Ep. 376: The Lincoln Protocol
October 27, 2025
Abraham Lincoln's success in escaping the pervasive distractions, dangers, and darkness of the 19th-century frontier provides a template, the Lincoln Protocol, for navigating contemporary digital challenges.
Ep. 375: Did OpenAI Just Kill Social Media?
October 20, 2025
The competitive advantage of legacy social media giants (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) historically rested on painstakingly constructed social graphs and user bases, which they abandoned by chasing the purely algorithmic, low-friction engagement model popularized by TikTok.
Ep. 374: This is Your Brain on Phones
October 13, 2025
Phone overuse is driven by the short-term motivation system, which is overwhelmed by the clean, consistent, and intermittent high rewards delivered by algorithmically curated content.
Ep. 373: The Internet’s Best Advice for Reinventing Your Life
October 6, 2025
Taking control of one's life is a critical prerequisite for effectively taking control of one's digital devices.
Ep. 372: Decoding TikTok’s Algorithm
September 29, 2025
The TikTok recommendation system is likely a highly optimized, two-tower machine learning architecture, not a controllable 'digital newspaper editor,' which allows it to relentlessly model and exploit human patterns, including dark impulses, without inherent ethical guardrails.
IN-DEPTH: Focus like a Nobel Prize Winner (w/ Brian Keating)
September 25, 2025
Brian Keating's unconventional academic path, marked by a lack of initial career planning and a focus on intellectual curiosity, ultimately led to success in academia, highlighting the potential pitfalls of the "academic hunger games" and the benefits of pursuing genuine interest.
Ep. 371: Is it Finally Time to Leave Social Media?
September 22, 2025
Curated conversation platforms, driven by algorithmic engagement and user interaction, create a "slope of terribleness" that inevitably leads from distraction to demoderation and potentially disassociation, impacting users' well-being and societal cohesion.
Ep. 370: Deep Work in the Age of AI
September 15, 2025
Deep work thrives on intensity and duration of focus, and introducing AI tools that reduce this intensity, even if they make the process feel more pleasant, can paradoxically decrease productivity.