Late last month, The Atlantic ran an

article titled The Film Students Who Can

No Longer Sit Through Films. I want to

read you an excerpt from early in the

article. This excerpt starts with a

quote from a film professor. I used to

think if homework is watching a movie,

that is the best homework ever, Craig

Eperling, a film professor at the

University of Wisconsin at Matson told

me, but students will not do it. I heard

similar observations from 20 film

studies professors around the country.

They told me that over the past decade

and protect part particularly since the

pandemic, students have struggled to pay

attention to featurelength films. All

right. So, yeah, that's not great. But

here's the thing. I think there is both

bad news and good news here. The bad

news is, as I'll argue, this phenomenon

reveals the impact of digital technology

on our basic human ability to pay

attention and think is perhaps worse

than we originally imagined. But the

good news is that in this problem, we

can find its own solution. So, as I'm

going to go on to argue, getting better

at watching movies might just be the

right first step toward reclaiming your

brain. So, here's the plan. I'm going to

elaborate on those two arguments, right?

That our struggles to watch movie is a

side effect of digital technology and

that practicing watching movies can help

us reverse that damage. And then

assuming that you buy those arguments,

I'm going to get practical. I'm going to

give you specific advice for how to

become a better movie watcher, including

a list of classic movies that you should

start with. Jesse, I think it'll come as

no surprise that my main recommendation

is going to be conducting an extensive

scene by scene analysis of the 2002

Britney Spears movie Crossroads.

>> No, I like it.

>> All right. Too soon. All right. Uh then

we'll move on to my news and note

segment where uh by popular demand, I'm

going to take a close look at last

week's viral essay sensation. This is

Matt Schumer's essay, something big is

happening. It's one of these uh AI is

about to change everything for real this

time type essay. So we'll get into that.

We have a reader email about the

Olympics and we'll talk about my new

book. So we have a lot to get to. As

always, I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep

Questions, the show about the fight for

depth in an increasingly distracted

world. And we'll get started right after

the music.

All right. Right. So, to start our

investigation here, let's look a little

bit closer at this problem

of people having a hard time watching

entire movies. It's not just film

students and it's not just the people

that The Atlantic talk about. If you

start poking around on the internet, you

can find a lot of evidence of people

having the same issue. Um, I was looking

on the R movies subreddit and I found a

bunch of people on there who are giving

similar complaints. Let me read you a

quote here. This comes from a a Reddit

post. This might just be me, but for a

while now, I'm struggling to decide

which movie is worthy of watching, then

actually sitting and watching it. I can

watch it in the movie theater, but for

some reason, I just can't watch it at

home. I end up watching Seinfeld reruns

on TV. I don't know what's wrong with

me. All right, here's another quote from

another post from the movie subreddit.

When movies are over an hour and a half,

I struggle to continue whether the film

is really interesting or not. I just get

bored easily and have to watch them in

two parts or even three. And I even

avoid watching films if I see they are

too long. Right. We have more evidence

that this is a problem. We've been

getting reports that the major streaming

services have started changing the way

that they make original movies to better

match their audience's reduced ability

to pay attention to them. Uh, in a

recent podcast interview, Matt Damon,

who has a new movie out with Ben Affleck

on Netflix that's called The RIP,

said that streamers are now pushing

filmmakers to avoid the classic

three-act structure and to instead, and

I'm quoting him here, reiterate the plot

three or four times in the dialogue

because people are on their phones while

they're watching. In another part of

this interview, Damon says, uh, another

change is the streamers now say you have

to have a major action setpiece in the

first five minutes, otherwise people

will get bored and flip away. This is

very different to the way that we used

to make movies where you save the big

action sequence for act three. People

aren't going to last that long anymore.

Uh, I'm I couldn't help when I was

thinking about that idea that you have

to have the major thing happen in the

first five minutes. I couldn't help

thinking about the making of the

Godfather. I'm reading another book that

talks about this recently and an

interesting tidbit about the making of

that movie is that uh nothing major

happens with Al Pacino's character of

Michael Corone Corleó

um until about an hour and 15 minutes

into the movie where he shoots Captain

McCcluskey. And so Pacino rightly

looking at the full duration of this

three-hour movie said, "I need to play

Corleó very sort of quiet and meek." And

then that's like a key character

transition point. Well, when Copelo

began filming this movies in the first

dailies were coming back, the head of

Paramount, Robert Evans, was like,

"Pacino's got to go." They're looking at

the sequences from the wedding the

wedding scene up front like this guy's

barely talking. Like he's barely moving.

Like this is the wrong person. We got to

fire them. So, so Copela had to actually

move up the filming of the restaurant

shooting scene way early into the

schedule just so they could show those

dailies to Robert Evans. At which point

he's like, "Oh, I see what's going to

happen later. No, no, Pacino's got to

stay." But it just caught my attention.

We used to be okay with an hour and 15

minutes going by before the main

character talks above like a quiet

whisper. Not the case anymore. All

right, enough movie geekdom. Let's get

back on track here.

The next follow-up question is why are

we having a hard time paying attention

to movies? Well, if we return to the

Atlantic article, there's a lot of

quotes in there that point towards

digital technology and a particularly

smartphones as being the culprit.

The first piece of evidence is the quote

from uh earlier in this episode. Notice

that that professor said this issue got

really bad after the pandemic. What

happened in the pandemic? young people

began to uh obsessively use their

devices because they were stuck at home

at a level they haven't seen before. So

there's a lot of device related issues.

They got really bad after the pandemic.

So that is a a big piece of correlative

evidence right there. There's also some

quotes from the article that make this

clear. I'm going to read you one. All

right, this is from the article. Mazuda

Lipit, a cinema and media studies

professor at the University of Southern

California, home to perhaps the top film

program in the country, said that his

students remind him of nicotine addicts

going through withdrawal during

screenings. The longer they go without

checking their phone, the more they

fidget, eventually

they give in. All right, here uh so why

is this going on? Here's another quote

from the article that I think helps like

unwind what's happening in these

students brains. Students arriving in

college today have no memory of a world

before the infinite scroll. As

teenagers, they spent nearly 5 hours a

day on social media, with much of that

time used for flicking from one short

form video to the next. An analysis of

people's attention while working on a

computer found that they now switch

between tabs or apps every 47 seconds

down from once every 2 and 1/2 minutes

in 2004. I can imagine if your body and

or your psychology are not trained for

the duration of a featurelength film, it

will just feel excruciatingly long.

USC's lip said. All right. So, I mean,

not a surprise, but these film

professors point their finger at the

obvious culprit. Phones

have made it hard for people to focus on

movies.

Now, I want to get a little bit more

technical here. There's actually a term

of art for the capability

that phones are degrading. The term is

cognitive patience. Now, this was coined

by the reading re researcher Maryanne

Wolf. Uh here's the formal definition of

this term which is reading specific but

we're going to generalize it to to

movies as well. Here's the formal

definition of cognitive patience. The

ability to read with focused and

sustained attention and delay

gratification while refraining from

multitasking or skimming over parts of

the text. So we can adapt this idea of

cognitive patience. I can sustain

attention on something for a long period

of time without switching context or

multitasking. We can really apply that

to multiple other activities including

consuming films. Our

cognitive patient seems to have been

degraded

by using our phones. All right. Well, if

we're going to solve this problem, let's

try to understand again in more detail.

Why is cognitive patients degraded by

looking at our phones all the time?

There's two things going on here that

have to do with the reward systems in

our brain. The first has to do with our

short-term reward system. So, there is a

bundle of neurons in your short-term

reward system that is associated with

the stimuli of picking up and looking at

your phone. And because you get this

consistent strong source of reward that

has high expected value when you pick up

your phone because of the algorithmic

curation of the apps that are on there,

those bundles have learned we will

probably get a good reward if we do

that. So what happens, and I'm

simplifying things here, is that bundle

of neurons effectively votes for picking

up your phone as your next action. If it

sees it nearby, you experience that vote

subjectively

as an urge to pick up that phone, a

distracting urge to pick up that phone.

There's a dopamine cascade that happens

through your neuronal, you know, motor

neurons. There's a whole thing here.

We're going to get into this more. By

the way, I'm having Anna Lympa is going

to come on the show to teach us more

about dopamine, but it feels like an

urge to pick up the phone. So, if you

have a phone with you and you're trying

to watch a movie,

there's all of these votes happening.

Those neurons are like reward, reward,

reward, let's go, let's go, let's go.

And you are feeling this like jittery,

as that one professor said, nicotine

addict style withdrawal symptoms because

your brain is like this is here, this is

reward. It's the same thing like if

you're hungry and there's the you have

the the big bowl of popcorn in the

movies, right? I don't know if you have

this problem, Jesse, but I often tell

myself not till the previews are over.

It's really hard because there's a

bundle of neurons. It's like that's

going to be good when we eat that

popcorn. Boom, boom, boom, vote, vote,

vote. And you're like sort of sitting

there shaking. Uh because it's right

there and it's hard to overcome your

short-term reward system. So our

constant use of the phones builds up a

very strong vote from that neurona

bundle which makes it difficult to do

anything else when the phone is there.

But the second thing that happens is

that because of that we lose our

exposure to the deep delayed

gratification rewards of actually making

it through a good movie. Now why is that

important? Well, there's a different

reward system in our brain. a long-term

reward system that can override the

short-term reward system and it deals

with not immediate guesses of if we do

this thing, what's the reward? It

predicts the future. If we do this thing

now, it actually might not in the moment

be the best feeling thing, but in the

future that's going to give us a good

reward. Um, not a cheap reward like the

the sad that comes from eating popcorn,

but like maybe a deep psychological or

philosophical type of reward. That

long-term reward system could overwhelm

the short term, but it has to be

trained. And the way you train that

long-term reward system is that time and

again, you delay gratification. You get

the deep reward in the end, the deep

satisfactions. It strengthens its case

in the future for like it's worth

sticking with this activity.

So, we have this anti virtuous cycle

where the the phone makes it harder and

harder to watch things when it's there.

So, you get less exposure actually

making it through good movies. So, your

long-term reward system loses its

standing. And now, when you're in a

situation where even your phone's not

there, you're just like, I don't I'm

bored. Like, I don't want to make it

through here because there's no

motivation left for you to actually make

it through the film. So, those two

things work together and in the end, you

can't watch the film. Now, should we

care about it? What if you don't like

movies? Well, I say yes because it's a

canary in the coal mine. Movies are just

one example from a broader c category of

activities that uh are moving and

meaningful and can change the way we

understand the world and ourselves

and we're getting pushed away from that

because of what's happening on these

devices.

So whether or not you like movies,

there's some equivalent of that in your

life

that you are probably being pushed away

from because of the dominance of your

short-term reward system and how that

leads to the long-term reward system

with these other activities to degrade.

So this is like a bigger trend that's

being picked up by this specific issue,

this bigger trend that

activities that give us deep

satisfactions almost always require

delayed gratifications and and cognitive

patience, right? And the more time we

spend on our phones, the worse we get at

actually sticking with those activities.

How many things like watching movies are

leaving our lives that we don't even

know. So I think it is something worth

dealing with. Like the first step

towards reclaiming our brain is

beginning to rebuild cognitive patience

especially around activities that can

give us deeper satisfactions. And I

think movie watching is a great first

tool that we can use. So here's my

physical analogy, right? I mean, I think

about the ability to make it through a

good movie. We should think about that

like if you're new to running, your

ability to actually like complete a 5K

race. It's like that first milestone you

want to get to that says, "I am now

starting to reclaim my brain. I am now

starting to actually build up some

cognitive fitness." It's not where you

end, but it should be your first step.

So, this is my pitch to you today. Let's

let's make this our exercise. Relearning

how to build up the cognitive patience

to make it through a good movie. And

we're doing this not just because movies

are cool, which they are, but because

again, we want what I call attentional

autonomy, the ability to actually have

more control over what we do with our

brain and not just what's going to give

us the most immediate rewards. Let's

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know we sent you. All right, Jesse,

let's get back to the show. All right,

so this brings us to the practical

segment of this discussion.

How do you teach yourself

to make it through and enjoy

good movies?

Well, I have two general categories of

things to suggest. Okay. Um, the first

category of things to suggest is when

you sit down to try to watch these

movies, you have to get the stimuli

that's that is going to trigger the

short-term reward system out of the

room. Do not have your phone with you.

But you're just setting yourself up for

failure. here, the nicotine addict,

shaky withdrawal if the phone is right

there because it's going to fire those

votes again and again and again. And why

combat that? Why combat that? Put the

phone far enough away that it's not

triggering your short-term reward

center. All right? So, that's going to

help. And if you're in a movie theater,

for God's sakes, I hate seeing this,

Jesse. I don't know if you see this now,

but because of that reward signal,

people are looking at their phones. They

can't help themselves. So, it's almost

easier to practice this at home because

you can put your phone very far away in

the movie theater. People are just like,

you know what? I'm just going to look at

it because, you know, I don't know, they

can't help themselves. All right. Number

two, so that gets that helps the

short-term reward system to greatest

influence. Number two, we have to uh

rebuild your association of long-term

reward. So, keep the movies good. That

is movies with enough sort of art or

artifice that you're going to end them

with a deep satisfaction. I was exposed

to something new. It was a moving

experience. It was an inspiring

experience. The the craft was really

inspiring. The the story was really

inspiring because again, the more

exposure you get to a moving experience

at the end of a movie, the more standing

you're giving to your long-term reward

system and the easier it will be to do

this in the future. So, how do you now

make it all the way through a good movie

if you're not used to watching movies

that aren't uh every six minutes there's

some sort of alien that's attacking? How

do you make it through these movies?

Here is my technique that I use. I'm

going to give it to you now for the

first time. Never talked about it

before. I call it the 30-minute rule.

You never go more than 30 minutes

without stopping to read something about

the movie. Right? So before you start,

you read a review or analysis of the

movie. And if it's a good movie, there's

going to be a lot written about it. So,

oh, I kind of understand. Why do people

like this? What should I be looking for?

Great. You watch 30 minutes. Stop. Give

your brain a little bit of a break. Read

another reviewer analysis. Start it up

again. go another 30 minutes, stop, read

another review or analysis. You're

always repringing your brain

with ideas about why this movie is good,

what you should be looking out for, why

people liked it, and just increases its

attractiveness or salience to your brain

and makes it easier to pay attention and

it amplifies the reward you get out of

it. I am not a big fan of this movement

of like exposure to art. Just go to the

museum and then you'll learn to love

art. It doesn't work that way. You got

to know what you're looking at and why.

Or just say, "Watch this movie. It's

great." Like, it can work. Some great

movies will will get the people, but a

lot of classics people like, "I'm

bored." Right? So, you need to know what

makes it great and it amplifies the

reward you get from the experience with

gives your long-term reward system more

standing. And now you can your cognitive

patience expands. Now, here's my extra

secret tip. This is this is one I like

because I like both the art of movies,

but also the craft of movies. If I'm

watching a classic, I always search to

see if there's an article written about

it for American cinematography magazine,

uh, magazine for cinematographers,

right? A lot of movies will have these

articles where the cinematographer, I

guess now they often call these director

of photographies as well, um, write a

long essay about how they shot the

movie, what they were thinking about,

the techniques they introduced, and why

they introduced them. you learn about uh

different lighting choices they make and

different lensing choices they make. I

always come away from those articles

with this like I I see the movie through

a different light. I'm like, "Oh my god,

look what they did in this scene. This

is great." All this amplifies reward.

All right, so that's what I'm going to

recommend.

What should you watch

this? Okay, you know this, Jesse. I

can't do top 10 list. I'm like I There's

a word for this. Like I I can't rank

things. I can't see what my favorite

things are. So, I can't tell you like

these are the 20 best movies or the 10

best movies or whatever. Um, but I just

went through and I listed I was thinking

through like if I was someone was like

wanting to get into watching good

movies, what are some movies I would

recommend? And I just threw a bunch down

that these are all movies that are

meaningful to me and I think they have

like really clear sources of value if

you do my 30 minute rule and read about

them or why they're uh important. So, I

have these in rough chronological order

here. Um, on the older side, consider

watching M, the German Fritz Lang movie

about actually uh, it's not a very

cheery topic, Jesse. It's about a I

guess like a child's abducting serial

killer, but it's from the 30s. Um,

so atmospheric. It's kind of touches on

German expressionism. So many like

innovations in it. It's actually a

really good movie. Watch Citizen Kane.

Citizen Kane kind of fell out of uh, I'm

obsessed with this movie. kind of fell

out of favor because what happened is a

lot of people watched they were like

what's so great about this? What you

have to do to understand that is watch

another movie made that same year.

You're like oh this is great because he

invented Wells invented like all of

these techniques that now we're used to

from from sophisticated movies. They

weren't in the movies before it. I mean

he has nonline nonlinear narratives. He

has uh the sort of um the the types of

cuts, these type of tracking shots, his

use of long focus. his even like little

things like I'm going to build a ceiling

on this set because I want to be able to

shoot low and they actually had a the

floor of the set up on a platform so a

cameraman could be down in a pit and but

to shoot up you have to have a ceiling

and so they built a fake ceiling on the

set. Uh he just innovated the the the

cinematography in this the the the

darkness, the shadows like this 20

whatever something like 27 or something

comes in from radio and just innovates

innovates innovates innovates the most

innovations in a single movie technical

innovation since probably Birth of a

Nation but with 100% less Clueless Clan

members. So like that's good. Um so I'm

a big Sis Kane fan. If you can watch it

with the audio commentary that's worth

it. You got to watch John Ford. You got

to watch the Searchers. You got to watch

Vertigo uh by Hitchcock. You gotta watch

um uh The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. I

think that's that's my favorite Clint

Eastwood from that period. You got to

watch Bonnie and Clyde. Read about

Bonnie and Clyde before you watch it.

This introduced new Hollywood. Read

Pauline Kale on it. Read uh Eert on it.

There's I think Bonnie and Clyde.

There's a famous review. I don't know if

it's Morgan Stern, who it is, who didn't

understand it because Bonnie and Clyde,

you know, this is Warren Batty,

Hackman's in it. Uh, it was bringing

like a European style personal film

making to Hollywood just as the studio

system was collapsing, right? Like this

was we went from The Sound of Music to

Bonnie and Clyde. It's it's a European

style film in the sense it's more

personal. It's more nihilistic. It's

it's it's playing on like emotional

realism or whatever. And there's a

famous review of it that's like this is

garbage. And then they had to go back

and write a new review like I was wrong

actually. This is a classic. So you got

to watch that. You got to watch Jaws

arguably like the platonically perfect

movie of the 20th century. Um then you

got to watch some of the new Hollywood7s

some other naturalist movie naturalism

rich movies. I would suggest uh Dog Day

Afternoon is good. Um the city ltt

Nashville I think is very good. You

listen to the Robert Altman working with

these multi-track recorders that have

overlapping naturalistic dialogue. I

also like McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Speaking of Batty, which is like another

Altman movie of that era. It's like a a

realist naturalist reinterpretation of a

western. Watch that after The Searchers.

That's a cool double feature you're

going to get right there. Um Taxi

Driver. I mean, it's an unsettling

movie, but man, the camera work in

there, the confidence of that movie. Uh

let's go modern like 21st century.

Dunkirk I think is uh a masterpiece of

writing and film making. Um I think I've

been pushing Zone of Interest. Not a

very cheery movie. Takes place right

outside the gates of Ashwitz. So I guess

you could double feature this with Fritz

Lang movie. Um I think it's a

masterpiece. There's there's a lot about

that movie. It's so original the way

that it was like crafted and

constructed. I saw in the theater. I

think it's fantastic. Um, if you want

something that's in the theaters now,

the best thing I've seen recently is

Marty Supreme. It's one of the Softy

Brothers. Uh, fantastic kind of, again,

you got to read about it, right? It's

it's commentary on the American

experience, on capitalism, on the

tension between ambition and family and

where we come from and is beautifully

shot and acted and the energy. It's just

like a really well done thing. All

right, so I don't know. I'm leaving out

all good movies, but that's a place to

get started. What am I missing, Jesse? I

mean, crossroads should be most of your

time.

>> I saw that in the theater. I saw that in

the theater and got yelled at by the

people behind me.

>> What happened?

>> I was making fun of it so much that at

the end of the movie they were like,

"You ruined this for us because you

wouldn't shut up." And I like it was so

bad.

>> Like, you should have been on your phone

so you were distracted by me.

>> Yeah, that's the problem. Nowadays, they

wouldn't have noticed. They would have

been on their phones. Oh, man. What am I

missing?

>> Well, Robert Dval just passed away.

>> Yeah. Okay, we we got to do some like

Devol

on him.

>> Yeah, you got to watch Apocalypse Now.

There's there's such great beautiful

remasterings of that of that movie. It's

visually beautiful. That's a fantastic

movie. Colonel Kilgore. That's classic.

Duval Godfather

one and two. It's like out of favor to

say that's good. It's a great movie and

he's great in that.

>> He wasn't in three because they weren't

going to pay him enough.

>> Yeah. And three wasn't very good.

>> Yeah. Three was horrible.

>> Um The Great Santini. He's very good. I

think Robert Deval's I mean his

>> he was in network too.

>> He was in network is a great movie. Um

his most challenging role and I

hopefully the role that he's remembered

for and the one that you should watch I

think is his appearance as the father of

the um Vince Vaughn character in Four

Christmases.

That's an underrated movie. My wife and

I love the the it's like a 2006 movie

Four Christmases. It's Reese Witherspoon

and Vince Vaughn at the end of that era

where like you would just put Vince

Vaughn in a movie and he would talk fast

and it was kind of funny and Robert

Duval played his like functional

alcoholic divorced father.

>> Mad Dog had a critic on talking all

about him and he said that he was

offered the Jaws leading role but he

didn't want to be a main guy.

>> Yeah, I know a lot about I just read

reading about again everyone was offered

those roles and you know how Schneider

got it. Spielberg was like at a thing

socially with Schneider and was uh just

telling about the movie and he's like

why don't you put me in the lead and

he's like you know what yeah that makes

sense and that was that and that's how

he ended up in the and they they put him

in the lead Schneider. All right we're

going to take another quick break to

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All right, let's get back to the show.

Um, all right. So, that's what we got.

Watch more movies. All right, we're

going to move on now with our news and

notes.

All right. So, I got to react to

something that uh I've been sent a lot

of times. I think a lot of people have

been sent this a lot of times. It's an

essay that's been going around on X that

went viral. It's written by an AI

startup entrepreneur named Matt Schumer.

And the essay is called something big is

happening. And it is a uh right down the

middle AI is about to change everything

for real this time. Let's all be worried

type of essay. I got sent this so many

times. For whatever reason, this crossed

over in the normie culture and out of

tech culture and tech journalism

culture. Everyone seems to be reading

this. So, by popular demand, I'm going

to go through this a little bit. Uh I

I've picked out three or four uh

sections I think are important for

understanding the message and approach

of this essay and then I'm going to

respond to it and we'll try to get down

to the ground truth here. So, I'll have

this on the screen here for people who

are watching instead of just listening.

All right. I'm going to read something

here. I'll start with something from the

introduction to the piece. All right, so

here's Matt Schuber. I've spent six

years building an AI startup and

investing in the space. I live in this

world and I'm writing this for the

people in my life who don't. My family,

my friends, the people I care about who

keep asking me, "So, what's the deal

with AI?" and getting an answer that

doesn't do justice to what's actually

happening. I keep giving them the polite

version, the cocktail party version,

because the honest version sounds like

I've lost my mind. And for a while, I

told myself that this was a good enough

reason to keep what's truly happening to

myself. But the gap between what I've

been saying and what is actually

happening has gotten far too big. The

people I care about deserve to hear what

is coming, even if it sounds crazy. All

right, that's quite the setup there. Um,

there's some sort of classic AI

reporting traps that are happening here.

There's no actual information in it.

It's pure emotional manipulation trying

to give you a sense of the digital ick,

make you feel uneasy. It sets you up for

this. what the emotional state it puts

you in if you're not someone who's

following AI closely is like, "Yeah,

your your worst suspicions are true.

It's crazy what's going on out there."

And you know what? All right, I'm going

to let you in. What's going on? That is

a classic before we get to the content

of this essay. That is a classic move.

Like, I'm going to reveal to you what's

happening and it's worse than you think.

I mean, that's like the classic move for

everything. Um, conspiratorial thinking,

for radical health trends. It's a very

compelling way to set up whatever you're

going to say. All right, let's get into

the content itself. I'm going to skip

ahead a little bit now. Here's the

first, I think, substantive thing that

said here. For years, AI had been

improving steadily. Big jumps here and

there, but each big jump was spaced out

enough that you could absorb them as

they came. Then, in 2025, new techniques

for building these models unlocked a

much faster pace of progress. And then,

it got even faster and then faster

again. Each new model wasn't just better

than the last, it was better by a wider

margin, and the time between new model

releases was shorter. I was using AI

more and more, going back and forth with

it less and less, watching it handle

things I used to think required my

expertise. All right, I'm going to stop

right there. This is our first piece of

evidence that, oh, this writer is

willing to essentially make things up if

they fit the vibe that he's trying to

portray.

The way he describes this is actually in

some sense the opposite of reality. As

someone who has been covering the AI uh

this the generative AI revolution very

closely for the New Yorker and here for

this show, this is not how things

happen. It's opposite.

Things were moving really fast when

pre-training scaling was working. The

jump from two to three and three to four

were these impressive leaps. This is

where you're in the steep part of the

the lost power law curve from the Kaplan

scaling paper. The period he's talking

about as we arrived into 2025 is

actually when progress slowed down.

It became a problem for the AI

companies. the general overall

capability boost that happened from

pre-training scaling stopped happening

and they had the shift instead to a

backup plan which was we're going to do

this sort of post-training work on very

specific tasks and we're going to do

things like post inference time compute

and we're going to turn our focus from

like general ability improvements that

are clearly impressive to any user to

instead chasing down these arcane named

benchmarks that we can sort of teach the

model to specifically do well on and

there was this whole period where this

was a real for users were like I don't

really the main thing I'm noticing is

like the personality of the chat bots

changing and you were getting

incremental improvements on specific

activities where they could specifically

try to post train for that activity it

was actually a bad period for growth not

a good period so this idea that changes

were speeding up um most I would say

close watchers are saying no no this

actually slowed down and they had to try

to find specific areas where some sort

of notable improvement could make. They

found video generation was one that that

ended up being a bit of a bust. And then

the other place was uh in computer

programming tools. So I think he's

extrapolating

uh continued progress on the computer

programming tools which I'll get into in

a second was not exponential but hard

one with like the models in general were

getting faster at some sort of bigger

pace. It's simply not true. I know it

fits the vibe of people talking about

cloud code more but it's simply not

true.

All right, so let's uh read the rest of

this quote here. Then on February 5th,

two major AI labs released new models on

the same day. GPT53 codecs from Open AAI

and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic. And

something clicked, not like a light

switch, more like the moment you realize

the water has been rising around you and

is now at your chest. Again, these were

just continued incremental improvements

on these coding related agents, which

I've been reporting on for a while. Um,

they've been impressive for a while. the

they've been making progress in these

somewhat frequent but relatively small

steps that are built on fine-tuning and

other types of post-training that

they're doing specifically around

programming tasks. There is something

like an inflection point where the the

latest model these latest models on

certain sorts of like code

autogeneration agentic autogeneration

task like it got just to a level where

more and more people were like I think I

can start using this more in my

day-to-day. So, but these are kind of

technical shifts

and they're very focused on what's

specifically happening in programming.

So, the idea that there's this these

models in general are exponentially

speeding up. This is the opposite of

exponential incremental steady progress

on a small number of narrow applications

where other applications that they

thought the models would be much better

at. So far, they failed to be making

progress on. All right, let's jump into

the details of the programming itself.

Matt writes, I am no longer needed for

the actual technical work of my job. I

describe what I want built in plain

English and it just appears. Not a rough

draft I need to fix to finish thing. I

tell the AI what I want. Walk away from

my computer for four hours and come back

to find the work done well. Done better

than I would have done it myself with no

corrections needed. A couple of months

ago I was going back and forth with the

AI guiding it making edits. Now I just

describe the outcome and leave. I'll

skip the final details here. Um, so he's

saying in the narrow world of computer

programming, this is the inflection

point advance that you can now as a

computer programmer just tell the AI

this is what I want and come back four

hours and you have that app built. He

goes on to talk about that it not only

builds the app, it tests the app, it

fixes it. You don't have to do anything

anymore. All right. Um, so is this how

people are now using this technology,

the latest models that were released

earlier this month? Uh, well, who can

tell? I can tell because I'm in the

middle of a reporting uh project that I

started just last week. So with the

exact models he's talking about where I

have so far rel received detailed notes

on how they use AI from active computer

programmers. I have over 250 such case

studies. I've made my way through about

half of them so far. So I'm still kind

of early in this progress. But here's

what I can tell you.

No one is saying make me an app and

walking away and coming back four hours

later and is like there I have it let's

release this. That is not how

programmers are using these very latest

tools. That only works for very specific

types of apps. They have to be in one of

a small number of like very common style

of applications that are much more and

it's like a special languages sort of

interface um focused not too big and you

don't need to be particularly stable. So

you can as like a hobbyist

kind of vibe code, hey, can you make me

a Tetris game with, you know, uh,

Dungeons and Dragons characters or

something and it will like do that. You

can come back, you'll have something.

But the 250 serious programmers I'm

talking to, that's not the way they're

using the auto code generation. U, um,

it's much more narrow and specified.

Those who are doing this, and a lot of

them aren't, those who are doing this

talk a lot about how there's these super

clear specs. This is exactly what I want

you to do. And then they let the they

they let the model build that code uh

for this piece and then they have to

extensively test it because again the

models make mistakes 20% of the time,

right? Um and then they run a bunch of

unit testing on it. Okay, I think this

is working. Let's integrate that in.

Okay, now here's the next thing I need

you to do. And like one out of five of

these attempts are like, okay, the AI

just doesn't get it. I'll just do it

myself. There's a lot of interesting

stuff happening here with AI. But what

he's describing so confidently is what

I'm a minuscule fraction of this broad

sample of real active professional

computer programmers I talked to a

minuscule fraction is using the tools in

this way. It's cool what's happening but

it's not hey go make me go do this I'll

come back four hours later it's just

done and I'm moving on in my life there

these are heavily supervised right now.

All right u let's keep rolling here. Uh

here's the next quote from the piece I

want to highlight. The AI labs made a

deliberate choice. They focused on

making AI great at writing code first

because building AI requires a lot of

code. If AI can write that code, it can

help build the next version of itself. A

smarter version which writes better code

which builds an even smarter version.

Making AI great at coding with a

strategy that unlocks everything else.

This is gradea nonsense.

It's just vibing nonsense.

These AI agents do not let us make

better AI models. That's not how that

works. That's not what's happening

there. They they're very useful

especially like if you talk to these

programmers like I've been doing. The

reason why they're saving time is that

it's there's a lot of very tedious tasks

that happen when you build various

software stacks or applications like

building out the interface and

connecting all the interface elements to

you know like the right functions or

integrating multiple different data

sources into you know a common framework

so that you can pull data from any of

them. Um this is tedious type of coding

especially if you're not an expert at

exact like you haven't built a hundred

of those type of apps before and it

takes people a long time because they

have to look up oh god what's the

library call for the button what's the

what do I how do I access this sort of

data source here for this what's the

call I got what do I have to import and

uh this type of stuff these models can

do automatically they know it already

like god that saves me so much time it's

so tedious I don't have to do the

tedious thing what they cannot do is

like invent a new

model of intelligence, improve the

fundamental mathematics of like machine

learning, you know, build us a a better

model for AI than we've ever seen

before. That's not how this works. None

of the innovations in generative AI are

programming related innovations. They're

all conceptual mathematical innovations

where someone who is an expert in

machine learning realizes like oh

reinforcement learning could be applied

to a language model if we work through

the different reormalizations of the

vectors properly and then someone goes

off and programs it. So this idea that

uh tedious code or code that requires

you to look up a lot of information can

be automatically coded and that saves

you a lot of time. You cannot jump from

there to say oh AI can write itself now

and now we're going to have this

self-reinforcing loop. That idea has

been in the zeitgeist all the way back

to the 1960s when JL Good wrote the

first paper on ultra intelligence and

introduced the idea of recursive

self-improvement. Uh it is not not not

what these tools are meant to do. They

cannot do that. That's not what going

it's not what's going on. This notion

that the AI companies chose to build AI

agents fir I mean coding agents first so

that they could build better models that

could then do everything else is wrong.

The reason why we're hearing more about

coding agents is because it's one of the

only narrow tranches of applications

where they could find a market. They

didn't choose there's a lot of other

things the AI companies promised

products in. I just I wrote an article

back in January for the New Yorker about

this where in early 2025 they said this

is the year that we're going to have

these general use agents for all sorts

of jobs. We're there. It's going to

happen. It didn't happen because it

turns out that's much harder than coding

agents. They put a lot of effort in the

video generation and like that did

pretty well, but there was no market

there because people didn't want to pay

$200 a month to make Tik Tok videos.

They want there to be other markets.

They're just the technology is not good

enough. It's not interesting enough.

It's not helpful enough. We're not

seeing it move the needle in other

positions as much. So, we're hearing

about coding because it's like the only

place right now where there's real

progress being made and it is a good

market and this technology could be

really useful for programmers. Again,

I'm I'm doing these surveys and I'm

going to do a much bigger thing about

this soon.

But this is like a narrow thing that's

happening right now.

one of the places where these models

have always been good all the way back

to the the instruct model the instruct

GPT model that was helped to make the

GPD35 that chat GPT was made on from the

very beginning the last half decade

we've known the one thing these models

are good at is structured code because

it's very structured language with lots

of good training examples and they've

been making steady improvements on it

using post- training techniques and

they've been passing various milestones

as they do these and this is a good

story for the computer industry and it's

an interesting story we might lose jobs

we might gain jobs and we don't know and

we should cover Well, but the idea that

the AI companies chose to do that first

so that they could then make their own

models smarter and then there's going to

be this takeoff and AI takeover straight

up vibe nonsense. That's not what's

actually happening.

So, okay, I'm I'm going to leave it

here, Jesse, because this this this

essay makes me a little bit upset, but

let me be clear.

summarize

their struggles with the AI industry

post GPT4, the failure of project Orion,

the failure of the BMTH model, the

failure of uh the Gro 3 failure where

they moved to 100,000, you know, GPUs

for training and didn't get big

improvements, the shift towards post-

training, more incremental improvements

and benchmark chasing. I've written

about this. Look at my article last

August uh for the New Yorker for more

about this. This is the the portrait of

a an industry that's not like it's

failing, but it's also not going gang

busters. This is why, you know, the

right now the investment community is

like a little bit nervous about the

stocks for the big AI companies like we

we need to see where your big revenue is

going to come from and we're not seeing

it yet. It's like just a mixed story.

It's a cool technology. They're trying

to find markets.

They're finding some niche markets.

Customer service, uh, you know, video

production, that's a pretty small

market, but there's good stuff there.

And in programming, they're pretty good

at programming. and they've been making

steady incremental progress and the

tools are now good enough now that it's

beginning to affect the actual workflow

rhythms of non-trivial percentages of

programmers. And that's a cool

interesting story. This essay is about a

science fiction dream. This is not an

inflection point for most people if

you're not a computer programmer. This

is not from here we get some rapid

takeoff. From here everything changes.

And I've seen article after article

after this essay came back, including

one, if you read my newsletter today and

get at calupport.com, I dissect an

Atlantic article that does so much vibes

on exactly this. I just don't think

that's an accurate way to think about

this. All right, interesting stuff is

happening to computer programming. This

is not an inflection point that AI is

about to rise over our heads and change

everything. Again, it's a task for which

these models are supremely well suited

and all this progress has been

incremental

but steady is to continue to refine and

update because it's the only place where

they're getting non-trivial monthly

subscription fees right now is honestly

in that space. So, I don't want to say

nothing's happening, but also I think

this essay is um it's alarmist and I

think it it he gets the technology wrong

and he mixes truth with fiction and

makes statements confidently that just

aren't right. So, there's a lot of good

reporting out there about AI. This is

not it. You could ignore this one. You

can ignore this one. So, I don't know.

There you go, Jesse. Did you see that

essay? Everyone sent me that essay.

>> I did not see it until I saw it in the

script. I mean he he wrote it in part

with AI

>> and you can tell I don't know I the

bigger thing not the bigger thing the

other story here is these essays on X

going viral is like definitely I think a

thing of the winner of 2026 and

obviously that opportunity is going to

get saturated and go away but remember

that Dan Co essay we did that was also

one of these X essays that went viral so

I think we're in this moment where like

you can go viral on X doing these long

form essays and I bet it's not going to

last past March it's going to get

saturated did and then that opportunity

is going to go away. But man, you're

going to How many YouTube videos do you

think are being made right now about how

to go viral with your ex essays? There's

probably so much content about this.

>> I know. I don't know. I don't like I

don't like to think of myself as an AI

skeptic, but like I see myself as an AI

realist. I I really want to ground

everything I do and what's actually

happening. I don't like this vibe

approach. Well, I love the fact how you

referenced on an earlier show as well

that you're doing all the reading with

your students from the past and you see

all the recurring themes.

>> Yeah, I the doctoral seminar I'm

teaching on super intelligence with AI

doctoral students. Yeah, these themes

are very powerful and they've come up

again and again and again. It's I mean

people doesn't mean they're true right

now. All right, let's hear from a

listener here. News and notes. Let's get

a note here. Um, we got an interesting

email that was related to the Olympics

which are just sort of ending as we

record this episode. We got an email

from Katie I want to read and then I'll

react to it. Katie says, "Um, I've been

following your work for years and has

helped me immensely in both my personal

professional life. So, thank you. I

thought of digital minimalism as I was

reading Ilia Malinin's Instagram post

after his heartbreaking solo performance

in the freekate a few days ago. He cites

quote vile online hatred in quote as an

impetus for his literal downfall. I

don't know if you saw that Jesse, but I

guess the quad god who's from Vienna.

He's around here.

>> Um fell during solo. Yeah. They said man

so hard. They said he there there's no

athlete who's more favored in his sport

than he was in his sport. But I the two

times I watched him he did not win a

gold medal. Um they got in the team

though. Uh all right, back to Katie

Zemo.

I was struck by this, especially in the

aftermath of Simone Bile's well

publicized experience in which she cited

similar demons. I would have thought

that elite athletes would have taken

note and begin to see social media and

really any media coverage of themselves

as far more of a liability than an

asset. No doubt an online present helps

with sponsorships and other business

deals. But is it worth it if it prevents

someone from truly achieving the highest

status in their sport? If elite athletes

will meticulously attend to their food

consumption, why do they seem hesitant

to limit their media consumption? It

seems to me that as sports grows and

becomes more competitive, the edge might

be less and less in workout plans and

diet regimes, but in the still

countercultural practice of social media

abstinence. All right, Katie, I think

that's a really good note. Uh, it is

going to happen. It is kind of happening

in elite athletics. The the coaches in

the front offices are realizing this.

I've had conversations with like

multiple GMs from the NBA. Uh I had, you

know, I talked with like the head of a

internationally ranked rugby team. Uh

athletes are beginning to at least the

the teams are beginning to realize, oh,

this is a huge edge in a sports setting

where small edges really matter. The

problem is the players are young and

they're addicted because they've been on

these things all the time.

and their whole life has often been

about just training for sports and it's

an anxiety producing type of life. they

don't have a lot else going on because

they have to focus so uh diligently on

the sports and so they use the phone as

like here's my escape here's my way to

numb here's my way to self-medicate and

it's better than actual drugs right or

alcohol because I'm a I need to keep my

body performing and they end up addicted

and it's really hard for them it's why

for example from what I hear talking to

sports executives the biggest issues are

are in the NBA why youngest players you

have the smallest gap from you know like

high school you can go right from high

school into playing for an NBA team

compare this to something like major

league baseball where man it's a long

road even if you're like Eli Willitz and

you get you know recruited at 17 you're

going to go through all of these uh

minor league teams also the games are

played they're long and you don't have

technology with you uh so NBA has this

worse but anyways I think eventually

people are going to put their foot down

from a coaching perspective and realize

this is getting you you're going to be

better if you don't use this at all I

think it'll be a non-trivial advantage

and once elite athletes are doing it

this often is why I like This trend

often accelerates trends into the

general public. Just like there's

certain types of exercise and diet and

recovery routines that elite athletes do

that make their way down to how the

general public does it. This could have

a big impact

to hear like really top athletes say I

don't even touch that stuff and it helps

means more people who aren't elite

athletes might be like okay that's not

so eccentric anymore. One person who

does do this is Alex Hnold the the rock

the climber. He's talked about this a

lot because for him it's not just if I

lose a 5% edge uh I'm going to have a a

bad performance in a basketball game.

It's like if I lose that edge I could

fall and die. So he goes on like a very

long period in the leadup to his free

solo climbs where he doesn't look at a

phone, no social media, nothing so that

his head can just get clear and he can

get into this like mind space where he

can concentrate more. More athletes have

got to follow this. I mean, especially

like these Olympians, these young

Olympians, it just gets in their head.

Like, especially if you're like a if

you're going to wear what you have to

wear as a figure skater, you don't want

to be on social media. If if if you look

like you're in Blades of Glory, like you

do look like the character from Blades,

like you don't want to be on social

media. Just do your quad jumps, you

know? So, I think Katie is right. I

think we are going to see that trend,

and I think that's good. Did you watch

any of the Alex documentary on climbing

the skysa?

>> I watched it live. Watched it live. Um,

and then I watched it kind of was a

bummer. I watched a video of a

professional rock climber talking about

it and he was like, I can't emphasize

how easy this was. He's like, this is

not this is this is a not a challenging

climb for Alex Honold.

>> That kind of goes with your theme of,

you know, watching 30 minutes of a movie

and then reading a review. It did change

my experience. Yeah. Yeah. It was

interesting. But yeah, but basically

they put it on the rating and it was

like a relatively low rated climb. He

was like the only He said you could do

this like if you repeated this a

thousand times maybe he falls once but

probably zero times. Like for Alex it's

like for us if someone was like I want

you to climb this step ladder and you're

like yeah I can climb the ladder like

I'm not going to fall or whatever. It's

like they they said the main thing is

just um making sure that you had the

right uh make sure that you were trained

up enough you don't get arm fatigue.

>> Mhm. It was like 70 minutes long. I

basically fast forwarded so it only took

me like 20 minutes of I got the gist.

>> I was chilling with some friends and

then we just had it on. Yeah. I was at a

friend's house for his birthday. We kind

of had it on the iPad just like hey does

he fall? No. All right.

>> The scariest part was really the end.

>> You see the end?

>> Yeah.

>> He's standing on that little thing with

those winds up there.

>> I mean

>> but then he went on his phone. Right. I

wonder if he went on social media. He's

like, "Oh, I finally got here. Let me

get on TikTok."

>> He was like, "Oh my god." And then he

fell.

That'd be bad for him. Be good for us,

though. Right. Metaphorically. Alex

Honold publicly on live TV falling to a

gruesome death while his wife was there.

Be good for our views. We do well. Kind

of a bummer that didn't happen.

>> Just kidding.

It's kind of a bummer. Um, all right.

Let me do another note. Quick update on

my book. Right. So, as longtime watchers

and listeners know, my next book, which

I actually it's taking me much longer

than I thought, is I'm writing a book

about the deep life because I have this

idea that uh like when it came to

distractions, digital distractions in

the office, what actually worked is when

I wrote a book called Deep Work that

said, "Yeah, distractions are bad, but

what I want to give you is a bigger,

better offer." So, books that were just

about email being bad don't sell as well

as the book that was here's what you

should do instead. I realized I needed

something similar for our digital lives

outside of work. It's hard to tell

someone to get off their phone when the

life outside of the phone is sort of uh

unsettling or uneasy or anxiety

producing or just boring. So, you need a

bigger better offer. We don't need to

hear more about why the phone is bad. We

need to create lives that the phone is

not that interesting. So, that's what

the deep life is. I talk about it a lot

on this show. Anyways, the update,

Jesse, is I I handed in my manuscript.

So, I finally finished a draft of the

entire book. It's in the hands of of uh

my US and UK editors right now. There's

still a lot of work to be done after

that. Like significant rewriting happens

during the editing phases, but still

symbolically to get a complete

manuscript that it's like, "All right, I

got my arms around it." So, I'm pretty

psyched about it.

>> Can we talk about the conclusion and

your strategy with that or is that

>> Yeah.

>> top secret?

>> You mean my conclusion that I haven't

written yet?

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> I feel like the audience would love

that.

>> I So, you're right. I didn't submit the

full manuscript. I submitted the

manuscript minus the conclusion. But

I've done this before because the point

is this is just like a bookw writing

thing, but that's the last thing you

write. And typically when you finish a

whole manuscript and I was like, I

wanted to get it done before I went on a

trip. The conclusion is kind of rushed

and they're bad because of that. And I

find it's much better to like finish a

whole book, step away from it for a few

weeks, clear your mind, maybe even get

edits back, and then say, "I'm going to

write the conclusion." And if the

conclusion is the only thing you're

writing and you've cleared your brain

and you're no longer exhausted, then

you'll write a really good conclusion.

But if it's the last thing you're

writing at the very end of like a really

hard push, conclusion isn't that bad. So

I I handed the whole manuscript except a

conclusion and I said, "Look, I'm going

to take a couple weeks and then I'll

tack the conclusion on the end." So

that's my I also leave the introduction

towards that was the last thing I wrote

before I submitted it was the

introduction. Um over the summer when

you were abroad for the month or not

abroad but just away you had written a

part and then had to throw it away.

>> I threw away a lot of that book.

>> Did that happen multiple other times?

Like

>> I've thrown away a lot a lot.

>> Is that typical with books or

>> It just depends for me. This one I This

one I I've thrown out as many words as

I've written like as I just submitted

I've thrown out at least that many

words. And there's a lot of that. The

first approach to the book wasn't right.

Um, so I threw that out. The second

approach was the right approach, but the

the way I was writing it wasn't right,

so I threw out a bunch of that. Um, some

of that stuff I salvaged and could use

in other places. But so

>> a lot of Brandon Sanderson has a good

quote about this, by the way. U, you

might know Brandon Sanderson as the

author of Name of the Wind.

Actually, you know, my son, my middle

son is reading a lot of Sanderson.

>> Oh, nice. He he's he just finished the

third book in the misborn. I told him

about the storm something. I don't know.

I don't know what S. Well, the storm

something way of kings. I don't know.

But his other like major like epic one.

He's like, "Oh, I got to read that." Uh,

but I was listening to Ferris's

interview with Sanderson again, which is

like a great interview. And he said,

"This is the big divide between amateur

and profess professional writers.

Amateur writers don't like to throw out

chapters, and professional writers do it

all the time. It's like I guess I'm a

professional because I threw out a hell

of a lot of chapters. It's like this is

good writing, but it's not the right

writing and then you got to throw it

out. But I think this book's going to be

good. It's a handbook. I mean, I really

wrote it like a handbook. I mean, it's

like it's practical. It's linear. This

builds on this, builds on this, builds

on this. Um, it's really meant to be

let's talk about cultivating a deep life

so your phone's less interesting as like

a engineering challenge. Like let's be

like very systematic about it. So, Slow

Productivity came out in 2024, I think.

In spring.

>> When do you think this one will

eventually come out?

>> A year from now.

>> So, spring of 2027.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah.

>> And then you'll do like a book tour and

everything.

>> Yeah.

>> Similar as last time.

>> Yeah. I will be I will be out and about

book touring it up and doing all our

doing all of our things. We did a

podcast here. That was We did a live

podcast here in Tacoma Park. That was

fun.

>> Uh we did Pollocks and Pros around here.

Did you come to that one?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. That was fun. We got a big crowd.

Um, went to LA, went to Austin. Do the

stuff. We'll do the stuff. All right.

Uh, finally, what am I reading? I

finished two books on vacation and I'm

doing the count, Jesse. This gets me up

to four for February because I know you

don't trust me anymore. And I'm almost

done with my fifth. So, we're recording

this. What's the date? Like the 18th.

>> Yeah,

>> I'll finish my fifth probably tomorrow.

>> I believed you. I just wanted to keep in

the audience.

>> You don't trust me at all. You think I'm

trying to pull a fast one. Um, all

right. So I finished on vaca on I

finished a book I had started before. So

we went to the Florida Keys for a long

weekend. Um I finished a book a new book

called attensify like at like a mix of

attention intensify. It's like a splashy

new like manifesto. It's a collective of

academics who are thinking and writing

about attention and the attack on

attention from digital devices. And this

is their their um big new bold book. Um

it's smart actually. It's smart writing.

Yeah. Um, I actually there's there's a

couple ideas in there I'll probably talk

about, maybe make a future deep dive

about, but that was a smart book. Uh,

some some definitely some good ideas.

Um, and then the thriller, I needed a

thriller to read when I was in the Keys,

and I needed to be related to that part

of the country. So, I found a Lincoln

um, uh, Preston and Child's

Gideon Cruz thriller called The Lost

Island, which takes place in the

Caribbean. It's a little nuts. It's a

little nuts. Uh the it was good set

pieces. The structure was not great.

Like it was very disjointed. Um

interesting. I don't want to spoil it,

Jesse, but they're cyclopses.

And I didn't think and I wasn't a It's

not a fantasy book. Let's just say

there's a cyclops.

>> I have two quick questions.

>> Yeah.

>> Would you ever want to be an editor

>> or you just don't have any time, right?

You'd much rather write.

>> We would rather write. Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> But you talk to editors all the time.

>> Yeah. God bless them. I don't want the

job.

>> Cuz they have to read all the time,

right?

>> Yeah. Which seems like it's fun, but I

think the frustration would be is like

you get Here's here's the problem. If

you're an editor, you develop fantastic

taste because you all you're doing all

day long is reading. You know what's

successful, you know what's not. Like

you, you know, you're just so good at

assessing like what's good or bad. And

like 80% of what you read, you're like,

"This is not great." You know, that's

the problem. Like you occasionally get a

book you're like this is great but you

you know too well why the stuff that's

not great is not great and I think

that's got to be

>> but what can you it's not your book.

>> Yeah.

>> So you're like I'll help the author but

like I would have written this book

completely differently. I think that's

got to be frustrating.

>> Yeah.

>> Um also they put too much work on

editor's plates right now. So it's like

I I think I wrote about this in a world

without email.

uh digital technology like email changed

the structure of the job of being editor

in the sense that it and personal

computers they added like seven or eight

more parts of the book publishing

process onto the plate of the editor

like now like you're involved much more

and more constantly in marketing and

sales and book shipping and fulfillment

and the cover design and all the you're

in the mix on everything and because of

this it's become a much more like admin

overhead heavy like logistical nightmare

of a job.

Whereas, you know, 100 years ago, it's

like you had your manuscripts, you took

them to your house in the Hamptons, like

without the digital technology,

>> there was less you had to have your

hands in beyond like working on the

books. And editors don't publish more

book per editor now than they did pre-

email, but they're just they're just

more busy, right? So, it's one of these

things where on paper they're like each

of these new things email lets editors

do makes them more productive on paper

because it's how could it be wrong to

have more information or more say on

things, but in reality it doesn't

produce more good books. So, it's like

one of these classic case studies of uh

you think in the narrow this technology

will make people more productive, but

then you zoom out on the metric that

matters and it didn't. So, I think it's

a hard job. Um, but they're the cool

thing about working with editors, they

read so many books

>> is their like feedback is like on it.

Yeah.

>> You know, like you give it to a friend

or someone or like they're like, "Oh, I

like this or what about this?" And like

sometimes it's useful, sometimes not.

The editor like they see straight to

your soul. They're like this. Nope. Yes.

No. What were you doing here? You're

forcing that. Like because they're just

so good at it. So I love working with

editors. I don't think I could do the

job. I wouldn't be any good at it.

>> And then last question. Did you read the

Rogan article in the New Yorker?

>> Remnix.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Did you read it?

>> Yeah, I read it.

>> Yeah. I got that that issue kind of

late, so I only read it more recently.

Um, yeah, it's pretty good.

>> I I just We're talking about off off air

a little bit. I the idea of Rimick

listening to like these Rogan episodes

where,

>> you know, the moon landing is fake and

like some of the more extreme Rogan

episodes like, oh man, that's that's

funny. But Rogue is a compelling

broadcaster, so it's not like the

hardest job. I thought it was a pretty

good profile. The main thing, here's

what I've noticed. I think the the sort

of elite writer world that I'm a part

of, like the in the academic elite

world, like the biggest problem they

have with Rogan is it's our frame. It's

like our frame for seeing the world is

very much a like rationalist

intellectual frame. Everything is about

ideas and knowledge and argument. And so

like Malcolm Gladwell did a big thing

about this. Rimnick was really upset

about this is like why your job you like

Joe Rogan is to um be looking for wrong

information and pushing back on wrong

information and building correct

structures of epistemology and knowledge

or whatever. It's actually not the way

that most people approach the world.

Most people approach the world like Joe

through like social relations like

connection with people like these type

of things. um emotional reactions.

What's interesting? What's not

interesting? Uh this makes me upset.

This makes me happy. This is, you know,

makes me feel good. Uh I want to like be

a a leader and a friend. It's like all

these things that are, you know, pre

writing rationalist, post-enlightenment

type of thinking that all like our elite

people do. And so they just see it very

differently. Like bro's like, "Oh,

someone's here. I want to like connect

with them and see if I can generate

interesting emotions or like I want to

something that's going to catch my

attention. But if it's like Rimnik or

Gladwell or me, our instinct is like the