Active Recall!

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Podcast Notes: Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman on UFOs, the evolution of the NBA, and pop culture on how we think

One of my favorite podcast duos. Others that come to mind that aren’t just the regular hosts

  • Jacoby and Wildes
  • Parr and Wilkinson
  • Puri and his cousin
  • Flynn and John

Anyway, great episode again.

UFOs
They talk about all the recent UFO stuff and the most frightening thing being the reactions of the pilots themselves.

Why didn’t they come out about this earlier? They still had their entire careers and whoever spoke about it would become the UFO guy.

They talk about growing up with aliens in pop culture and Klosterman points out that they were awesome at first, including Superman. Then things turned and they were nearly always evil. Still fun movies. Simmons sums it up: “But I didn’t think I’d have to deal with them!”

(They also talk about ghosts and Simmons re-tells the story of staying at an OKC hotel. Not the MVP ghosts of past present and future. But the horrible one that jumped out of the window with her baby.)

Mimetic desire and the NBA
For the 20th time this week I’ll mention that I’m reading Luke Burgis’s “Wanting” so that’s currently my main lens for things. But mimesis is so clear in the evolution of the NBA from a league where you follow one team primarily to many individuals.

I grew up with my dad working the night shift so some mornings I’d be getting ready for school and he’d be watching a recorded Sonics game.

The Sonics don’t exist anymore so now he mostly roots for good passers.

He loved Larry Bird.

Simmons points out that, back then, a photo of Larry Bird smoking a cigar was this big thing. Because it was a glimpse of what a player is like in real life.

Now we have a better sense with all the access the internet and social media gives us. But a mistake is that the combination gives us the full sense of who they are. We think that they’d make decisions the same way we would.

We enjoy “Just Like Us!” moments because it brings the celebristan models appear closer to ourselves.

To the point that we can forget they aren’t like us at all.

Pop culture was how we thought of stuff
They talk about learning things through pop culture. That’s where we learn what aliens are like. Or what people who would be able to fight aliens are like.

Some narratives are passed through centuries of culture. Dan Carlin compares Clint Eastwood to the Spartans. His characters follow the laconic model the Spartans did.

“Stand down and disengage your thermo lasers.”

In the Drone Wars of 2039, one drone lights up, leading the other 299, and sends a reply.

“Come and get them.”

Tips for daily sharing

Pick a format where polish isn’t necessary

You can’t make a feature film in a day, it’ll just be terrible every time. Same thing with a long-form article.

But you can probably do a thread, an email, a short video, and even a podcast episode.

If your cadence goal is daily, you can’t do something that requires a lot of prep, a lot of drafting, and a lot of private feedback for revision. The intention is to post it publicly and get public feedback.

That feedback helps you improve tomorrow’s piece, not today’s.

Daily makes things forgiving. Because the following day you can do some housekeeping if a reader pointed out an error.

Set a timer

Work will fill the time you give it. You know that already.

But do you take action on that?

Setting a timer is a reminder of that law. You’ll learn what to do with that time.

You can also start with some output like word count but still set a timer. Then you can compress the time little by little and see if the quality drops.

250 words in an hour
250 words in 45 minutes
250 words in 30 minutes
250 words in 15 minutes
250 words in 5 minutes
250 words in 1 minute

You’ll find a sweet spot somewhere in there.

Practice some structure

Not 10,000 kicks 1 time.

And no, not 1 kick 10,000 times

More like 5 kicks 2,000 times

John Danaher is one of the top BJJ coaches in the world. He teaches his students to master 6 submissions. 6 submissions with 98% confidence you’ll finish someone is better than 30 submissions with 20% confidence.

You won’t get that many chances for the percentages to stack well.

Oh yeah, writing.

Have some go-to…

  • Openings
  • Transitions
  • Body formats
  • Bullet formats
  • Closers

Practice those over and over.

More writing, more revision

I always get tempted to dictate or transcribe audio and create an enormous wall of text. You really can get to 250 words in 1 minute.

1000 words in 10 minutes is not really a problem when you’re just talking.

The problem is trying to revise 5000 words of garbage in the 10 minutes I have left for the hour I blocked off.

Listen log (June 07, 2021)

I’ll try to make this a regular thing but also we’ll see.

In the morning I:

  • take my dog for a walk
  • work out at the gym

Aka: lots of time listening

Do audiobooks count as reading?

  • No, if you’re doing some X books a year reading challenge
  • Yes, if you’re doing some other X books a year reading challenge

Can you actually learn from audiobooks?

Now, I remember the first time I read about CrossFit and someone was describing it from an aesthetics standpoint.

Their model was something like

  • Bodybuilder split (aka bro split) + steroids = Best results
  • CrossFit with steroids
  • CrossFit without steroids
  • Bodybuilder split without steroids

The point being: if you want results naturally then CrossFit is a good route.

I then probably did LL Cool J’a 60-day workout plan for 4 days.

You didn’t answer the question at all

Okay so here’s what it has to do with reading.

The model I have in my head is (from best learning to worst)

  • Print book with notes
  • Audiobook with notes
  • Print book without notes
  • Audiobook without notes
  • Audiobook at 3X without notes to fulfill some X books a year challenge

(Notes here includes highlights)

The idea that you can’t learn from listening at all is dumb, otherwise we wouldn’t ever talk.

But I’ve listened to my fair share of audiobooks too fast while doing too much other stuff that I didn’t listen. Which is a worse kind of dumb, because it’s disguised as doing a smart thing.

So with all the listening I do, I’ll try to make writing notes a when-then habit:

  • When I do cardio
  • Then I’ll journal
  • Then I’ll write a public listen log

These are supposed to actually log what I’m listening to with some notes, but instead I’ve just written notes on writing notes.

Quick log without thoughts:

  • Bill Simmons w Ryen Russilo talking about Mayweather and Logan Paul: People care about storylines, especially in sports when it’s not the top competition. The best of the best is a good storyline in itself. Below that you need narratives. This had a couple underdogs in some sense. Logan has no experience. Mayweather weighed 40 lbs less and was 20 years older. Formula 1 is much more interesting to watch if you have the Netflix show as spark notes for who to care about.
  • Wanting by Luke Burgis: This will shape my thinking for the next month and I think for the rest of my life. Why do I want to write the notes I’m writing now? Some of it to learn, some of it to share with the world that I’m someone who learns, some of it to share the ideas with the world.
  • Talk Therapy with Alex Lieberman: I definitely listened to this through a wanting lens. Alex talks through selling The Morning Brew, which is a general career outcome plenty of other people want. BUT then seeing that he still wants other things. You can always, always compare up. And you’ll always, always compare just a little bit up or laterally.

Shaan Puri talked about something similar: it’s easier to feel good about friends’ successes when they’re not in the same field as you.)

Far less wanting that way.

Wanting: Pre-read and first impressions

Check out the full notes for “Wanting” by Luke Burgis

I have a better understanding of what I want than I did this morning.

Not specifically what I want. But the concept of wanting things at all. All from the first couple chapters of Luke Burgis’s “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life”.

Summary: I want things but should probably spend time considering why and where those desires come from.

I’d love to read books, listen to podcasts, and draw notes all day. But I also like income that comes in through my job.

Someday I’d want to make those things intersect.

But why?

(I’m guessing the book won’t tell me the answer directly, but I’m hoping it’ll give me some guidance to frame that properly at all.)

Presumably I’d have more free time to… fill with more desires more likely.

  • How’d you find out about “Wanting”, the book?

Luke Burgis was interviewed on Ryan Holiday’s podcast. I checked his book out on Amazon and remembered seeing the cover in the past.

Ok the episode they started talking about mimetic theory and Peter Thiel and Girard.

Now here’s where some of my cogs started turning.

I was in a Write of Passage breakout room and someone mentioned their enthusiasm for Girard and their enthusiasm for another member’s writings about Girard.

No first name mentioned, so I knew (1) this “Girard” person was important and (2) the rest of the cohort is much smarter than me.

After that, I’d notice his name mentioned more and more (like how you notice VW bugs when you’re playing the game where you punch someone in the arm when you see a VW bug), often in discussions about Thiel.

Which all just reminds me of the “That Funke!!!” scene in Arrested Development. Spread the name around the water cooler.

So back then I thought “okay I’ll check out some Girard stuff” and did and saw how dense it was and quickly thought “okay I won’t check out some Girard stuff”.

Back to my comfort zone of books mentioning the marshmallow study.

I was somewhat relieved listening to the Daily Stoic episode because they talk about how unapproachable Girard’s writing can be. A lot of it isn’t meant to be taken at face value.

So I was happy to hear that Burgis wrote this book with people like me in mind. Interested in learning more about memetic theory but looking for some more approachable material.

Some random ramblings before I head off to sleep (a need, not a want—though 8 hours of restful scientifically optimized sleep does creep into the “want” side of things…)

  • Ryan Holiday and Luke Burgis discuss book success. The failure in the process happens when you start thinking about how a reader might dislike or attack your writing. Success in the process is laying out the truth as you see it as clearly as possible.
  • Still, authors of modern philosophy books aren’t immune to mimetic desires. Of course it’d be great to be a New York Times bestseller. Ryan doesn’t go as far as to say he was jealous, but he does make the comparison between his book “Conspiracy” and “Bad Blood”. One of them was a runaway hit you’ve heard of. The other is an excellent book with my childhood hero Hulk Hogan as the primary pawn.
  • Similar to Daniel Kahneman (who seems to go by Danny the way teammates called Kobe 1-syllable “Cobe”) saying he still falls for cognitive traps but might be slightly better at recognizing it’s happening — Burgis hopes to help us understand our desires better, not get rid of them entirely. That’s a fruitless exercise, because at some point you’ll _want_ to _not want_.

Looking forward to reading the rest.

Notepod 16: Reading Recap (May 2021)

Talking about a few books I read in May

  • Effortless by Greg Mckeown
  • The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention by Nicolas Cole
  • Soundtracks by Jon Acuff
  • The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo
  • Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
  • 21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling
  • Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole by Gigi
  • How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman

June 2021 Goals

Here are some public goals for the month

  • Making stuff: 3 videos, 3 podcast episodes
  • Weight: 163 lbs
  • Website: Add show notes pages for previous episodes

I’ll write more about each goal in the future, but just wanted to write them down.