Hi, I'm Tiffere. Hi, I'm Kahran. And this is Thinking on Thinking. Um, wait, what was our first name? Sexes.
Oh. How do you measure sexes? Bitch, when you hear, see, it's great. Now, when you listen to the episode, you'll be like, what? We talked about this.
So surprising. That's very funny. I mean, I feel like in each one of these, we've said, like, oh, we should revisit one, you know, revisit this more deeply, right? Or like each time we've ended with a thought that we would revisit it from a different angle.
So we could do that. Um, or we can do that in a few more. What are your, what are your thoughts? I mean, I'm thinking from our poor listeners point of view, that's be some continuity at some point. I mean, I don't think so.
I don't think people listen to, hmm, that could be an interesting thing to think about. Why do people listen to podcasts? Like there is, when you think about a media, there is a certain set of expectations that you bring to any form you bring a certain set of expectations to, even some forms, right? So like if we were telling a story, right?
Like if we were doing something like cereal, we would need some continuity. But how much continuity does it need when we are just talking about things that have been on our mind recently that we have been discussing? See, I really enjoy, like, have you listened to Matt Walker's podcast? I haven't.
Okay. So it's about sleep. It's, it's, it's looking at sleep from, from different, uh, just like different aspects, right? Like how do different things affect your sleep? How do your behaviors affect your sleep? So like how do things like, you know, you consume food, alcohol, cannabis, melatonin,
like how can those affect your sleep? And then how can like different behaviors affect your sleep? But there's some amount of continuity. So he'll, he tends to do like, like he'll do three episode arcs, or maybe a four episode arc on a particular topic.
And then while like, if you do listen, I tend to binge things as I listen to them, right? So I'll listen to like maybe six and then not listen for a while, then I listen to another five. So then if you do it like that, you also will hear there's some continuity just in the, like, because he has obviously talked about that topic already. So he's aware that he's talked about it.
I don't know. It kind of depends on how you think people will listen to it. I think shorter ones, like his is 12 to 15 minutes, and some of them are short, it's like maybe six minutes or eight minutes, right? Like those, I think they suit themselves well, where especially like, if you're like, Oh, I heard an insight, it was interesting to me, I want to hear more of those kinds of insights,
then you're going to listen to more of them. And I feel like we're also building that kind of podcast. So like having some sort of like, I don't know, that's more just an argument for thematic continuity than anything else. That's interesting because so I'm thinking about a bunch of podcasts that I listen to, right?
Like if you look at knowledge project, he will be talking to different people. He might interview Matthew Walker in one episode talking about sleep. And then he might interview Esther Parrell talking about relationships in another episode. And then he might talk to, you know, somebody who's in the tech world, or somebody who's in the finance world, and like, you know, somebody who's an athlete,
like he talks to all sorts of different people. But then what he's interested in is just what, how people are thinking, rather than what they're thinking about. Well, would you, do you ever listen to his podcast one after another? Because I will not, I usually don't listen to the knowledge, like as soon as I listen to one,
I won't listen to another one immediately. Right. Or like maybe in the next day or in a few days. And you may be a... I mean, I am... Yeah, I am fully caught up on knowledge project.
So I can't really answer that question. But I don't think that I ever listen to any podcast, same episodes one after another. Like, you know, sequentially, even when it is story driven podcasts, like I remember only the Magnus archives was a podcast that I binged. I just binged through all five seasons of it, within like a period of maybe two and a half weeks
or something like that. Interesting. And like even like something like Sandman or audio books are different. Audio books are different. It's also a different app.
I see. Interesting. So, yeah, of course. I generally like, you know, try to structure it like, I'd listen to, I have this weird heuristic in my mind where I listen to one sort of
very deep and high density podcast. So it could be knowledge project, it could be design matters, it could be 99% invisible. It would be just something which is, which has like, you know, deep content. Then there would be one which is more journalistic in nature.
So it could be Radio Lab or it could be something like Endless Thread or historical blindness, like more, they're talking about a topic and they're just going deep diving on that topic. But like it's not something which is more generally applicable to life. And then I would have like a fiction podcast and a live podcast.
And I would cycle in this for loop constantly. What's a like, so a fiction podcast is a story and then a live podcast is like comedic. Yeah, it could be comedic. It could be just like people chit chatting with each other or it could be like something which is more emotional or psychological in nature.
So like, you know, I listened to a couple of therapy podcasts, like the one with Laurie Gottlieb and the one with Esther Perel. Like I listened to those or Modern Love, like stuff like that, which is more, which does not involve as much cognitive energy. Let me put it like that.
It doesn't involve as much cognitive energy, it just requires emotional energy. So that's like the full podcast. And then I go back to the heavy one. So I like, I mean, this is also different behavior than I guess, like I didn't ever think that people would listen to the same podcast continuously.
Oh, even like, even when it's the same, like, for example, so Matt Walker, I think he has three episodes on your body and caffeine, right? So even in that, and like one of them, I think is literally six minutes. So, you know, of course, I'm going to listen to all three. But then I think that like, there's also this factor of I don't really have a lot of short
podcasts, low, not low cabinet of curiosities by the same guy who made low and memory palace are the only two podcasts that have episodes smaller than 15 minutes in my field. Everything else is longer. Interesting. So how do you listen to your podcast?
No, I'm curious. I didn't even think that other people listen to them differently. Yeah, that's really just interesting to me. I'm like, now I'm also very curious, like, do you consume your media similarly? Like, do you read like that?
Like, you'll read a little bit of one book and then another book and then I'm going to go back to the first one. Yes. How cool. I have at a time, I think four or five books, this is not including audio books. No, it just I think part of the reason why I find it so interesting is because I,
so, you know, many people say you should read before you go to bed, right? And I've never been someone who would read well before they go to bed because the kind of things I read, I will just stay up all night reading. Yeah. And I know that's not true of everything I read, right?
But the kind of stuff that I'd want to read before I go to bed or like books I like to read because at the end of the day, you want to read something that makes you happy. And those kind of books, because of how I like to engage with my media, right? Like, I would just keep consuming it. I've always like the games I've always loved to play.
I've always loved to play them for the narrative. Again, I would just play them until four o'clock in the morning. But yeah, so it's just an interesting notion of like kind of being cognizant of like, oh, this is going to engage my brain in this way. And then that's why I was curious about if you always follow this kind of like stepping down
sort of engagement with your media, because you've engaged yourself cognitively and maybe emotionally and then you're kind of engaging yourself maybe a little more lightweight. And then finally you're kind of getting to a place where it's like, it's just kind of like like lighthearted and like you're just engaging like, you know, the smallest kind of parts of your maybe smallest more of a judgmental word that I met, but like arousing sort of.
Cognit, yeah. Least cognitively taxing. Cognitive taxing. Is much better because I think arousing is also a bad word because right, like sometimes like very comedic things are very exciting to you, right?
Like, but they're, but they're not cognitively taxing in that same way. They kind of let you relax, which brings me to a really interesting thing. I was just hearing that I think in that podcast, even I both listened to, we have not given ourselves a good flow state in our relaxation time. Right.
Or we haven't enabled that for ourselves, right? And I think that was just very interesting to me to think about because I think something like comedy, right? Like you can get into those, right? I think a lot of what we sometimes, right?
But like a lot of what we can't, what we do engage with is, it's very, it's just hard to really like, like get yourself into a state where you are kind of using your brain, but you're also relaxing. So I think you have a really good system. At least.
Okay. So like this is maybe a bit of a side story, but like, I have generally worked with people and I've almost always found it very difficult to convince people or even to explain to them why I don't like to work on a single thing at a time. Generally, people are like, oh, if you work with our company, there will be enough work.
You will be fully engaged. You know, like your brain will be fully engaged. They're not wrong. There is a lot that needs to be done if you're like, you know, building a company. And I'm happy to like take on a lot of things also, but I almost always find it very
non nourishing way of working. Like if I'm doing a lot of different things, I always, I find that my brain is like, oh, but we can connect these dots and we can connect those dots. Yesterday when I was listening to Kunal Shah's episode on knowledge project, that's what he was talking about, how you should learn broadly because when your brain
needs to come up with insights, it needs a lot of different dots. And I also, when I was younger, I always used to think that philosophy is a load of garbage. It's not useful. Why does anybody need philosophy? But then the more I learned it, the more I realized, oh, this is a different way of thinking
and then it just made me think more about how am I thinking? You know, how am I thinking on thinking? And I think that also made me feel like, okay, it's a faster way to generate insights if you are going more broadly and if you're like exposing yourself to a lot of different information. Are you saying philosophy specifically or you think just consuming media in that way?
Consuming media in general way, but I think just learning philosophy made me question how I'm consuming knowledge. It just made me think about knowledge. Nothing else had made me think about knowledge itself. Or something I think we were talking a few days back about what is normative.
It also made me think about philosophy internally made me ask those questions. When we are assuming something is normal, it's because somebody made up those rules and everything is made up and it's very, you know, fish have no word for water kind of a thing. Just learning to recognize that there is water and then water is water and asking questions around it. That's really interesting.
I think, you know, if you generally study liberal arts in the US, like almost everyone has to take some philosophy, like an introduction to philosophy course, and they're almost always taught in a way of historical view, right, to understand how things have evolved from one to another. And I think it's very, it's like it can be helpful, right?
Because it's a way for people to connect the ideas and understand, you know, within trends that were otherwise happening. But it's really interesting because you don't end up learning it in the way of what are the questions that I have about kind of life and living and the way we act. And then how have these been explored through time in different ways?
Because you're learning it in a historical narrative and then more as like movements. And in a lot of ways, I think a lot of art, at least the way I learned art, was taught in this way, right? And movements in opposition to each other. And because you learn it in that way, you don't, yeah, it's just really interesting
because as I was listening to you, I was thinking that this was not my experience when I learned, you know, about philosophers and philosophy. But I could see how it'd be really nice to have that experience. Interesting. I mean, it's also, I think that like one thing is like when you're self-learning anything,
like you can think about it, anything that you have self-learned, you will always have like a much richer understanding of it, even though to start off with it's way harder. Like if you, you know, like if you learn philosophy in school, it was probably way easier for you to start in it. It took me almost three years of actively picking up philosophy courses or books and
then dropping them because, oh my god, who wants to read this boring stuff? Kant is so like unimaginably dry. Why am I reading this? Right? Like, and just like pushing through all of that, three years is a long period of time
to push yourself through something. But then once you do get into it, you actually get into it. Then you just like it. Yeah. Right?
Interesting. Well, yeah. So like because we were discussing about like, you know, forms and, you know, your expectations that come from it. So like initially I was just assuming that people have different expectations from
different forms of media. You know, when I go to a movie, I expect this thing from a movie. When I go to a fiction book, I expect this thing from a fiction book. And even in fiction, you know, maybe like why I'll expect something and a fantasy book, I'll expect something else.
But clearly, I mean, we consume a lot of similar podcasts, not a lot, but like we consume enough similar podcasts. And it's interesting that you don't have the same experience. So like, where do you think you derive your, this is what I expect from this piece of media and this is how I want to consume it.
Where does that originate? Like, I like to understand things deeply, especially, or I guess really it's people, right? Generally, I feel this way about people, right? Like when I meet someone, I tend to like, I think the joke one of my friends had when
I was much younger, I was always having a new best friend. And I think, and because a lot of the podcasts that I really enjoy are about like that, right? Or they're about like people they're sharing, they're sharing insights, but they're also sharing insights in a way that is evocative maybe, or just like, like men, like aware of, they're sharing insights in a way that helps you understand their nature, right?
And I think that is really interesting to me. And also there's like this, this element of, like, I don't enjoy as much closing the, this, the book, if you will, right? I enjoy knowing that there is more that I can, I can kind of come back to you and more than I can learn.
I don't know. I think that's why that's why I think longer stories and like times where you can engage with people longer are very interesting to me. I don't know. It's hard.
I don't have a, maybe as Chris, but the definition of it yet, unfortunately. So we'll have to revisit it at some, some later point, but I took it a little bit better. Interesting. So do you think that when you are consuming media, and then when you're creating it, right? So like, for example, when you're writing, how much of how you consume your reading influence
how you write? Because your model, like my assumption here is your model of how a reader is going to see this is going to come from how you see things. Yeah, I think that's, there's definitely truth to that. Right.
Like I will read books many times, right? Especially books I really like, but I will always tend to not read certain parts. One of the first books I read the time of times was the Lord of the Rings, right? But I have like very little patience for reading songs. So I've always skimmed the songs, right?
You know when they're multiple pages? And like, and I also have very little patience for like long, elaborate. It's just like, if the text is too long, a paragraph, I just can't read that much paragraph at once. Right? You give me the small paragraph, so I'll be happy.
So if it's a really long paragraph, I'm going to like read it kind of quickly, right? But I'll tend to, I like to read dialogue, right? I'll always read all the dialogue. And I do think it comes up in my writing, right? Like I know some feedback I've received in some of the classes I've done,
it's just like, you've created this big beautiful world, but it's not really clear what it is. Like especially for people who need more just descriptors to understand what they're imagining. I don't really need that, right? Like I am able to kind of like create whole stories in my head with very little sort of descriptors. So I'm much more excited about what these people are doing that I'm now running around
within my head than I am like, oh, so fine. He's four feet tall, not eight feet tall, like whatever. You know, like these kind of like logistics don't really matter. I mean, four and eight feet are quite different. I'm sure that that logistics would matter.
But I get what you mean. Yeah. To continue in my Lord of the Rings example, like I always imagined these like the ends being like massive trees, right? Like like the big trees that you put the giant sequoias of the California, right? But then like the way they portrayed them in the movies,
and I think maybe it's probably true to the books too, I've never actually double checked, right? Is that they're like 20 foot tall trees, which is totally reasonable, right? It's a very reasonable size tree, but it's very different than a 200 foot tree. But I don't know. It's just, I don't feel sad that I misinterpreted it probably because I didn't read that.
Because I just don't care so much about the, I care about the way, like I've read enough of it to understand how I should feel and how I do feel. And then that is enough for me. I don't really need to know, I don't know the details of it, if that makes sense. So then I have an additional question.
I agree with that part. Like I only care about how it makes me feel, right? But then what keeps you in a long story? Because I also feel that way, that I only care about how it makes me feel. But that's because of that, I really feel like I'm getting into long stories.
Short stories is where my patience stops. Because these people are going on adventures together, right? I don't know how to better say it, but it's like, yeah, why did I love Sandman so much? Because you fall in love with this character and like the way he approaches the world and how he and then you guys go on adventures and you go into situations you would have never really imagined
you going into. And I think of people, I mean, I think people do this about public personas all the time too, right? Which like it's like a big thing about fan bases, right? Where that you kind of like, you imagine these people in your head in a certain way.
Let me say that a little bit more clearly. Like I think how I was just describing for a fictional character, right? But I think similarly, right? That people have a conception of famous people in their heads, right? Where oh, you know, we would be friends because you have these traits.
And it's like the way that it's the persona that people are putting. I so I think I think that's why I get to like deeply engage in that locker, right? Because I have this like picture of him in my head as being like this kind of slightly disorganized Englishman who's very excited about his work. And it's just kind of entertaining to see what journey he is going on.
And I also like one of the things I've noticed and is amusing to me is he clearly records his commercials repeatedly, right? Because you can see how his tone and his engagement with them is changing over time. And how he's, I know you guys must be a little tired of hearing about athletic greens.
And I think it's probably a part because he's a little bit tired of saying the same thing. So then he changed it after that. And I think it's just, but it's interesting, right? Because you're like, you have this kind of conception of this person that's kind of amusing to kind of see them going on this podcast journey, both in terms of what they're
saying and how they're saying it. So I feel like that whole side of it, to me, it's similar to how I feel about going on a journey with my fictional characters. I like going on these journeys with my podcast and my other kind of mediums as well. See, I brought it back.
Let's say like whenever we encounter a problem that we both have to work on together, I think that you almost always take the person approach and I almost always take the theme slash feel slash what is the sort of cognitive model of this thing approach. It's very interesting that it's also reflective of how we consume the things that we consume. What is this about versus who is this about?
It's gross generalization, but still it's interesting. It's also one of these great debates of history, right? How much of history is about big movements versus individual people, right? Like if the people weren't there, would the movements have happened? Would the events have happened anyway?
Yes. So what side of it do you follow? Oh, I don't have any right. Never did very well in history. It was not right.
I mean, I think that yes, there are like larger movements, but I do think that there are like basically the movement is going to send you in a certain direction, but depending on depending on which person gets picked up by that movement, that outcome can be very different. Right? Like I think for example in the US, the US has been going on a certain direction, right?
Sarah Palin was a vice president in Kennedy and then you know, you very easily argue that Donald Trump came from the same sort of base and like it was going in a certain direction, right? But now if there had been a different candidate that was able to harness that energy in a slightly different direction, right?
Like just maybe someone with a slightly different background who maybe not grown up in real estate and real estate is just a place where you have, you do bend a lot of rules, right? Like that is how real estate unfortunately works in America and in a lot of countries because there's so much money available. If you can just get something re-zoned, so trying to be farmland,
you know, one stroke of a pen and the, you know, values change so much. So yeah, right? Like I think if it had been a different person, the country would probably be in a very different place because so much of, I think we only know, especially at a society level, we only know what we know, right?
And I think the ability to understand unknown unknowns is really, really hard at a more macro level. I don't know. I'm just thinking these words and saying them, but I think that that is true. And so I think that we now people would be more cognizant of what does it mean to have a real
populist candidate and what can that mean that populist candidate doesn't really love the rule of law and have that kind of like understanding of unwritten norms that a lot of people do who come into the political sphere. Now people have more cognizance of what that means, but at the time it was an unknown unknown. And I think there it can just have these kinds of outcomes that people don't really understand.
They can't predict. And then yeah, you do have these larger movements, but then because of these like smaller factors, they can kind of just have these unexpected twists to the direction. I have always, maybe always is the, not the right word, but I'm for the longest time felt it's more about the movement of the society rather than about the people because you'd
almost always find that it's white men who are those people who are at the center of those sort of let's say like direction vectors for that movement. It's almost always white men and it's very difficult for me to imagine that it would all like or in India it would be upper class men and it's just almost impossible to imagine that really would it always be only these people when there's a, so for example, if you think about
okay, let's think about like, you know, US music scene for you know, since forever. So much of it has come from like African American culture, right? Like African people brought so much music with them and musicality. And then, you know, they gave birth to so many like blues and R&B and jazz and hip hop and rap so many different genre are just started by black people.
But generally like from whatever I have heard, it's almost when the names, it's black culture has generated these movements and their names are of white people who are like it there is this weird sort of contradiction that almost always makes me feel not comfortable with that idea of its individual people. It's there are people who manage to cash in on the flow of the tide,
but the tide was already flowing in a certain direction is how I feel about it. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I just feel like the effect of certain people what people do when cashing in can then have later outcomes. That is very fair. I mean, like if it was someone other than Donald Trump, probably like US history right now would be looking, it's not history yet, but yeah, the US would be looking
different. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's other examples, right? Like, you know, would India have had a different woman Prime Minister? Right? Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But good chat. Yes. I'm not sure what we should say the topic was. People versus movements. No, no, no. The topic was around understanding like how we consume forms and how that affects how we. Yeah. Okay, we did explore that.
Couple of voices. I agree with you. We did. Yeah. Awesome. Good job. Thanks for listening to this episode of Thinking on Thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes and you can find a link to it in the show notes.