. And I can just like enter into these like weird little funnels where right now I'm reading a lot about Taoism. And I don't really know how it ended up here. But this has been like the theme of my Q1. I wish you were reading Zhangji. I was going to recommend you. The author Ken Liu has a new translation of the Tao Te Ching.

Okay, cool. Ken translated part of the three body problem. Oh my God. I think I have a galley copy in my email inbox. It's all from the publisher. I should read it. [23:32] He splices in Zhuangzi essays and other things, and he'll just kind of write random side notes. It's a very, like, this isn't that deep kind of trend. He takes it seriously, but he doesn't take the whole part of it. The playfulness. Yes, which is nice when you're engaging with them. [23:50] Anyway. [23:51] Yeah, I do think a key part of having your curriculum for yourself is actually being very playful and lighthearted.

[23:57] Because I think something that maybe stops people from kind of cultivating their own intellect or education is this kind of like, maybe like neurotic rigidity where they're sort of like, I have to learn things the right way. I have to start with the right text. I need to have the right opinions and the right interpretations. And that's very scary. And it also prevents you from kind of almost like responding to a work and being like, OK, everyone says this book is good, but what if I don't get it? And what if that's not a sign that I'm dumb, but it's just a sign that the prose quality

[24:27] written for specialists and it's not accessible. What if I want to read about this thing that everyone says is kind of pointless, but for some reason I'm drawn to it and I'm having some response. And if I take my interest seriously, I can understand the nature of that response. I think just being like very playful and just kind of instinctual in a way, like very spontaneous, which is very much, I think, a Taoist, like Zhuangzi thing as well. It's just like, you're interested in this thing, just like channel in that direction.

[24:53] A version of this, or at least a part of this, that I think relates very much to what you just said is this amazing idea. I don't know if you quite, I think it maybe actually comes from that Arena channel, but it's research as a leisure activity. Carly in the Arena channel. There was this bit where you said, I find myself turning this phrase, research as leisure activity, over and over again, especially as I plan out what I want to read this summer, what I want to write, and who I want to be at the end of the season.

[25:23] um [25:25] First of all, like, yeah, what is that planning like? [25:27] Um, to the extent it does become more structured, explicit. And then I'm very specifically interested in what goes into like who I want to be at the end of the season. [25:36] Okay. [25:37] Okay, well, a few thoughts on this. One is that [25:39] I am always coming up with very elaborate plans and then they completely dissenter your head. That's the point. Time passes. Yeah. It's like the plan is this kind of like you plan in order to daydream, to set an intention, but then you have to be responsive to what happens as time passes.

And so at the beginning of this year, maybe I was like, I want to read a lot more poetry because I think poetry is the place where you have the greatest compression of poetry. [26:04] I guess like style and information. That makes sense. Like with poetry, like every word is chosen so deliberately that there's like no chance for, I mean, [26:14] There's not really any fluff. There's a lot of decision making involved. There are all these like small aesthetic encounters that can happen just in terms of like a poet breaking a line at a certain place.

[26:24] And I just wanted to understand more what it means that like that level of [26:29] discipline and style at this very deep craft level so i was like i should read more poetry and then i wanted to read more about like chinese philosophy and the zhuanze but that was just because a friend gave me a copy of the zhuanze as a birthday present so i was like okay i guess i'll read that and i became quite obsessed [26:44] Um, [26:46] I think... [26:47] I think a lot of these plans start out with some intention, like the poetry thing.

There's this plan of like, I want to become a certain kind of writer. And so I think this is the direction that will help. I think there I think nonfiction plans are maybe a little bit easier to understand this framing of who you want to be. Like a lot of the nonfiction plans. [27:06] reading I have right now, I think, is thinking about this question of [27:10] This sounds so lofty, but right now we're in this moment of incredible technological change in a people. Associated with that are all these concerns people have around what an ideally equitable future looks like.

And last year, I was very interested in what this looks like in an artistic and creative context. [27:40] models available. So I'm very interested in this question of like, what do we want the future to look like at a time of technological upheaval? [27:48] And in order to answer that, I'm like, OK, look at the Victorian era and how people thought about the Industrial Revolution. I could think about. [27:56] There's this book called Inventing the Future that talks about like why have left political movements failed to fail to achieve their aims?

And like, what would an alternative path look like that embraces technology and progress instead of kind of clinging on to the past? [28:12] I don't know. It's just like there are these questions or there are [28:16] these intellectual questions or these kind of like very craft-based, skill-based concerns. And from there, I can kind of assemble like, oh, these are the books I've heard about. These are the sources. These are the historical periods or ideas or intellectual traditions. And I just put that in like an Apple Notes or something, or I journal extensively about it.

And I text all my friends and I'm like, I'm thinking about this. If you have any resources, let me know. And then two or three weeks in, I like start reading something random. And there's a part of my head that's like, [28:46] and maybe I complete like a quarter of it or something, but I'm also constantly being distracted in a productive way by new ideas. [28:55] The specific language of who I want to be at the end of the season is like, a lot of people are like, I got to get more educated.

Maybe at the point we were talking about earlier, or maybe I should have more curriculum or I should study more. I should do the research. Even part of that answer, it's like you were kind of describing like things you wanted to get more up to speed on or more educated on. [29:16] to be. [29:17] Mmm, yeah. [29:18] Well, I guess the who I want to be part is... [29:23] So I should say, I think my most embarrassing reading trait is that I love self-help books. I've probably read like every bad to good self-help book out there.

Although I think of this genre as very capacious. So I'm reading right now, the mathematician Bertrand Russell has this book called The Conquest of Happiness. And I would say it is his self-help book about maybe like his approach to mathematics, but also his understanding of what makes for a happy and meaningful life. [29:49] I think you've made the point, by the way, that philosophy, what's the point of philosophy? It's to help you live a better life. Yeah. There's a lot of philosophy that's around these metaphysical questions of what is truth?

What is beauty? But then the parts that are like, [30:04] We have this one life. [30:05] It's for many of us briefer than we want. The people we love in our lives, not to be morbid, but we have very limited time with them and we don't know how long that will be. So. [30:15] it really, really matters how you spend your time. And it really, really matters what kind of person you are and all of your actions and your behaviors and in the things you're trying to produce in the world.

[30:26] I think this question of self is... [30:30] I don't know. [30:32] This kind of feels like this aspect of... [30:35] I'm trying to describe this thing that is so innate to how I view the world that I'm struggling to come to... It's like a tacit knowledge kind of shaped thing almost. Yeah, or this kind of implicit assumption that structures my life of like... [30:51] I think life is about continual self-cultivation. And so learning is definitely one of the most powerful ways to do that. I think another thing is thinking seriously about what impact you want to have on other people.

[31:05] And that can be in a large scale way, but that can just even be in a small way of like, [31:10] I don't know, like you you compliment someone, you like give someone a very sincere compliment of like, I don't know you. I read your blog posts. I thought this was really meaningful and this was really profound. Everyone is looking to be seen and kind of understood for their ideas, their point of view. And that feeling of recognition is very valuable. [31:29] And so I think that one of the best ways to relate to yourself and to relate to others is to constantly be developing your intellect, which is a way of developing your relationship to others, your relationship to the world and how you want to act.

And to yourself. Yeah. I don't know if that's too cheesy. I don't think it is at all. Yeah, that's really lovely. [31:48] on the kind of noted research specifically, you talk about [31:52] Um... [31:53] You're kind of comparing it to research in the academic sense or the whatever scientific sense. You say as much rigor as necessary. [32:02] How do you attune to how much rigor is necessary? [32:07] Ooh. [32:08] It's all made up. Like, it's just for you. So, like... [32:11] Yeah, so I think sometimes... [32:14] There's like a very classic [32:16] definition of rigor, which maybe occurs out of an academic discipline, which is like, in order to rigorously understand something and do research in that domain, you have to have done, in the humanities, it's often like five to seven years of a PhD.

You need to have read like it's [32:31] the 200 most important books in your discipline. [32:35] I think that that is obviously a very important form of rigor because it produces a kind of specialist knowledge that is not possible without that background. And then there's another form of rigor where it's like, [32:47] If you are someone who... [32:49] you know, is really interested in a certain historical period or a certain philosophy, your goals may be different than someone who's publishing an academic paper. And what you may want to do is just like be really rigorously thoughtful about like quoting the parts that most that you're most interested in and summarizing a book or an argument that you're drawing from.

And you want to be extremely precise with language when making your own claims. But you might not need to do this thing of like, oh, I need to like survey 200 [33:19] or something. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just like, [33:23] I think people can land at the wrong level of the rigor axis, if that makes sense, where it's like maybe they pressure themselves into thinking they need to do like a super high level rigor for something where the audience, the aims, the impact that making the work will have on themselves.

You just don't need to be that intense about it. And then some people can be like. [33:42] I mean, frankly, quite sloppy. I'll just start this argument, but I won't define my terms. [33:46] So just calibrating the right level of rigor for your intended objective. Yeah, and I guess over time you're building, on that last point, you're building more of a sense of when you are being sloppy or when you're taking the shortcut or whatever. [33:58] Yeah. [33:59] There's another part of this, which is like, I think interesting in the backdrop we were talking about earlier and wanting to always kind of go back into the historical context and so forth.

We were talking about how relevant something should be almost. You say, I'm convinced that research should respond in some way to matters of urgent concern today. And then separately... [34:17] You were talking to Jasmine Sun about there was this segment of the conversation. We're talking about like the ways we can get caught up in these sort of like artificial trends that come from TikTok and places like this. I think you call it you framed it as a bait for cultural criticism, like bots listening to music. And like, is this a real trend?

Like, is this really happening? It feels like it's going to increasingly happen. I think you said it was like almost like pro wrestling, like we're conscripted into this fantasy of like a thing happening. And so. [34:44] especially as someone who's like going way back and reading all this kind of historical literature or whatever, and who is grounded in all these things that we were just talking about. This is very relevant. Like what is inside that original statement of like, [34:56] research oriented towards urgent matters of today without getting like lost in this [35:00] I guess it's a question about balance, basically.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. [35:05] Well, I... [35:06] This is a big question, but I have some maybe like provisional thoughts or inroads in. [35:12] One thing is that I think so, I think of intellectual labor as a very social practice. I think there's this idea that to do intellectual labor, you have to retreat to a cabin in the woods or you have to like retreat to the proverbial ivory tower. And like thoughts just kind of come directly from like your mind out into the world. Walden Ponding. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I just feel that the best intellectual work is actually highly relational and highly networked.

[35:42] or like trading ideas or like kind of encountering this like big ferment of other people's innovations. And then they use that to drive their own. And I think because I believe in intellectual work as social, I also think that it and social and embedded in human relations, I also think that has to be embedded in the relationship you have with other people today. And in doing so, you think about like, what are the concerns that other people have in their lives? What are they worried about? What are they anxious about?

What are they excited about? [36:12] that the best way to do work that really resonates i mean i've been talking so much about history but like the thing that resonates is bringing history into the present or like taking these kinds of like [36:22] ideas that seem like they're just trapped in a book, they're a little bit more abundant, and connecting them to something that people care about now. [36:29] I actually have a great example of this. And I think it also gets at this question of like, how do you do like cultural criticism or like on trend writing that's like a little bit more grounded?

[36:40] There's this political scientist, Henry Farrell, who I really, really love. I think he's so brilliant. I love his newsletter. But I think this was like a year or a year and a half ago when Elon Musk was just like running a mock on Twitter. [36:59] be seen as such a genius when he also seems a little bit childish online. And Henry Farrell kind of made this point where he was like, Elon Musk is a prophet trying to do a priest's job. And he talked about how founders are often people who have this intense charisma and this original thinking.

And that's [37:17] is what makes them successful at starting things. But then there's a different kind of skill set needed to like run things or just like be good at like PR and comms. And that's a much more... [37:27] you're a little bit more cautious, you're a little bit more safe. I think this kind of, to me, this is the more interesting framing of the founder mode. Yes. Debate that was happening around that time. But Henry Farrell said he was drawing from this book by the sociologist Max Weber, which is about the routinization of charisma in the...

[37:47] Christian church and all these like early religious structures where you have a prophet who is intensely charismatic. And then you have all these people that come after and turn that original kind of, you know, like that original movement into something that's very durable, mass for centuries. But to me, that's so cool. It's like, who is reading Max Weber directly? But now because Henry Farrell is connecting that to like, you know, what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter today. And it's not a gimmick either. Like that makes so much sense.

That's like such [38:17] I was so excited. I was like, wow, I need to get into sociology. I need to get into Max Weber. Like when you can also take the past or like take these ideas and make them relevant to the present, you're kind of. [38:28] infusing the culture, I think, with a love for learning and a desire to, like, go to those sources and learn more. So I think it's also a beautiful way to transmit, like, what research and intellectual inquiry can do. [38:41] It's also a way to be very...

[38:44] as you said, like grounded in, in what's real and, and, um, and paying attention and attuned to the real things that are happening to real people, but not be like trapped in this [38:54] utter reactivity that feels like it dominates so much of our, like when you, when you live your life through a screen, it's just like, [39:00] it's like my like i have when i'm on twitter brain i literally have to like downshift for 20 minutes to be able to read a book because my mind's just like buzzing and your nervous system is very activated because you're going like idea after idea after idea it's like very much the neil postman amusing ourselves to death thing where it's like you're constantly shifting between topics the serious the name and you should calm yourself down one and it turns out actually that mode is not very effective before we started talking recording we were talking about effectiveness and it's like [39:30] or this kind of weighing between...

[39:34] the ideological, almost the emotional of like caring a lot about what's happening, but not like getting sucked in too much that you can't really do anything about it. And I think that like that just rules so much of the – [39:46] the social media mindset is like, what? [39:49] And by the way, I love that you made the point up front, which is like it's not also about like going up to the ivory tower. [39:55] And like... [39:56] It's including yourself. Yeah. Yeah. There's this Nabil was tweeting about something, Nabil Kreshi, about like comparing all the AI stuff now to like Rome research and the whole kind of like over optimizing of tools and processes and stuff.

[40:26] you to synthesize and integrate. It's like a reply to that. You say, in 2021, I updated my Zettelkowski every day. In 2026, I barely touch it because I externalized most of my notes in public-facing writing. [40:38] I love it. It's like such a just good reminder. But yeah, like what, how has the writing changed how you read and take notes? [40:49] Okay, well, I really I will try to connect this to effectiveness, which we were discussing before. So [40:55] So maybe some context. So in 2020, I made the decision, which seemed kind of [41:01] dumb or risky at the time, but I think was so intellectually satisfying, which is like, I quit my job, which was in tech.

I went to art school to study history. And in the run-up to that, I was like, okay, I know very little about history. I've never taken a serious college-level history class. I need to prepare myself. And so the month before I began, and then throughout my MA program, I was just taking so many notes. And I was doing them in Notion. And I was just being very meticulous about, I'm going to color code the different themes. I'm going to, like, [41:31] organize like different pages for like this topic, this topic, this term definition, stuff like that.

I'm going to link between pages. So I had this very neurotic note taking system. And I think at the time I'd come across, you know, there's this guy, Sanke Aarans, who has this book titled How to Take Smart Notes. And I think that's what really popularized this SettleCaston idea of like, you take a lot of these like, little atomic notes, and then you try to figure out the themes and the connections between them. [41:59] One of the interesting things about his book is that he talks about a specific scientist or no, sociologist, a scientist.

[42:07] Nicholas Lerman, I think, who used the Zettelkasten system to just be incredibly prolific in his research. Like he published so, so much. And so the whole promise of note taking in that book is like you take notes because you're producing some intellectual outcome. Yes, effectiveness. Yes. And then when I was reading a lot of like academic self-help books when writing my dissertation, there's one called How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silva. And he's just like, [42:37] Your job is to write things. You can't just collect knowledge. You have to be putting things out there.

That's where we started the conversation, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And so... [42:46] I think I began to think of note taking as like, it's just like this intellectual infrastructure armature to help you produce an outcome. It's not the goal in and of itself. And so I've gone through all these different note taking systems where, you know, [43:01] Before I started writing my MA dissertation, I was kind of obsessively cataloging things. I was also using Arena. That was actually so effective for me. I had this channel that was titled A Leisurely Path Towards My MA Dissertation.

And whenever I came across something interesting, I'd throw it in there and I'd just be like, inspiration will merge. I'm out of something here. [43:20] I think I'm really obsessed with these different software tools because I think they do change how you can research and collect information. [43:27] So I was collecting all this information and then I start doing my dissertation and I just kind of like stop taking notes because I have this draft. And every morning what I do instead of like taking notes in some isolated place, I open my draft and I'd be like, what am I trying to do?

I'm trying to glue like this reference to this reference. I'm going to put them in the same sentence. I'm going to like write some sentences that don't make sense. I'm going to rearrange them. [43:49] Yeah. [43:50] It's not that I have fully abandoned note taking, but I think what I've realized is that people can really polish [43:57] their note-taking systems as if they're the end game. And I see them as like preparatory work. Like you're taking notes in order to think about what you want to say. But for me, that can also happen through like texting friends and being like, I'm reading this thing and I'm really excited and I don't know what to do with it.

Or like I journal pretty extensively and my journal is just like the least optimized thing possible. It's handwritten. I first sub. Always. You have some, you have very [44:27] like when you're reflecting on starting the blog and stuff it's cool to see that yeah yeah i i really enjoy it but like [44:34] I also do this thing where I have a table of contents for each of my notebooks and I have an index at the end. It's like this is where I quote this source or this person. It is so slow to do that by hand.

Sometimes I'm like, why is this not why am I not doing it in a computer? But the point of writing it is that I'm trying to think through writing. So the goal isn't to optimize it. The goal isn't to make this the most searchable thing possible. I just need to get to some new level of awareness. [45:01] So that's how I use paper notes. That's how I use texting friends about what I'm working on. And then... [45:07] If it produces some written artifact, like if I produce a newsletter or a book review or something like that, then I'm very happy.

And I'm like, all my ideas end up being contained by the work. By the time I finish an essay. [45:20] Like that is the summation of like my entire subjective experience while working on it. [45:26] I really, really like that. It also reminds me, I can't remember the name. I might have it somewhere in my notes, but there's this, I think her name maybe is Annie something. And you were talking about how she was translating something from Greek and she uses this word like a hesitance or an interval. Oh, and Carson.

And she has, she's using the physical lexicon. She has to literally go every single word she doesn't know. And it's, it's reminds me of what you were saying, which is that [45:51] That space, that air gap, there's something like you don't want it to be fully optimized. Yeah. [45:58] Yeah, I think there's this aspect of... [46:01] Well, one thing I'm very fascinated by is like when it is important to go slowly or do useless things or things that take way more time than needed. I remember that in Carson, and I think I really love it because what she's explaining is that the inefficiency of having to look up all these translations by hand and do all these things like that is how you are training your mind.

And at the end of the day, it's like your mind is the instrument that is producing all these intellectual and artistic and creative outcomes. [46:31] that cultivates the mind in the optimal way. [46:34] So I read so many things where I'm like, like in the middle of working on an essay, I tend to off road dramatically and I'll have this list of things I'm supposed to be reading for it. And I'll go like, oh, but someone just told me about this book and I'm really into it. Or like, I just want to read this magazine that I've had on my shelf for ages.

And I've often found that the things that seem like distractions from the work, I end up pulling something out of those that end up. [47:00] going into the like real essay. And there's this real feeling of serendipity where I'm like, I'm reading this thing that seems useless, but there's like some beautiful framing, some beautiful idea. Like you can just harvest so much out of life if you're very open and receptive and you're not like, I need to stay on task. Like this is the topic. This is the curriculum. This is like where I go.

Yes. Yeah. It's funny. [47:21] it's almost as though there are three things that you could optimize for. One is the actual work as you described. The second is yourself, your own growth, your own mind. And the third is like the external tool and perhaps the, the, [47:35] fallacy or the mistake many people today make, especially people who like to [47:39] play with cool tools is they're [47:42] It's like that's the worst – the tool is the worst one to optimize for. Yeah. Like shape it around either the work or around at least making your – I mean, I think you probably make a case that actually even the work, all of that is in service of like to your earlier point, becoming the person you want to be.

I am curious like, again, less about optimizing for the tools and more about the work. Like you – [48:02] your output is a sort of a scaffolding or a tool in and of itself in the sense of at the very least you're [48:09] monthly-ish, um, what I read series. Like, [48:14] is a very specific container that you, you at this point are very used to, but you also like, know is coming. Um, and so I am curious, like, I would imagine knowing that it's, [48:26] Zhuang Jie is going to appear in the [48:29] January, 2026, what I read column is changing how you're reading.

[48:34] To some degree? Yeah. You notice that? [48:37] Yeah. Okay. This is really interesting because you're making me realize the monthly. So these like monthly newsletters I do, they're like everything I read in January, February, things like that. Well, one is like, I actually skip a lot of months and I always feel self-conscious about it. And I hope that no one notices, but sometimes I'm like, this is not the time to synthesize or like be external. This is the time for me to kind of like be internal and figure out what I'm trying to do with my reading.

But I originally began those newsletters because I had, [49:07] Shit. [49:07] force myself to publish once a week. And I was just desperately scrabbling for ideas. And I was like, okay, I'll just do this. It seems easy. Just a roundup of what I'm thinking about. But I guess it is me externalizing my note taking and trying to come up with these bigger thematic containers. Because the first few newsletters were just kind of me like info dumping, like I read this and I read this and I read this. And then naturally, because I was reading so much good writing, like [49:37] and an end, a narrative thrust, an arc, I started thinking like, okay, I can't just like dump a list of like book summaries.

I need to come up with these bigger thematic arcs. And so I think I'm kind of training myself as well to like out of disparate sources, find a way to tie them together into a bigger theme. Just like, what am I thinking about now? What are some of like the bigger connections between these things? So I think it has definitely changed how I read because I end up trying to like [50:06] glue things together more. Yeah. [50:09] Like right now, I'm still reading the genre. I'm moving through it very slowly, but I'm reading the genre.

I'm reading this book by Nick Cernichek, and I forgot the other author, Alex Williams, maybe, Inventing the Future. What else am I reading? There's this psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips. You're reading all of these things at the same time. [50:26] Yeah, because I can't concentrate. So I was reading one in the tube over here, and I was reading one at the cafe before it. This is a slight total sidetrack, but I think we have, like, how many, on average, how many books are you reading at one time? [50:42] Um, [50:43] I don't know, because some of them I will also abandon for, like, two weeks at a time, and then at the end of the month I'll be like, oh, I need to summarize it.

I kind of do this, but I don't – I read far less than you do, and I finish far, far, far less than you do, and people think I'm insane. They're just like, you have to pick one book at a time. That's not why you're finishing anything. Well, you need books for a different mood. Well, so – okay. But, like, okay, different – like, are you compartmentalizing? Is it spatial? Is it environmental? Is it, like – [51:06] How do you hold it all? [51:08] Oh. [51:09] I don't know. I think...

[51:11] Okay, well, [51:12] I have this theory, which may not be true, of like... [51:15] One of the conditions of contemporary life, if you're on your phone a lot and looking at algorithmic feeds a lot, is you're just like skipping between. Context changing, yes. Yeah. And it's just like. [51:25] I think people who look at algorithmic feeds a lot, you just become used to that context switching. Like your brain gets comfortable with it. And maybe we have this kind of like shifting mode of attention compared to people in the past.

There's this art historian, Claire Bishop, who has this really amazing book, Disordered Attention. That's one of the other books I'm reading at the moment. But at the very beginning, she's like, everyone says that sustained attention is better and very distracted attention, where we're jumping back and forth between things, is bad and it's worse. [51:55] what if we stop stigmatizing that form of attention and we start thinking about how it has shaped contemporary art? [52:01] So I really like it because it has that kind of provocative contrarian instinct without being really reactionary and rude, basically.

But I think... [52:11] switching between books is this way to give yourself novelty, perhaps, even though like give yourself novelty while also trying to attain depth. Because I imagine both of us are like we don't want to be like Twitter brain and constantly zooming around between like tiny bits of input. But we're also so shaped by that. And so maybe it's like we dip into one book in the morning, in the afternoon, like when we're feeling very energized, when we're feeling a little bit lazy. And that's our way of just like constantly gaining novelty while still committing to reading.

[52:41] the committing to reading part like what causes you to like rubber band because my issue is and again i'm just a [52:47] I have a lot of issues and I'm a far less dedicated reader, but like I just start lots of books and don't finish any of them. [52:53] And like, you're juggling all these balls and you're also not really dropping them. And by the way, I'm sure you stop books if they're not good, but like, [53:01] Yeah, well, this is interesting because I feel there's this very much like external versus internal.

[53:06] Obviously, I read a lot, but I don't know if I have this hierarchy where I'm like, I'm a more dedicated reader than other people. I would imagine that we are similarly dedicated as readers probably in the sense that we both care about our intellects. But my craft is writing, and so it's like I'm really oriented towards that. I'm sure there are things that you or other people who read less, it's like there's this other thing that I need to constantly have as input in order to refine my craft. That's generous.

Yeah.