One year ago today I launched an experiment: a long, open-ended, deep dive conversation show based on a premise: I'm enamored with people who make things and love getting to know them by way of their ideas. More to come soon, but some reflections on @DialecticPod's anniversary: I'd long imagined doing something like this but figured it was too crowded. It wasn't worth doing without a more coherent strategy. It wouldn't stand out in a crowded media and podcast landscape. Fortunately, @ettinger, @BrennerSpear, and a few others pushed me to stop thinking about what the seed would look like in theory and instead plant it in soil. @phokarlsson says "make contact with reality." Just do an interview and release it. It turns out if you'd had a list in your phone for years of people you'd want to interview if you had a podcast someday, maybe you already know what you need to do. So I started and committed to doing 21 episodes, or the amount that some business insider article says puts you in the top 1% of podcasts. Silly but a real, serious goal. I quickly realized that it was easy for me to care a lot about this, and the fact that every episode is a new person to briefly obsess over makes it easy for me to *keep* caring a lot about it. Since then, I've been fortunate to be reminded that as @FoundersPodcast says, there's always room for great. And that if you can find something that's easy for you to care a lot about, maybe you have a shot at approaching great. It's still early, but I feel lucky that my conversations have resonated with a lot of people, and more importantly, people I admire. And I've been reminded how much I truly love, to use my guest @cyantist's words, collecting rare minds. I wrote a personal mission statement on a whim a few years ago: "help people be true to themselves." I think I am doing that in a very small way by talking to special people about what makes their eyes light up. By trying to see if I can make them shine just a little brighter than usual. I feel especially proud that one of the dominant emergent themes of Dialectic is that we only get so many things to care about, and choosing what you will care deeply about is the antidote to many of modernity's challenges and certainly a core part of a meaningful life (h/t @nabeelqu). I'm proud to put a lot of care on display by way of the people I curate. There are many more lessons and much more I could say, and I'm so excited about what year 2 of Dialectic holds. Slow, rapid iteration is a magical thing (as I just got to discuss first hand with @johncoogan @jordihays). I hope to do much more of that. But for now I will leave you with this. Everything is possible. You have more potential than you can possibly know. It is not too late. You don't need more plans. You don't need more time. Tomorrow isn't real. You have what you need. You were built for this. Go make something that is easy for you to care about. Try it, experiment, launch and get feedback, feel the material in your hands and notice when aliveness arises within you. You don't need permission, you just need a little belief. Launch. Pull the thread and see what magical things you find. An infinite horizon awaits. And soon you will find yourself asking: How lucky are we?

the algo might change to reward posting about one topic but my favorite posters will always be people who post about a bunch of stuff in a way that’s uniquely their own. jokes, work, niche interests, slice of life stuff, random thoughts but never a “technical” approach to posting