Is The Internet Becoming Television Cal Newport

Is The Internet Becoming Television? | Cal Newport 🔗 **Source:** [Is The Internet Becoming Television? | Cal Newport](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [internet-culture, media-theory, digital-transformation] > author: Cal Newport > source: Deep Questions Podcast > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0 > date created: 2024-12-19 10:15 > > # 🏷️ Title: Is The Internet Becoming Television? >  ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Time block daily to resist distraction — prevents continuous mental arguments about when to take breaks #productivity - [H2] Consider video for content creation — major podcasts need video to be serious players by 2026 #media-strategy - [H3] Prepare for easier abstention from internet media — as it becomes TV-like, cultural acceptance of "not watching much" increases #digital-minimalism ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Derek Thompson's "Everything is Television" Essay](https://example.com) - [Raymond Williams' Television: Technology and Cultural Form](https://example.com) ## 📝 Summary - Cal Newport explores Derek Thompson's thesis that all internet media is converging toward television's "flow" model of continuous, non-specific video content - The shift affects social media (80-90% of time now spent watching videos from strangers), podcasts (moving to video), and AI tools (generating endless video streams) - Key stakeholders include content creators, social media platforms, and users experiencing cognitive/social consequences - Risks include decreased thinking ability and increased loneliness; tradeoffs involve lucrative market opportunities vs. societal costs - Bottom line: Internet-based media is becoming upgraded television due to economic incentives, not technological determinism ## 📖 Main Content Thompson's core argument draws from Raymond Williams' 1974 concept of television as "flow" - continuous, non-specific multimedia streams rather than discrete content pieces. Modern internet platforms exhibit this same pattern: Facebook and Instagram users spend 80-90% of time watching videos from strangers, podcasts are moving to video formats, and AI tools generate endless video streams. The convergence occurs because television represented a $730+ billion market in 2025 - far larger than books ($151 billion) or combined Meta/TikTok revenue (~$200 billion). When internet and smartphone infrastructure enabled "upgraded television" (portable, algorithmically curated, better-targeted ads), entrepreneurs naturally pursued this lucrative opportunity. However, not all media became television. Books and movies maintain their traditional forms and continue growing. The phenomenon specifically affects internet-based media due to economic rather than technological determinism. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=0) — [H1] Derek Thompson's thesis introduction - Key idea: "Everything that is not already television is turning into television" - Evidence: "A spooky convergence is happening in media" #### ⏱️ [03:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=225) — [H2] Death of social media evidence - Key idea: Meta's legal brief reveals 80-90% of platform time is watching stranger videos - Evidence: "More than 80% of time spent on Facebook and more than 90% of time spent on Instagram is now dedicated to watching videos" #### ⏱️ [06:12](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=372) — [H2] Financial Times data on social media decline - Key idea: Social media usage peaked in 2022, especially among young people - Evidence: Average daily social media use peaked around 2.5 hours in 2022 #### ⏱️ [08:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=510) — [H2] Podcasts moving toward video - Key idea: Video podcast consumption growing twice as fast as audio-only - Evidence: "The consumption of video podcast is growing twice as fast as audio only" #### ⏱️ [09:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=585) — [H2] AI video generation examples - Key idea: Even AI tools are organized around endless video consumption - Evidence: OpenAI Sora and Meta Vibes demonstrate "even AI wants to be television" #### ⏱️ [11:20](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=680) — [H1] Raymond Williams' "flow" concept - Key idea: Television defined by continuous sequence rather than discrete content - Evidence: "The characteristic organization and therefore the characteristic experience is one of sequence or flow" #### ⏱️ [14:15](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=855) — [H1] Television as media attractor state - Key idea: All media systems evolve toward television's continuous video flow - Evidence: "Television seems to be the attractor of all media" #### ⏱️ [16:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1005) — [H2] Consequences of television convergence - Key idea: Moving from literacy to orality culture harms thinking abilities - Evidence: "We get worse at thinking as we move from a culture of literacy to a culture of orality" #### ⏱️ [19:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1170) — [H1] Not everything became television - Key idea: Books and movies maintained traditional forms and continue growing - Evidence: "Global book market in 2025 reached $151 billion and has been growing steadily" #### ⏱️ [22:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1320) — [H1] 1980s television usage patterns - Key idea: Television was background distraction tool, on 7+ hours daily in households - Evidence: "84.9 million American households kept them in use seven hours and eight minutes a day" #### ⏱️ [25:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1545) — [H1] Economic determinism explanation - Key idea: Internet became television due to economic opportunity, not technological inevitability - Evidence: "Global television video market is over $730 billion in 2025" #### ⏱️ [28:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1710) — [H1] Prediction: Video required for major content - Key idea: Podcasts and newsletters will need video components to remain competitive - Evidence: "Major podcasts are going to have to have video to be a serious player" #### ⏱️ [31:15](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1875) — [H1] Prediction: Bad news for social media giants - Key idea: Television convergence eliminates social graph competitive advantages - Evidence: "Only 7% of time spent on Instagram is looking at content produced by a friend" #### ⏱️ [34:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=2040) — [H1] Prediction: Easier abstention from internet media - Key idea: As internet becomes TV-like, cultural acceptance of non-participation increases - Evidence: "It became very culturally normal... 'Yeah, I don't watch a lot of TV'" #### ⏱️ [37:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=2265) — [H2] Time blocking prevents distraction - Key idea: Structured time blocks create clear rules that reduce continuous mental negotiations - Evidence: "If you don't time block... your brain is going to have a continuous argument with yourself" ## 📚 References - [Derek Thompson's Plain English Podcast](https://example.com) - [Raymond Williams' Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)](https://example.com) - [Financial Times data visualizations by John Burn-Murdoch](https://example.com) - [Christian Science Monitor 1985 television usage article](https://example.com) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Internet platforms are abandoning social features in favor of algorithmic video feeds that mirror 1980s television's "background distraction" model - The convergence toward television format results from economic incentives rather than technological determinism - entrepreneurs target the massive $730+ billion television market - Traditional media like books and movies resist this convergence, suggesting the phenomenon specifically affects internet-based platforms rather than all media universally ## 📰 Newsletter The internet is becoming television - and that changes everything for content creators and digital citizens. Derek Thompson's viral essay reveals that 80-90% of time on Facebook and Instagram now involves watching videos from strangers, not friends. This isn't technological inevitability but economic opportunity: the global TV market exceeds $730 billion, dwarfing other media sectors. For WordPress professionals, this means video integration becomes essential. Major podcasts will require video components by 2026, and even newsletters may need multimedia elements to remain competitive. However, there's a silver lining: as internet media becomes obviously TV-like, cultural acceptance of digital minimalism will grow. The shift also threatens social media giants by eliminating their competitive moat - social graphs become irrelevant when platforms focus on algorithmic video feeds rather than friend connections. Resources: [Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/), [Developer Docs](https://developer.wordpress.org/), [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Create video content explaining technical concepts, measure engagement across platforms - Education: Develop multimedia workshops combining traditional documentation with video walkthroughs - Developer experience: Consider video-first onboarding flows and interactive tutorials - Developer marketing: Invest in video production capabilities for technical content - Community management: Prepare for shift from text-based forums to video-centric discussions #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: Document video content policies for open source projects - Developer Support: Create video training materials for contribution processes - Community Engagement: Consider video formats for project updates and governance discussions - Strategic Alignment: Track video engagement metrics alongside traditional KPIs #### Community - Maintainers: Support video documentation and demo creation initiatives - Contributors: Provide video onboarding materials and walkthroughs - Ecosystem: Coordinate video content standards across related projects #### WordPress - Core: Prioritize video-friendly features and multimedia handling improvements - Community: Create video-based meetup kits and WordCamp presentation templates - Training: Develop video lesson plans and interactive learning experiences - Documentation: Add video explanations to complex technical concepts - Design: Optimize themes and interfaces for video content integration ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Video-first content strategies will outperform text-only approaches in audience growth and engagement by 2026 - Social media platforms that maintain friend-focused features will lose market share to algorithm-driven video platforms - Traditional media consumption (books, movies) will remain stable despite internet media's television convergence - Cultural attitudes toward internet media consumption will shift to mirror television viewing norms within 5 years ### 📊 Methodology - Track engagement metrics across text vs. video content formats over 12-month periods - Survey audience preferences for content consumption across different media types - Monitor social media platform usage patterns and feature adoption rates - Analyze cultural discourse around digital media consumption in mainstream publications ### ❓ Questions - How quickly will video production costs decrease enough for individual creators to compete with platform algorithms? - Will regulatory responses to television-like internet media mirror historical broadcast television regulation? - Can traditional social media features coexist with television-style content flows, or is the shift irreversible? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal studies of cognitive effects from television-style internet media consumption - Economic analysis of content creation cost curves and democratization timelines - Cross-cultural comparison of media convergence patterns in different regulatory environments ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Content creators must develop video production capabilities or risk obsolescence - Policy: Platform regulation may shift from social media frameworks to broadcast media models - Security: Video-centric platforms create new attack vectors and content moderation challenges - Education: Teaching digital literacy requires addressing television-style consumption patterns - Funding: Investment priorities should shift toward video production tools and infrastructure ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: Grade 12-14 (College level) #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Video examples, data visualization charts, platform interface screenshots - Improve: Interactive timeline of media evolution, platform comparison infographics #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Podcast format with clear audio narration and examples - Improve: Audio-only summary version highlighting key statistics and predictions #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Clear definitions of "flow," "attractor state," detailed analogies - Improve: Historical narrative structure connecting past and present media patterns #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Actionable predictions and practical implementation steps - Improve: Interactive exercises comparing platform interfaces and usage patterns #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Clear data progression, economic reasoning, systematic predictions - Improve: Decision trees for content strategy, quantified comparison matrices #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Discussion of cultural implications and community effects - Improve: Group discussion prompts about personal media consumption changes #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual reflection on media consumption patterns - Improve: Self-assessment tools for digital media usage and preferences #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Ecosystem metaphors for media landscape evolution - Improve: Environmental impact considerations of video-heavy internet infrastructure ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Clear heading hierarchy, descriptive video content summaries - Improve: Detailed alt text for data visualizations, audio descriptions for video examples #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard podcast player controls and chapter navigation - Improve: Keyboard shortcuts for section jumping, timeline scrubbing #### Contrast and readability - Present: High contrast video player interface - Improve: Customizable transcript formatting, adjustable font sizing #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: Responsive web design for various screen sizes - Improve: Zoom compatibility for detailed charts and graphs #### Media and captions - Present: Full transcript provided - Improve: Synchronized captions with speaker identification, downloadable formats #### Forms and interactions - Present: Simple playback controls with clear labels - Improve: Accessible sharing options, bookmark functionality ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: Global market statistics, international platform examples - Improve: Non-Western media convergence patterns, diverse cultural perspectives on television #### Inclusive language - Present: Gender-neutral terms, defined technical jargon - Improve: Plain language summaries for complex economic concepts #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Clear section breaks, consistent formatting structure - Improve: Content warnings for rapid video examples, processing time indicators #### Representation - Present: Diverse range of media platforms and creators mentioned - Improve: Include creators from underrepresented communities, varied socioeconomic perspectives #### Psychological safety - Present: Respectful analysis of technology impacts - Improve: Acknowledge potential anxiety around technological change ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: Clear logical progression from economic incentives to platform behavior - Inductive strength: Multiple data points support television convergence thesis - Causal reasoning: Well-supported connection between infrastructure development and media evolution - Analogical strength: Effective comparison between 1980s TV usage and modern internet patterns #### Fallacies - Hasty generalization: Some predictions extrapolate from limited current trends - Appeal to authority: Heavy reliance on Derek Thompson's analysis without independent verification #### Tone of voice - Overall tone: Analytical and measured, combining academic rigor with practical implications ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: No denial patterns observed - Attack: No --- ## Full Transcript [00:00] Back in October, the journalist Derek [00:02] Thompson published an intriguing essay [00:04] on his Substack. It was titled [00:06] Everything is Television. Now, it [00:09] created a bit of a stir among those who [00:11] study technology and the internet for a [00:14] living. Here's Derek actually in his own [00:16] words summarizing the thesis of this [00:18] article. A spooky convergence is [00:20] happening in media. Everything that is [00:23] not already television is turning into [00:26] television. [00:27] >> So, what did Derek mean by this? This is [00:30] the question we're going to answer [00:31] today. I'm going to both unpack and [00:34] expand on Thompson's arguments and then [00:37] add my own conclusions, including three [00:40] predictions about what I think is going [00:42] to happen next. Hopefully, by the end of [00:44] our discussion, you'll have a brand new [00:46] way of understanding the sort of vaguely [00:48] distressing but difficult to define [00:50] changes that seem to have been happening [00:52] in internet culture in recent years and [00:54] have some ideas about what to expect and [00:56] what to do to best react to the future. [00:59] So, let's get into it. As always, I'm [01:01] Kell Newport and this is Deep Questions. [01:15] Today's episode is the internet becoming [01:18] television and what does this mean for [01:21] you? [01:23] All [01:25] right. So, I want to start by really [01:26] diving into the big points from Derek [01:28] Thompson's articles to see if we can [01:30] make sense of what he's saying here. Uh, [01:33] fortunately, on a recent episode of [01:35] Thompson's podcast, Plain English, which [01:38] is really good and you should listen to [01:39] it, especially the episodes where I've [01:40] been a guest, uh, Thompson read his [01:42] piece out loud. So, we can actually, uh, [01:45] hear passages from his article read in [01:48] his own voice. All right. All right. So, [01:50] I want to go back and I want to replay [01:52] that that initial clip because this is [01:54] where uh Thompson started his article. [01:57] So, Jesse, let's hear that original clip [01:58] again. A spooky convergence is happening [02:01] in media. Everything that is not already [02:04] television is turning into television. [02:07] >> He then goes on in the article to [02:09] immediately give three examples of what [02:12] he meant by that claim. All right. [02:14] Example number one, the death of social [02:17] media. Thompson references a brief that [02:20] was filed last August by uh Meta as part [02:23] of the antirust trial that the FTC [02:25] brought against it. In the brief that is [02:29] publicly available now, Meta made what [02:31] Thompson described as a startling claim, [02:34] which was the fact that their social [02:36] networks, namely Facebook and Instagram, [02:39] really aren't that social anymore. Let [02:42] me give you a couple statistics from [02:43] that brief. More than 80% of time spent [02:45] on Facebook, they revealed, and more [02:47] than 90% of time spent on Instagram is [02:50] now dedicated to watching videos, most [02:53] of them being videos created by people [02:56] who the users do not directly know. [03:01] So he's noting social media is now less [03:03] about socializing and more about [03:05] watching content from people you don't [03:06] know like you would do on television. [03:09] Over at the Financial Times, John Burn [03:12] Murdoch, as you know, he does so well, [03:14] has some nice data visualizations that [03:16] capture this shift from social media to [03:18] video. Let me put one of these graphs up [03:20] here on the screen. This is for people [03:21] who are um watching instead of [03:23] listening. You can see it and I'll [03:24] describe it for everyone else. This is a [03:26] graph from the Financial Times. Uh the [03:28] title is time on social media peaked in [03:30] 2022 with young people cutting back [03:33] first. And what we see here on the the [03:35] far left is average numbers of hours [03:38] spent on social media per day uh seem to [03:40] peak in 2022 around 2 and a half hours [03:43] and it's been going down um ever since [03:45] then. The biggest drop when you break it [03:48] out by ages is young people. Older [03:50] people are kind of stuck at that peak [03:52] because I don't know I think they're [03:54] still [03:55] updating their friendster profiles. I [03:57] think the older people aren't [03:58] necessarily up with it. All right. So it [03:59] is true there's data to back this up. [04:01] There's another uh chart I can show here [04:03] from the Financial Times. This is one [04:05] that Dererick had in his essay as well. [04:07] This is labeled social media has become [04:09] less social. Uh and what we're seeing is [04:12] change and share of people reporting [04:13] each reason for using social media. Um [04:16] so the reasons to meet new people, to [04:18] keep up with friends, and to share my [04:20] opinion have drastically fallen since [04:23] 2014 to 2024. While the reasons to [04:26] follow celebrities and to fill spare [04:28] time have both increased. uh somewhat [04:31] notably uh since 2014. So yeah, Derek is [04:34] right about that as he supports with [04:37] that type of data. Uh social media has [04:40] become more about watching videos from [04:41] strangers. All right. His second example [04:42] he gave to back up his claim is that [04:45] podcasts are moving towards video. [04:47] Thompson notes that podcast used to be [04:49] the radio for the internet, but now he [04:51] quotes an analyst who says the [04:53] consumption of video podcast is growing [04:55] twice as fast as audio only. He talked [04:59] about his own pressure to film his own [05:01] podcast which was just on audio. So it's [05:03] another example of a technology that [05:04] made sense as not a visual thing just [05:06] becoming more visual. His third example [05:10] was uh AI videos. Thompson references [05:14] the rise of open AI Sora and meta vibes [05:17] which are these AI tools that are [05:19] organized around watching endless videos [05:21] generated by artificial intelligence. As [05:23] Thompson concludes, even AI wants to be [05:28] television. Uh for those of you who [05:30] haven't seen what this sort of AI uh [05:34] what this actually looks like, this AI [05:36] uh video revolution, let me just put a [05:38] clip up here on the screen. Uh it won't [05:40] play audio, but you can just watch it. [05:41] All right. These are examples of Sora [05:43] videos. Uh so now we see someone having [05:45] Bob Ross was painting one of his [05:47] paintings on his face. Uh here is the [05:50] person. This is just like a the person [05:51] who generated the video is now on stage [05:54] giving an Oscar acceptance speech. Here [05:57] is an ASMR podcast with characters from [05:59] famous European paintings from the [06:02] Renaissance interacting and drinking [06:05] tea. Here's a another [06:08] bespectled normal guy who's put [06:10] themselves into the Braveheart scene. So [06:13] yeah, this is um here's a cat [06:15] skateboarding. There we go. This isn't [06:18] exactly the future that we were promised [06:19] by Star Trek, but that's what's going [06:20] on. Even AI is now just producing uh [06:23] video content. All right. So, that's [06:25] what he that's what Thompson is arguing. [06:27] That's what he means as examples of [06:29] things becoming television. [06:31] But what does he mean by television, [06:34] right? I mean, how is watching a cat [06:36] skateboarding on Sora the same as like [06:38] in 1997 watching an episode of American [06:40] Gladiators on your TV? Well, to help [06:43] make this connection clear, Thompson [06:46] draws from an interesting book. It was [06:48] written by Raymond Williams in 1974, [06:50] which is called Television, Technology, [06:51] and Cultural Form. This actually a [06:53] really good book uh if you're someone [06:54] who's studying the academic the academic [06:57] study of technology studies. It has a [06:58] really good upfront [07:00] uh explanation of the difference between [07:03] technological determinist [07:05] explorations of technology versus social [07:07] construction based uh consumptions [07:10] perspectives. he's much more on the [07:11] social construction side. Um, anyways, [07:14] Thompson draws from Williams' book to [07:16] make a a couple key points. He notes [07:18] that Williams says in that book, "Before [07:21] TV, entertainment was discreet, like [07:23] books or plays, something that had a [07:24] beginning and an end, and when it was [07:26] done, you could discuss that specific [07:27] thing you just saw. Television, by [07:29] contrast, became defined by the fact [07:31] that it was continuous, and streaming [07:32] and multimedia." Williams called this [07:34] flow. It's not like a discrete thing. [07:37] It's just sort of something that flows [07:38] by. Um, let me read you. I pulled some [07:41] passages from Williams book here. Here's [07:44] William talking about this concept. [07:45] Here's Williams's words. In all [07:47] developed broadcasting systems, the [07:49] characteristic organization and [07:50] therefore the characteristic experience [07:52] is one of sequence or flow. This [07:53] phenomenon of planned flow is then [07:55] perhaps the defining characteristic of [07:57] broadcasting simultaneously as [07:59] technology and as a cultural form. In a [08:02] later quote, he emphasizes the [08:03] non-specific nature of television versus [08:06] something like a book or a play as being [08:07] critical to its operations. I'm going to [08:09] read a quote here. Yet, for all the [08:11] familiarity of this model, the normal [08:13] experience of broadcasting, which when [08:14] we really consider it is different, and [08:16] indeed this is recognized in the ways we [08:18] speak of watching television, listening [08:21] to radio, picking on the general rather [08:24] than the specific experience. This has [08:26] been true of all broadcasting, but some [08:27] significant internal developments have [08:29] greatly reinforced it. All right. So, [08:32] Williams had this model of like the [08:33] right way to think about why television [08:34] is unique is that it gives you this flow [08:36] of sort of non-specific multimedia [08:38] visual content. You you watch television [08:41] more than you come to the television to [08:43] engage with a particular discrete [08:46] um element of of whatever you would call [08:48] it entertainment or content. And that's [08:50] really pretty similar to what we're [08:52] seeing with like Tik Tok or these Sora [08:55] videos. It's just stuff that's flowing [08:58] by that's like it's on. It's [08:59] interesting. you watch Tik Tok, you [09:01] don't talk about going to Tik Tok to [09:03] consume a very specific piece of [09:05] content. All right, so let me play uh go [09:07] back to Thompson here. Here's Thompson [09:09] summarizing the move towards this [09:12] definition of television. [09:15] When I say everything is turning into [09:17] television, what I mean is that [09:19] everything is turning into the [09:22] continuous flow of episodic video. [09:26] >> All right, so where does this leave us? [09:28] I want to go back to Thompson here and [09:30] he he's going to um elaborate his [09:33] summary of this entire state of affairs. [09:36] >> Whether the starting point is a student [09:38] directory like Facebook radio or an AI [09:41] image generator, the end point seems to [09:43] be the same. A river of short form [09:46] video. In mathematics, the term [09:48] attractor describes a state toward which [09:50] a dynamic system tends to evolve. So to [09:53] take a classic example, drop a marble [09:55] into a bowl and it will trace several [09:57] loops around the bowl's curves before [09:59] settling to rest at the bottom. In the [10:01] same way, water draining in a sink will [10:03] ultimately form a spiral pattern around [10:06] the drain. Complex systems often settle [10:09] into recurring forms if you give them [10:10] enough time. Television seems to be the [10:14] attractor of all media. [10:16] >> Right? So here's Thompson's overall [10:18] summary of of what he's arguing is that [10:21] media in general is just inexraably [10:24] heading back towards this Williams [10:25] notion of television as a continuously [10:27] like non-specific stream of of video [10:30] content. This is some sort of attractor [10:32] state for media and this is where the [10:34] internet itself is pass uh heading. The [10:36] past might be methane circuitous but [10:38] it's something that uh attracts it in. [10:41] Now I have to do a little bit I can't [10:43] help myself Jesse. Um, I've a little bit [10:46] of of nitpicking on the use of dynamical [10:48] system theory here. I've done a little [10:49] bit of publishing on on dynamical [10:51] systems. Uh, this is kind of the right [10:54] use of the word attractor, but maybe not [10:55] quite exactly accurate. So, in dynamical [10:58] systems, you're often thinking of [10:59] attractors would be like things like [11:00] strange attractors, which comes out of [11:02] uh chaos theory. A key thing about [11:06] strange attractors though is in the most [11:09] visible variable, they're not the the [11:11] the recurrence or the the collapse onto [11:14] like a steady recurrent state is not [11:16] visible. It's only when you create a [11:19] more complex state space that includes [11:21] multiple other sort of related variables [11:22] that you actually find the structure [11:24] going on. So it's like a structure [11:25] that's hiding behind the visible chaos. [11:27] Uh so this is why I think the marble [11:29] moving around the toilet bowl, that's [11:30] probably not a great example of like a [11:32] strange attractor. That's actually like [11:33] a physical system that's just what you [11:35] see just like the position of that [11:38] marble is very predictable because it's [11:40] it's uh obeying laws of physics in a [11:42] really clear way. A classic dynamical [11:43] like chaotic system might be like a [11:44] luren system which measures sort of um [11:48] fluctuations in temperature and sort of [11:50] uh climate systems and they're famously [11:53] if you look at the main variable that [11:54] people care about which is the [11:55] temperature variation itself that seems [11:57] chaotic. You're like I can't predict [11:59] this. It's all over the place and it's [12:00] very sensitive to initial conditions. [12:02] you make a little change to the initial [12:03] conditions, this thing goes off [12:04] somewhere else. But if you take that one [12:07] variable of temperature variation, you [12:08] combine it with two other carefully [12:10] selected related variables and I don't [12:11] know them exactly, but one is like [12:13] temperature variations vertically [12:15] through strata and one's about like a [12:16] horizontal temperature distance and you [12:18] plot that as a threedimensional point in [12:19] threedimensional space. Now suddenly you [12:21] see a structure that's like spiraling [12:23] around something and there has [12:24] structure. So not to nitpick, but in [12:25] dynamical systems often attractors are [12:28] not visible to the naked eye. there's [12:30] something that exists in the [12:30] mathematical substructure that is only [12:32] visible when you you uh plot points that [12:35] are outside of just like the the the [12:37] main information. Um I thought that was [12:39] important, Jesse, that [12:40] >> I thought that was great. [12:41] >> Yeah, I think it's an important [12:42] clarification. This is why my articles [12:44] aren't as popular because I have the [12:46] two-page thing about dynamical system [12:48] theory. But anyways, it's a good the [12:49] idea is good. It's a clear idea. Media [12:54] is pulled back to the state. So, it was [12:57] inevitable that the internet would be [12:59] pulled back to the state of the William [13:01] style definition of television. This [13:03] continuous non-specific flow of visual [13:05] media. Um, is this a problem? Like, do [13:08] we care about it? Uh, it's a natural [13:10] follow-up question. Um, Thompson gets [13:12] into this. Let me play a quick clip of [13:13] him setting up this discussion. [13:17] My beef is not with the entire medium of [13:20] moving images. My concern is what [13:22] happens when the grammar of television [13:24] suddenly conquers the entire media [13:26] landscape. [13:27] >> Right? So he say it's not bad that we [13:29] have really interesting YouTube videos [13:31] like this one or that you know maybe [13:33] there's some interesting stuff happening [13:34] on Tik Tok but the idea that all media [13:36] is going towards this form he's worried [13:38] about. He points to two particular [13:40] consequences. One that we get uh worse [13:44] at thinking as we quote move from a [13:47] culture of literacy to a culture of [13:49] orality. That's a Walter type of idea. A [13:52] lot of data backs that up that yeah, as [13:55] we use especially short form video in [13:57] particular, people have a harder time [13:59] concentrating and thinking. So we do [14:00] lose something as is if that's what [14:02] everything becomes, we lose mental [14:04] abilities that are important. His second [14:05] issue is we know that classical [14:07] television made people lonely as he [14:09] points out. This was the at the core of [14:11] Robert Putnham's famous book, [14:14] sociologist from Harvard's famous book, [14:15] Bowling Alone, that traditional [14:16] television made people more isolated. [14:19] And as we have television now being [14:22] delivered through our phones, as the [14:23] internet becomes television, we get even [14:25] more isolated. We see this in the data [14:26] as well. So, it's not that v video [14:30] content itself is bad, but if everything [14:33] becomes short form distracting video [14:35] content, Thompson's pointing out, [14:36] there's real consequences of that. All [14:38] right. Well, overall I think Thompson [14:40] has a this a really smart idea and a [14:41] smart take. Like any good article, it [14:42] gets you thinking and helps explain [14:44] something you didn't understand before [14:45] and gives you new things to think about [14:46] or argue about. I want to get into uh my [14:50] reaction. [14:51] So, I agree with most of this, but [14:53] there's some places where I would want [14:54] to complicate or caveat his explanation. [14:56] I also want to make some predictions. I [14:58] have three predictions about what is [15:00] going to happen next in the world of [15:01] media based on these trends that maybe [15:03] will give you some ideas about what you [15:05] should do to prepare for that. Before we [15:07] get to my take and predictions, however, [15:09] I have to take a quick break so we can [15:11] hear from some of the sponsors that make [15:13] this show possible. [15:15] Are you looking for a gift for your [15:17] family this holiday season that they'll [15:18] find meaningful? Let me tell you exactly [15:21] what you should get. An Aura digital [15:23] picture frame. 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For [16:04] a limited time, you can save on the [16:06] perfect gift by visiting or aura.com to [16:08] get $35 off Aura's bestselling Carver [16:11] Matte Frames. These were named number [16:13] one by Wire Cutter. Now, to get this [16:15] discount, you have to use our promo code [16:17] deep questions at checkout. That's auraf [16:21] frames.com and use the promo code deep [16:23] questions. This deal is exclusive to our [16:26] listeners and these frames sell out [16:28] fast. So, order yours now to get it in [16:31] time for the holidays. And remember to [16:32] support the show by mentioning our [16:34] podcast at checkout. Terms and [16:37] conditions apply. Let's also talk about [16:39] our longtime friends at Grammarly. [16:40] Grammarly is the essential AI [16:43] communication assistant that boosts both [16:44] the productivity and the quality of your [16:48] writing. Now, I don't think people fully [16:49] realize how powerful this tool has [16:51] gotten. Let me tell you about a [16:52] particular feature that I've been [16:53] enjoying, the proofreading agent. Here's [16:56] a real example. I had to write an email [16:58] that was going out to a large group of [17:00] people. So, I typed out a quick draft. [17:01] Before sending, I had the proofreading [17:03] agent take a look. In addition to [17:06] finding a few grammatical mistakes, uh, [17:08] I found that I could go much farther, [17:10] right? So, I clicked, for example, on [17:12] sharpen opening point, and the Grammarly [17:14] proofreading agent actually suggested [17:16] ways to rewrite my opening paragraph to [17:19] be less wishy-washy. Uh, it actually [17:21] made the email better. I'm not the only [17:23] one to find Grammarly useful. 93% of [17:26] professionals report that Grammarly [17:27] helps them get more work done. They even [17:30] have a new feature called AI chat that [17:32] can help you anytime, whether you want [17:34] to come up with a new idea or just help [17:36] polish one you already have and are [17:38] trying to explain. Grammarly helps you [17:42] produce better writing faster and that [17:45] is incredibly valuable. You can sign up [17:47] for free and experience how Grammarly [17:49] can elevate your professional writing [17:50] from start to finish. Visit [17:52] grammarly.com/mpodcast. [17:54] That's grammarly.com/mpodcast. [17:56] All right, Jesse, let's get back into [17:58] our deep dive. [18:00] All right, let's go on with my take and [18:01] my predictions here. Look, I love this [18:03] article. We had original ideas that [18:05] helps us make sense of a phenomenon [18:07] we're all living through. Let me add on [18:08] a few additional thoughts. All right, [18:11] here's thought number one. [18:14] Not everything became television. [18:17] There's actually a lot of media that did [18:19] not become television. Now, I'll explain [18:22] in a moment why I think this is [18:23] important, but let me justify this point [18:26] first. Right? A core idea in Thompson's [18:28] piece is that the sort of uh television [18:30] style flow of undifferiated video is an [18:32] attractor state that eventually draws in [18:33] all media. That was his words. But that [18:35] doesn't seem quite right because of the [18:38] existing legacy media types that have [18:39] basically stayed the same from the time [18:42] before television existed to today and [18:44] are actually doing fine as industries. [18:46] They don't seem to be in states of [18:47] collapse. Consider for example the [18:49] global book market. In 2025 that market [18:52] reached 155 $151 billion. And that [18:55] market's been growing steadily. So it's [18:57] not showing signs of collapse. That's a [18:59] big market. It's it's roughly uh it's a [19:02] little smaller than the combined market [19:04] of Meta and Tik Tok, but it's kind of in [19:06] the same ballpark. [19:08] So books are still books and they uh [19:12] they're doing fine. They continue to [19:14] grow. Uh movies are still around as [19:16] well. The total domestic box office in [19:19] 2024 was $8.7 billion. So we're at a [19:21] lower order of magnitude in things like [19:23] books and social media, but that's um [19:25] non-trivial. Uh in 1974 when Raymond [19:28] Williams wrote his book television, the [19:30] total domestic box office was 1.14 [19:32] billion. Um if you adjust that for [19:34] inflation, today's dollars, it's about [19:36] 7.5 billion. So you know, it's it's like [19:39] we can think of the global box office [19:41] since like the rise of television as we [19:43] know it today. I mean the domestic box [19:45] office and today it's like kind of the [19:46] same or it's grown modestly and so like [19:48] movies are still around now. Of course [19:50] to be fair in the 90s movies got way [19:54] bigger than that and have kind of shrunk [19:55] back down again but they're they're not [19:56] below adjusted for inflation where they [19:58] where they were back when television [20:00] began taking its move. So these are [20:02] media that exist in the same form as [20:04] they did before television and they're [20:05] doing more than holding their own. So [20:07] it's not really the case that all media [20:09] becomes television. I think the real way [20:12] to state this headline would be [20:14] internetbased media is becoming [20:16] television. Okay, but this is still [20:19] really interesting. So why is this [20:21] particular type of media [20:24] so uh attracted to the television form? [20:28] This brings me to my my second thought. [20:30] To understand why the internet in [20:32] particular is becoming television, we [20:34] have to remember the relationship that [20:36] we used to have with television. You [20:39] know, a lot of people I think like the [20:40] younger members of my audience um when [20:45] they think of television, they're [20:46] probably thinking about growing up in [20:47] the brief golden age where there was [20:48] appointment viewing and on like Sunday [20:50] night you would you watch the Sopranos [20:52] on HBO. But back in the the 70s and the [20:55] 80s and the early 90s when television [20:57] became this like sort of massive market, [20:59] the time when Raymond Williams was [21:00] writing his book television, our [21:02] relationship with screens was different [21:04] than a lot of people actually remember. [21:06] I want to load up an article here. Uh [21:08] I'll put on the screen for those who are [21:10] watching instead of just listening. This [21:11] comes from the Christian Science Monitor [21:14] was published in June of 1985. All [21:16] right? And it's looking at television [21:18] back in the 80s. So let me just read to [21:19] you from the beginning here. The figures [21:22] are staggering. In 1984, [21:25] 84.9 million American households, 98% of [21:28] them had television sets. They kept them [21:31] in use seven hours and eight minutes a [21:34] day, making television watching far and [21:37] away the most popular leisure time [21:39] activity ever. Even if those households [21:42] had only one person watching for those 7 [21:44] plus hours, which is a very conservative [21:46] estimate, the American public would have [21:47] invested 217 billion hours before it [21:50] sets last year. That's more than double [21:52] the number of hours spent by the [21:54] American armed forces fighting in World [21:55] War II for a full year. [21:58] All right. So, this is what television [22:01] was in the 80s, in the 90s, and the 70s. [22:05] It was just on all the time. Everyone on [22:08] television on average that television [22:10] was on in your household [22:12] over 7 hours a day. I think we forget [22:15] how staggering those numbers are. Now, [22:18] here's what's interesting. If you dig [22:20] deeper, so this article is really cool [22:21] because what it does is they say, "Where [22:23] did that number come from? How do we [22:25] know that the average American household [22:27] has a TV on 7.8 hours away a day? It [22:30] actually came from the Neielson company [22:32] using a tool called an audometer. [22:34] So, it was actually like a tool with a [22:36] microphone that they would put in a [22:37] random sampling of houses so it could [22:39] listen to hear if the television was on [22:41] or not because people lie when you ask [22:42] them to write it down. And the [22:44] audiometers were the ones that were [22:45] measuring this average of 7.8 hours a [22:47] day a television at least one television [22:49] was on in these houses. Now, they make a [22:51] key point in this article. That doesn't [22:53] mean that for 7 hours and 8 minutes a [22:55] day there was someone sitting in front [22:56] of that television watching intently. [22:59] The audometer doesn't know who's there [23:00] or not, just whether or not the [23:01] television is on. And what they're [23:03] capturing is a a a truth we forget about [23:06] how television was used. You would put [23:08] it on in the background in your house [23:10] while you did other things. And [23:12] sometimes you'd be sitting there [23:13] watching a show all the way through if [23:14] it was one of your favorites, but also [23:16] you would just have it on if you were [23:17] doing other things like housework. and [23:20] uh during like boring moments, you would [23:21] just kind of hey, what's going on over [23:22] here? Or if like Oprah had on a [23:24] particularly good guest, you might stop [23:25] for a little bit to watch that [23:27] interview. [23:28] So, if you think about it, the way we [23:30] were using television in the 1980s [23:33] was exactly the way we use something [23:35] like Tik Tok today. It was a tool we [23:37] used to banish or eliminate any moments [23:40] of downtime or boredom, at least in the [23:42] household context. So, I could just have [23:44] it on and when I didn't have something [23:48] interesting in front of me that I was [23:49] dealing with, like I was on the phone or [23:50] like trying to figure out something [23:51] difficult, I could just immediately turn [23:54] my attention to whatever it was showing [23:57] because it was in that flow that [23:58] Williams talked about. It's just you [23:59] just had it on. You weren't watching a [24:01] particular show. It was just there to [24:03] fill in the moments [24:05] that turned out to be um that's a very [24:08] lucrative business model. I went and [24:11] tried to look up these numbers. The [24:12] global television video market today, [24:15] remember uh books 150 billion, Meta plus [24:18] Tik Tok is a little shy of 200 billion. [24:21] The global television video market is [24:23] over $730 billion in 2025. [24:27] This is a massive [24:30] highly lucrative market, right? So what [24:34] I think happened, here's my argument, is [24:37] that as the internet infrastructure grew [24:39] out in the 90s to include uh broadband [24:41] and then the smartphone infrastructure [24:43] built out in the late 2000s, early [24:44] 2010s, [24:46] this made possible the creation of an [24:51] upgraded version of exactly what people [24:52] were doing in television with the 1980s [24:54] and '90s. It made upgraded television [24:58] possible. upgraded in three ways. It was [25:00] now more portable, so you had access to [25:02] it not just in your house, but wherever [25:05] you went because it was on a smartphone. [25:07] Upgraded because it had algorithmic [25:09] curation. So now its ability to satisfy [25:13] your your distraction needs was better [25:16] because before you would just go through [25:18] a few channels and now of course we have [25:19] algorithmically curated content. So it's [25:20] just like a it's a more pure distraction [25:23] um environment. Um and because the ads [25:25] are now targeted much better than you [25:26] could get on a broadcast medium like [25:28] television. So they've become, you know, [25:29] much more lucrative. [25:32] So I think what happens is we had this [25:33] massive market that was built on, it was [25:35] the Tik Tok of the 1980s. this massive [25:37] market that was built on you don't have [25:39] to be alone with your own thoughts or [25:41] bored just there'll be something to kind [25:43] of take the edge off of the onwei of [25:46] just like I'm here sweeping and it's [25:48] kind of boring and it was this massive [25:50] market and once we built this [25:52] infrastructure for other purposes right [25:55] that we built the internet [25:56] infrastructure thinking about the web [25:58] and expression and connection and being [25:59] able to get information from anyone [26:01] around the world uh all just like [26:03] distributed you know that was our vision [26:04] for building that infrastructure we [26:05] built smartphones because uh Steve Jobs [26:10] said we shouldn't have to carry a [26:11] separate iPod and a separate Razer [26:13] Motorola Razer phone. Let's put them in [26:15] the same device so that you can make [26:17] your calls and listen to music on the [26:18] same device. Right? That was the point [26:20] of smartphones. But these two things [26:21] came along [26:23] and other entrepreneurs were like well [26:25] the money's in TV let's do that. So in [26:27] this particular technology it was [26:30] possible to build upgraded television [26:32] and when you see the size of the [26:33] television market and how dominant that [26:35] was of course you're going to pursue [26:38] that that has become the biggest [26:40] economic engine the biggest economic [26:41] activity opportunity in the internet age [26:44] has been building a better version of [26:48] television. [26:50] So let me refine my take you know even [26:52] further here I would say the existing [26:55] this is my headline set of everything is [26:56] becoming television the existing [26:58] television industry is so large and [27:00] lucrative that it's not surprising that [27:01] when a new technology came along that [27:03] enabled the creation of an upgraded [27:04] television experience a lot of [27:05] investment energy went towards these [27:07] goals so to me this is not a tale of [27:10] technological determinism which is a [27:12] tale of like all technology is going to [27:14] come back to this form but instead a [27:16] tale of economic determinism there is a [27:18] lucrative market over here and this [27:19] particular particular technology made it [27:21] possible to compete. So of course people [27:22] would use it to compete. So it's not an [27:24] argument about all media is going to [27:26] become television so much as it is the [27:28] internet plus smartphone infrastructure [27:30] revolutions have been co-opted by media [27:32] entrepreneurs that said now we can take [27:34] a run at competing with television. So [27:37] it's sort of specific to these [27:38] particular technologies. Um those are [27:41] just the details. Thompson's big point [27:43] still stands which is a lot of internet [27:46] based media is converging towards this [27:48] other model. That's kind of the [27:49] interesting observation regardless of [27:51] why that's happening. So our question is [27:54] what is that going to do to us in the [27:56] future? So what I want to end with here [27:57] is three predictions [27:59] for the future of internetbased media as [28:02] it continues this convergence towards a [28:04] television model. All right. Prediction [28:07] number one. [28:08] If you participate in internet-based [28:10] media, then you have to be aware of this [28:12] shift because it's going to be [28:14] consequential. [28:15] Major podcasts are going to have to have [28:17] video to be a serious player. I think [28:19] even other types of internet media that [28:21] we don't think about as being multimedia [28:23] at all, like newsletters are going to [28:24] eventually need to have some sort of [28:26] video content if they want to be a part [28:28] of the full like entertainment [28:29] entertainment ecosystem. [28:31] To be a little bit more specific, here's [28:33] a couple things. Um, here's something I [28:34] think you're going to see. The move of [28:37] podcast on the streaming video services [28:38] is going to be uh a big thing in 2026. [28:42] This is already starting to happen. The [28:43] Ringer just did a deal, I believe, with [28:45] Netflix where they're going to have more [28:46] of their podcast show up on there. We're [28:48] going to see a lot more of this. The [28:49] economics just make sense. [28:52] Podcasts have loyal audiences. And if [28:55] you can just raise the production values [28:56] a little bit, which is not that big of [28:58] an investment. I mean, this is we're [28:59] talking tens of thousands of dollars per [29:00] episode, which is nothing if you are [29:03] producing television for something like [29:05] Netflix. They have loyal audiences and [29:07] they produce a lot of content. So, if [29:10] I'm a big fan of a, you know, you're a [29:12] big fan of my show and it's on twice a [29:15] week on Netflix with good production [29:16] values, not that the HQ is not good [29:18] production, but even better production [29:19] values than the HQ and and you're you're [29:22] going back and forth between YouTube and [29:23] other sorts of things in your TV [29:24] anyways. Like, that might be a reason [29:26] that you stay subscribed to Netflix. [29:29] That's incredibly valuable to them. and [29:31] it's much cheaper to build like an [29:34] upgraded version of the HQ and to, you [29:37] know, pay me some whatever fee. That's [29:39] still going to be much cheaper than [29:41] doing eight episodes of Nobody Wants [29:43] This, which is only going to give you [29:45] eight episodes of content and, you know, [29:48] you're going to have to spend $20 [29:50] million in that or $10 million. I don't [29:51] know what it cost, but you know, cost a [29:54] lot of money to get Kristen Bell. She [29:55] doesn't get out of bed for less than $4 [29:58] million in a cut of the merchandising. [29:59] That's what I hear. That's same with [30:01] Jesse. He makes those same demands. [30:03] Yeah. Every day he comes in and said, [30:05] "I'm not going to get out of bed for [30:06] less than $4 million in a cut of [30:07] merchandising." Um, so that's my [30:09] prediction. You know, note I I made this [30:12] prediction not to pat myself on the [30:13] back, but back in 2020, Jesse, you'll [30:15] remember this when you first started [30:16] working for me. I insisted on video for [30:18] the podcast. I said, I can't tell you [30:20] exactly why. It's not like I have a plan [30:22] for in 2021, like why our YouTube [30:23] channel is going to be important. I just [30:25] said video is going to be the future of [30:26] internet media because of the the power [30:29] of we've seen that video has over people [30:31] and the way that television just ate the [30:33] launch of radio and didn't even look [30:35] back. Video is going to be so I made [30:37] that prediction. That's why we've been [30:38] on YouTube uh since the beginning is [30:40] like we just I was like we have to be [30:41] conversant in that that idiom. All [30:43] right. Prediction number two. I think [30:46] this convergence of internet media [30:47] towards television is bad news for the [30:49] existing social media giants. Now, this [30:51] is an argument that I made in that 2022 [30:53] article in the New Yorker that I talk [30:54] about all the time, Tik Tok and the fall [30:57] of social media giants. I reference it [30:58] all the time because I think it's like [30:59] the most important article I' I've [31:01] written that no one's read, but it [31:03] actually like was getting at some really [31:05] core idea. So, I keep coming back at it [31:07] to push. The big point there is that the [31:10] competitive advantage that the social [31:12] media giants had that the the Facebooks [31:14] and the metas and the Twitters of the [31:16] world had was their social graphs. the [31:18] fact that people painstakingly as first [31:20] adopters put in the effort to click on [31:23] people they wanted to follow or they [31:24] knew. And as long as those services were [31:26] built around using those social graphs [31:28] to produce interesting content, they had [31:30] a moat that other competitors couldn't [31:31] cross. Once the early Facebook [31:34] excitement was gone, the early Twitter [31:36] excitement was gone, no one was going to [31:37] bother to like go through all that work [31:39] of following people and building their [31:40] friends on another platform. [31:43] When internet media moves towards [31:44] television, you got to throw out those [31:47] social graphs. is not really that [31:48] relevant anymore. And this is exactly [31:49] what we see Instagram doing. It's [31:51] exactly what we see, you know, Twitter [31:53] trying to move towards. They want to be [31:54] like Tik Tok. U what was the numbers we [31:56] had before? It was something like only [31:59] 7% of time spent on Instagram is looking [32:03] at content produced by a friend or [32:05] keeping up with a friend. Everything [32:06] else is just watching videos created by [32:08] other people. Yes, that moves you more [32:10] toward television, which is very [32:12] lucrative. But now you're a a a [32:14] television network without a competitive [32:16] advantage that other people can't [32:18] replicate. You're competing now with all [32:20] other sources of short form video [32:22] content. All the podcasts that are [32:23] producing short-term video content, all [32:25] the streamers like actual television [32:27] that are putting hundreds of millions in [32:28] the short form video content. Upstarts [32:31] like Tik Tok was an upstart because they [32:32] didn't need a social graph. They had a [32:34] pure experience and a better algorithm. [32:36] Uh we have Sora now. We have Meta Vibes [32:38] is trying to compete with Sora. Like it [32:40] is a incredibly competitive world. It's [32:42] a world where you don't have competitive [32:44] advantages anymore when you move away [32:46] from your social graph, but you have to [32:47] in the television world. So, uh, legacy [32:50] giant monopoly social platforms that [32:52] their their time is cooked in a world [32:55] where the internet media moves more [32:56] towards television. It's going to be a [32:58] much more aggressive sort of competitive [33:00] landscape with winners and losers [33:02] shifting much more tumultuously. [33:05] Uh, third prediction is I think there's [33:08] a silver lining here for us as [33:10] individuals. [33:12] I believe that abstension [33:15] from a lot of this becomes a lot easier [33:20] as the internet-based media moves [33:21] towards television. Why? Because this is [33:24] what happened with television. Like we [33:26] know what television is and it became [33:29] very culturally normal. But yeah, it's [33:31] maybe on average people have your TV on [33:33] 7 hours a day, but like if you were [33:35] talking to, you know, Noom Chsky, [33:39] he'd be like, "Yeah, I don't watch a lot [33:40] of TV." like, "Yeah, of course you [33:42] don't." Like, that's that's you you have [33:44] other things you're doing that are more [33:45] like intellectually demanding and you [33:47] read more books or whatever. Um, it was [33:49] very normal to be like, I don't watch a [33:51] lot of TV. No one questioned it. And in [33:53] fact, by the generation of like our [33:56] kids, things had shifted and parents [33:59] think a lot about screen time and like, [34:00] I don't want you to watch too much TV. [34:02] Like, that's not good for you. We be [34:04] we're very used to this idea that like [34:05] it's not that TV is poison, but like you [34:08] probably don't want to do a ton of it [34:09] and it's completely normative to be like [34:11] I self-defined by not watching a lot of [34:13] TV. For a while, internet-based media [34:17] had grabbed this sort of cultural high [34:19] ground where they would basically argue [34:21] um this is necessary to function in [34:24] civic society. That somehow these [34:25] services, these social media services, [34:27] what you were doing on your phone was [34:28] just part of being an informed citizen. [34:29] It's how politicians were elected and [34:31] news was spread. It's the new digital [34:33] town square. It's where people are being [34:35] expressed where people could find other [34:37] groups which where activism happened. [34:39] There's this moment where it was like [34:40] you have to use all these services, [34:42] right? Uh or it's somehow weird or [34:44] disengaged or eccentric not to. But as [34:46] the internet based media moves more [34:47] towards TV, it'll be so much easier not [34:49] to use it or use less of it. No one is [34:52] like, "What do you mean you don't listen [34:53] to Bravo?" Like, no one would say that [34:54] in 1996. Like, you don't watch Real [34:56] Housewives. What's wrong with you? No [34:58] one would say that. Whereas today, [35:00] they're like, "Oh, you don't use TikTok. [35:01] It still seems a little bit weird. I [35:02] think that will change once things are [35:04] TV. We know how to deal with TV. We know [35:06] it is not vital and we're completely uh [35:09] okay with the idea of not being big TV [35:12] watchers. So for people who listen and [35:13] watch this show, this is good news. It's [35:16] going to make it easier for you to live [35:17] a deeper life because what you're moving [35:19] away from is going to be more clearly [35:20] coded as uh just distraction. It's it's [35:24] uh Mory Povich. It's I'm trying to [35:27] remember all those shows, the fight [35:29] shows, the talk shows. Yeah, [35:30] >> Jerry Springer. [35:31] >> Yeah, [35:32] >> my Povich is a deep dive. Jerry [35:34] Springer, Phil Donahghue, you're like, [35:35] yeah, it's it's light and actually good [35:38] for you for not watching it. [35:40] >> All right, so there we go. Jesse, uh, no [35:42] separate takeaways this week because I [35:43] think my whole thing was a takeaway, but [35:45] >> yeah. [35:45] >> Um, that's it. I think it was a cool [35:47] article and that's how I would but [35:49] that's how I would uh evolve it. [35:51] >> Do you watch any podcasts personally on [35:53] video? [35:55] >> Um, [35:56] no. I'm trying to think about Neither do [35:58] I. Yeah. Uh, but I don't [36:01] >> I would never consider I mean I know [36:03] it's important but personally I would [36:04] never do it. [36:05] >> I I mean I'm just thinking it through. [36:07] Um I've seen clips like clips of [36:10] podcast. I'll watch the video if it's [36:11] like an interesting clip. I'll I'll [36:12] watch the video. [36:13] >> Like you put it on when you're working [36:14] out or something or you [36:15] >> Well, no. More if like I'm researching [36:16] something or like I'm at my computer and [36:19] I'm you know writing about whatever. [36:21] Like if there was an interview um like a [36:24] clip from a podcast interview about the [36:26] thing I'm researching, I would prefer to [36:28] watch it than like if I had the choice, [36:29] I'd prefer to watch it than listen. [36:30] >> Mhm. [36:31] >> I don't watch a lot of TV in general, [36:33] but I think part of the thing that's [36:34] happening is that people that like [36:36] actually, which a lot of people do, [36:38] spend more time in like front of a TV [36:39] like normal people. Uh more of what [36:42] they're doing is like they're loading up [36:43] the YouTube app [36:44] >> and watching like I'm I'm going to watch [36:46] a podcast episode instead of like a show [36:48] on Netflix. Y [36:49] >> so I think that's one way one way that's [36:50] being consumed. I do think the video [36:52] podcast numbers are somewhat inflated [36:54] because of generationally [36:57] Gen Z will often use YouTube as their [36:59] podcast player. So in theory in their [37:01] pocket the video is playing just like it [37:03] does on Spotify, but they're not [37:05] watching it like they're they're they're [37:06] listening while they do other things. [37:08] >> Um but I it is I mean I've looked at our [37:10] numbers the watched on TV numbers is [37:13] growing [37:14] >> because they can tell what device the [37:15] podcast is download. [37:17] >> Mhm. It's not as high as I've seen for [37:18] other people I've talked to, but like [37:20] we're on our way up. It's like number [37:22] three. It's like computer phones and TV [37:24] and TV is like in the mix. [37:26] >> So, I think I don't, but I don't watch [37:28] main the main things I watch is movies [37:30] to be honest. [37:31] >> Yep. [37:31] >> Yeah. Who's got new TV actually? [37:34] >> A lot of people did Black Friday last [37:36] week. [37:36] >> Yeah. Well, ours got broken. And by got [37:39] broken, I mean one of my son's friends [37:40] broke it, but it was an excuse to get [37:43] the latest OLED technology. And plus the [37:47] new TVs aren't that that expensive, [37:48] right? [37:49] >> Yeah. I mean, [37:51] >> unless you go [37:52] >> if you want like a really good movie. If [37:54] you start to care about film make if you [37:55] use the the term uh filmmaker cont uh [37:58] intent and are looking at the color [38:00] correction options, it starts to get [38:01] more not crazy, but [38:03] >> expensive, [38:04] >> more [38:06] 2x than it needs to be. I would say it's [38:08] probably 2x than what but it's worth it. [38:10] We got a nice Blu-ray player, so I can [38:12] really get the highest, you know, good [38:14] HDR10. Perfect contrast, color [38:17] resolution, like just what the filmmaker [38:18] wanted. Happy about that. All right, so [38:22] anyways, let's uh move on to some [38:24] questions. Sounds good. [38:27] All right, who we got first? First [38:29] question is from JS. As a software [38:31] engineer, I have a web browser open [38:33] constantly. This distracts me a lot. I [38:36] started using claude.app instead of my [38:38] browser. This has basically eliminated [38:40] my distractions. What do you think about [38:42] this? All right. So, I have a specific [38:44] answer for you and then a larger, more [38:45] general answer for people thinking about [38:46] their work in general. Uh, my specific [38:49] answer is, look, I think that's great, [38:51] right? Uh, [38:53] if you had your browser open, because [38:55] I'm assuming you had it open because you [38:56] were looking up, just to give some [38:58] context for non-computer developers to [39:00] look up things that were relevant to the [39:01] coding you were doing. This used to be [39:03] the standard rhythm of doing computer [39:04] coding, [39:05] >> is that you would often have a site like [39:07] Stack Overflow open, right? and you [39:09] would search for um what's the function [39:12] call here or how do I do this and and so [39:14] now you had a browser open you could [39:16] look at other things if you're using [39:17] cloud.app app, you could do things like [39:19] uh tab complete, etc. where it will give [39:23] you these answers like directly in the [39:24] thing where you're writing the code. You [39:26] don't have to go over to a web browser [39:27] and look things up. Ironically, it was [39:30] language models tuned in part on these [39:33] humor interactions. It kind of just [39:34] sucked it all in and replicating it to [39:37] some degree. So, I think that's good. If [39:39] you start using code agents, you're [39:41] going to have a separate problem. So not [39:43] to just to like quickly differentiate [39:45] this, there's kind of two ways that AI [39:47] is intersecting development. One is what [39:50] I think of as like the autocomplete tab [39:51] complete type of tools, which is where [39:54] you're writing computer code and you can [39:56] say like, hey, finish this function for [39:58] me or can you fill in this function [40:00] header and it you like press tab and it [40:02] like does it for you. Um, behind the [40:04] scenes that's all implemented by a [40:06] single call to a language model. So the [40:08] thing you're typing in like makes a [40:09] prompt to a language model. Hey, here's [40:11] the existing code. Can you finish this [40:14] like with a function that does whatever? [40:16] Language models are good at that. You [40:17] get the answer back and then the the [40:19] editing environment puts that right in [40:20] there. Right? Agents on the other hand, [40:22] coding agents are going to do many steps [40:24] on your behalf. So, this is where you [40:25] say like uh I need to build like this [40:29] sort of prototype a simple application [40:31] to do something internally is going to [40:33] be useful. And you're gonna actually [40:34] have a program that goes in a loop and [40:36] it's going to ask the language model [40:38] like okay give me a plan like a [40:39] multi-step plan for doing this and then [40:41] the program takes that plan and it's [40:43] like great we're now going to do step [40:44] one and so then it'll tell the language [40:46] model okay here's the first step we want [40:47] to do uh give me the maybe it's produce [40:50] code for whatever give me the code for [40:51] doing that language model sends it back [40:53] and then it and you go in this loop [40:55] where you continually prompt the [40:56] language model step by step what do you [40:57] want to do next what do you want to do [40:58] next until it thinks it's done so so [41:00] coding agents allow you to sort of uh [41:02] have AI I automate longer, more [41:05] complicated steps than you can get with [41:07] just asking it one time to do something. [41:09] I've heard from a lot of developers who [41:11] use those for producing prototypes or [41:13] more complicated code is that there's [41:14] downtime. It takes a while. There's a [41:16] lot of back and forth with the language [41:18] model and you know, language models [41:19] aren't fast in returning their their [41:21] answers and so they have downtime in [41:24] while they're waiting for their agents [41:25] to finish things. So, you need a good [41:26] deep distraction for those down times if [41:28] you use a coding agent. uh something [41:30] that's not going to be emotionally [41:31] arousing and something whose context is [41:33] very different than your work. That's [41:34] usually my advice about deep [41:35] distractions. Don't look at your email [41:38] is that context is very similar to the [41:39] work you're doing. That's going to [41:40] confuse your brain. MLB trade rumors is [41:43] probably fine because it's like a [41:44] completely different context. It's not [41:46] going to have as much uh interference, [41:48] right? But here's the bigger point, and [41:49] this this applies to everybody. [41:52] Why were you so distracted by having [41:53] your web browser open? [41:56] like why why not just be say I don't [41:59] look at other things on my web browser [42:00] when I'm working on this and the reason [42:03] is [42:05] because you're not time blocking. [42:07] So the the the bigger point I want to [42:09] make here is if you're time blocking so [42:10] you're like this is what I'm working on [42:12] and these are the minutes I'm working on [42:14] it during like from 1 to 2:30 I'm [42:17] working on code. When you time block, [42:20] when you have a particular uh you know [42:21] what you're doing and for how long, it's [42:24] much easier to say, here is my rule [42:26] about time blocks. If it's like a deep [42:28] work time block, I don't look at other [42:30] things other than the work I'm doing. [42:32] The only commitment you have to make now [42:34] is do I follow my time block rule, my [42:36] single rule? And so if you go off and [42:39] you go to email or go to YouTube or [42:41] something like that, it's very clear [42:43] you're violating the rule. then you have [42:45] to kind of live with that mentally like [42:47] I guess I'm not able to to uh you know [42:49] obey my own simple rules. If you don't [42:52] time block like let me just kind of like [42:54] work on stuff. The problem is that it's [42:57] very reasonable that at some points you [42:58] need to take breaks. At some points you [43:00] need to check email. At some point it [43:01] makes sense you might want to go look at [43:02] some YouTube. You can't just work like a [43:04] robot all day long. But if you don't [43:05] have a structure for your time you have [43:08] to figure out when those breaks or [43:09] context switch happens on the fly. And [43:12] now your brain is going to have a [43:13] continuous argument with yourself. What [43:15] about now? What about now? What about [43:16] now? What about now? Like any minute is [43:18] a possible minute you could be taking a [43:19] break. And that's not that unreasonable. [43:22] And so now you're going to lose that [43:23] argument like every six or seven [43:24] minutes. And you get a much more [43:26] distracted flow because there's no [43:28] simple rule you're violating. Your [43:29] brain's like we're going to take a [43:30] break. We have to check our email at [43:32] some point and we checked it now. Like [43:33] what did we do that was wrong? But if [43:35] you time block, you say, no, I have an [43:36] email checking block at 2:30 and I'm in [43:39] a deep work block and I don't check [43:40] email during deep work block. It is [43:41] clear as day if you go and check your [43:42] email anyways that you're violating a [43:44] rule that you set up to make your own [43:46] working experience better. So if you [43:48] have that problem or generally whether [43:49] you're a computer programmer or not, [43:52] time block. That's one of the the hidden [43:54] advantages of time blocking is it makes [43:56] it much easier to stay on task. All [43:58] right, who do we got next? Next up is [44:00] Bert. I work as an automation engineer [44:03] at a major technology company. I split [44:05] my time between hands-on mechanical work [44:07] and debugging code. In my world, [44:10] something like a single broken bolt [44:12] could add hours to a task and urgent [44:14] breakdowns regularly interrupt any [44:15] planned time block scheduled work. How [44:18] do I adjust? [44:19] >> Well, first of all, I want to make clear [44:21] that in your position as you describe [44:23] it, this idea of like you you deal with [44:25] unpredictable but urgent interruptions [44:28] and then then do your best to get other [44:29] stuff done in between, that's your job. [44:32] Like that's what they expect you to do. [44:35] It's not as it feels like for a lot of [44:37] knowledge workers that their job is X, [44:41] but this other thing which is like [44:42] really not that important keeps coming [44:44] in and interrupting them from doing [44:45] their job. And that's really frustrating [44:47] because you're like, I'm measured on [44:48] producing X, but you keep throwing like [44:50] Zoom invites at me for nonsense and I [44:52] can't do X, but you're never going to [44:53] know it's your fault. You know, you're [44:54] just like, why aren't you doing more X? [44:56] Where your job is like, no, this is like [44:58] Bert's job handle physical breakdowns [45:01] and there's these other things he works [45:02] on as he can. So like there's there's [45:03] nothing to be frustrated about here. [45:04] This is like what you signed up for. So [45:06] your goal is not to eliminate the [45:08] disruptions because that's part of your [45:10] job. Your goal is not to resent the [45:11] interruptions because it's part of your [45:12] job. It is to do the best you can with [45:16] the time you happen to have in between [45:18] interruptions, which some days could be [45:19] very little and some weeks could be like [45:21] a ton. And the key there is intention. [45:24] All right, I build a time block plan at [45:26] the beginning of the day so I have [45:29] intention for my time that I can [45:30] control. Then a bolt breaks and I have [45:32] to go spend three hours fixing it. When [45:34] I'm done, I come back and say, "What's [45:37] the best plan I can make for the time [45:38] that remains?" It'll look very different [45:40] than your initial plan, but you have [45:41] intention for what you're going to do [45:43] with the time that remains in the day. [45:45] That's the name of the game here. [45:47] Intention, not completion. Your goal is [45:51] not to create a plan you're able to [45:52] stick with. It's that you keep coming [45:54] back to saying, "What can I do with the [45:55] time I have that's going to be most [45:57] useful?" Now, if you multiply that over [45:59] many weeks and many months, what you get [46:01] is someone who's handling the urgent [46:03] stuff and is doing as well as anyone [46:04] could possibly do, making the most of [46:06] the time that they have outside of it. [46:09] So, you want to return to intention, but [46:12] don't have any qualms about I have to [46:16] fix my time block schedule three times a [46:17] day because I'm constantly being [46:18] interrupted by this other part of my [46:19] job. The only exception would be if your [46:21] bosses expect you to be doing more with [46:24] that other time than is possible. Like, [46:26] you're being very intentional. like why [46:27] didn't you do these other optional [46:28] projects? Well, now you have a record. [46:31] Like, oh, I time block. I keep track of [46:32] my time. Let me show you what's going on [46:34] here. On average, I'm getting like two [46:36] interruptions on the scale of like 3 to [46:38] four hours per day, which is leaving [46:39] about like this many hours that is uh [46:42] fractured between a few different um [46:44] stretches. I'm very organized with my [46:47] time. I I time block my time after every [46:49] interruption. This is about how much [46:51] progress I'm able I'm able to put about [46:53] like 10 hours per week on one of these [46:55] projects. these projects really take [46:56] about 30. This is like a three-we [46:58] project. Like, oh, okay. Well, you have [46:59] the receipts. We get it. We get what [47:02] you're saying. So, if that's the case, [47:03] bring the receipts. But probably people [47:05] are just you're if you're doing this, [47:07] you're time blocking the time you have [47:08] left. You're doing much better than [47:10] everyone else there who's in a similar [47:12] automation engineering position. And [47:13] they're probably already very impressed. [47:14] So again, your your goal is to keep [47:15] having intention. How do I make the most [47:17] out of my time? Not to satisfy some sort [47:20] of plan that you created earlier when [47:21] you had a different understanding of [47:23] what your day was going to be. [47:26] All right. Uh, let's do another question [47:27] here. [47:28] >> Next up is Scott. How should I develop [47:30] and manage my lists of what to read, [47:32] listen, and watch? I get overwhelmed and [47:34] don't have a good system for execution [47:36] and review. [47:38] >> I mean, you really should only be [47:39] reading my books and articles and [47:41] watching this podcast. Let's be honest. [47:43] And I I don't want to be hyperbolic, but [47:46] if you don't, if you watch and read [47:48] other things, there's like a 14 to 15% [47:51] increased chance you die this month. [47:53] It's my new marketing technique. Just [47:56] threaten people with death if they don't [47:57] watch our podcast. Uh, I'll tell you [47:59] what, Scott, those type of lists stress [48:00] me out. Some people love them. They [48:02] stress me out. The way I see it is like, [48:05] look, do I always have something [48:07] interesting to read? Yes. Do I have no [48:08] shortage of like interesting things to [48:10] watch when the time comes around? Yes. [48:11] Do I have no shortage of podcasts to [48:13] listen to when I have downtime? Yes. [48:15] Then I'm happy [48:17] because the problem is I make list of [48:19] all this stuff, then I feel lost for not [48:22] doing the stuff on my list. that I [48:23] haven't gotten to. But the list are [48:25] technically speaking could be unending. [48:28] I mean, there's no shortage of books you [48:30] could be reading. There's no shortage of [48:32] like visual content you could be [48:34] watching. So, why create loss, right? I [48:37] I'm just like, what am I excited about? [48:39] Let me do that now. I I with my books, I [48:42] definitely do this. It's like, what am I [48:43] in the mood for right now as I get to [48:44] this new book or movies? Like, okay, I [48:46] have some time. Like, what am I excited [48:48] about now? Because as long as I'm [48:50] filling those things with stuff I'm [48:51] happy with and is interesting, I don't [48:53] want to feel bad about missing out on [48:54] stuff on a list. So, if it stresses you [48:56] out, Scott, just get rid of the list, [48:58] you know? Or you can write down ideas, [49:00] but don't stress about like crossing [49:02] them all off. It's just like having as [49:04] long as you're not just sitting there [49:05] like, if I had I don't know what to do. [49:06] If only I had a list, but I don't, so [49:08] now I'm just going to sit here and stare [49:09] at the wall. Like, if you're not in that [49:10] situation, I would just not sweat it. [49:13] All right, we have some more good [49:14] questions coming up. We also have a case [49:16] study. We're going to talk, someone's [49:18] going to talk about their experience [49:19] with a deep life pitfall. We're going to [49:23] learn a lesson from that. Um, we also [49:25] have, speaking of books and list, I will [49:28] talk about the five books I read last [49:30] month because our first podcast of [49:31] December. But first, we need to take [49:33] another quick break to hear from our [49:35] sponsors. [49:37] Right, Jesse? We have to talk about Cozy [49:39] Earth. As listeners know, I'm a huge fan [49:41] of their bamboo sheets. I absolutely [49:42] love them. We own three sets, but I also [49:44] recently got a pair of their bamboo [49:46] pajamas. And I've really been enjoying [49:48] these as well. Um, especially as the [49:50] holidays are upon us and it's like [49:51] officially pajama season and our [49:53] household is kind of it's cold, the [49:55] fire's going, it's thriller December, so [49:57] we all want to sit in the living room [49:58] and read. Uh, so I'm loving my bamboo [50:00] PJs. They have a soft stretch knit [50:02] that's really a gamecher. Not only are [50:04] they super comfortable, but if you sleep [50:06] warm, these are going to feel a few [50:09] degrees colder than cotton when you're [50:11] in bed. So, it's like a more comfortable [50:12] sleep experience. They also have a 100 [50:15] night sleep trial. So, if you try out [50:17] their sheets and you don't love them, [50:18] you can return them hassle-free, but [50:20] trust me, you won't. They're awesome. [50:22] They also have a 10-year warranty [50:23] because once you feel this level of [50:25] comfort, you'll want it to last a [50:26] decade. So, why don't you give the gift [50:29] of everyday luxury this holiday season? [50:31] Head to cozyearth.com and use my code [50:34] deep for up to 40% off. Just be sure to [50:38] place your order by December 12th to get [50:42] guaranteed Christmas delivery. All [50:44] right, so order by December 12th to get [50:46] that guaranteed Christmas delivery. Now, [50:48] if you're listening to this episode [50:49] after the 12th, don't worry. My code [50:52] deep will still work year round to give [50:54] you 20% off. And if you get a [50:56] post-purchase survey, be sure to mention [50:58] that you heard about Cozy Hearth right [51:00] here. [51:02] Give the gift of comfort that lasts [51:03] beyond the holidays and carries into a [51:06] cozy new year. Head over to [51:08] cozyearth.com. [51:10] All right. I also want to talk about our [51:11] friends at Indeed. Here's something I've [51:12] learned as we've grown this plucky [51:14] little media company over here. Hiring [51:17] is hard. Finding the right people with [51:20] the right skills is like trying to find [51:21] a needle in the haystack if that needle [51:23] also had to be good at Adobe Premiere. [51:26] Indeed makes this all easier. Here's why [51:29] it's useful. [51:30] You can give your job the best chance to [51:32] be seen with Indeed sponsored jobs [51:34] feature. This will help you stand out [51:36] and hire quality candidates who can [51:37] drive the results you need. The [51:39] sponsored jobs will also boost your post [51:42] for quality candidates so you can reach [51:43] the exact people you want faster. This [51:46] works. According to Indeed data, [51:48] sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed [51:51] are 90% more likely to report a higher [51:53] than non-sponsored jobs because you [51:54] reach a bigger pool of quality [51:56] candidates. This is why more than 1.6 6 [51:58] million companies that uh sponsor their [52:00] jobs with Indeed. You need to hire. [52:02] Indeed really is all you need. So spend [52:06] more time interviewing candidates who [52:08] check all your boxes. Get less stress, [52:10] less time, more results now when you use [52:13] Indeed sponsored jobs. Here's the good [52:16] news. Listeners of this show will get a [52:19] $75 sponsored job credit to help get [52:22] your job the premium status it deserves [52:24] if you go to indeed.com/deep. [52:29] Just go to indeed.com/deep right now and [52:31] support our show by saying you heard [52:33] about it on this podcast. That's [52:36] indeed.comdeep. Terms and conditions [52:38] apply. Hiring. Do it the right way with [52:41] Indeed. All right, Jesse, let's get back [52:43] to some questions. [52:46] Next question is from Butterscat. As I [52:50] become more aware of the attention [52:51] economy and more intentional with how I [52:53] spend my time, it's hard to see family [52:55] and friends scrolling on TikTok as their [52:57] main hobby and not feel judgment towards [52:59] them. It's especially hard during the [53:01] holiday season when I spend lots of time [53:02] with them. What should I do? Uh, usually [53:05] my recommendation and do this as many [53:08] times as you can is when you see that [53:10] like a young relative or something is on [53:12] their phone kind of stuck in Tik Tok. [53:14] Uh, come up quietly, knock the phone out [53:16] of their hand, yell deep work, and then [53:20] sprint out of the room and just do that [53:22] again. And, you know, it'll it'll be [53:23] like kind of like a fun thing you'll [53:24] build up for. It's a lot of like [53:25] knocking the phone out of people's [53:26] hands, yelling deep work, and running [53:28] out of the room. That's what I do. Um, [53:30] I'm not invited to a lot of parties [53:32] anymore, but that's what I do. No, look, [53:34] it is hard because you care about these [53:36] people and you're like this is not [53:38] great. Like I have this feeling when I [53:39] see like my students or whatever or [53:42] friends of my son just like looking into [53:44] this phone all the time like this is [53:45] just not great for you. Like you're [53:47] missing out on the world. Like this is [53:48] just abusing your brain. It's like I [53:50] don't know like you see a baby smoking a [53:52] cigarette. It's funny. Don't get me [53:55] wrong. I've given my share of babies [53:58] cigarettes for the fun, but you know [54:00] like long term this is probably not good [54:01] for you. That's the way I feel about it. [54:03] However, [54:05] uh like with substance abuse or [54:06] whatever, you can't force someone to [54:08] change and lecturing them is not going [54:09] to work. Demonstrate life without it so [54:12] they see it going on and you have [54:14] gratitude for all that you are able to [54:16] enjoy because you're not on your phone [54:17] all the time. And then in like a another [54:20] occasion, so not in response to seeing [54:22] them using their phone, you can mention [54:23] like one of my books or send them one of [54:25] my podcast episodes, you kind of get [54:27] them exposed to the world of deep living [54:29] in a distracted world, but not as a [54:32] luxury sort of heranging like, hey, [54:33] you're on your phone right now, you [54:35] know, listen to Cal Newport. Like that [54:37] doesn't work well, but you can bring it [54:38] up with them later. But again, it's hard [54:39] to make people change. So be the change [54:40] you want to see in the world. All right, [54:43] who else have we got? Next up is Josh. [54:47] Have you come across anything saying [54:48] that endless scrolling makes people less [54:50] motivated to be physically active as [54:52] well as adversely affecting their [54:54] attention span? [54:55] >> Yeah, there's data for both. We've [54:56] talked about both on the show, mainly [54:58] the attention span one. There's some [54:59] good John Mur Murdoch data in the [55:01] Financial Times. We we did some uh [55:03] podcast about this earlier in the fall [55:06] where as we get to the smartphone era, [55:08] you see trouble with concentrating, [55:09] trouble with attention just goes up. [55:11] There's some new research out in [55:12] September, a big meta study looking at [55:15] short form video in particular like you [55:17] get on Tik Tok or Instagram reels, and [55:19] they found a definite impact on [55:21] attention. So, your attention goes down [55:23] the more that you use these this uh [55:25] those particular types of content. So, [55:27] we know that's out there. John Height [55:28] talks about the connection between more [55:30] phone usage and spending more time [55:31] indoors. So, we spend less time outdoors [55:33] as we spend more time on our phone. [55:36] Scott Galloway in his new book, Notes on [55:37] Being a Man, talks about this idea that [55:39] the phone offers for like digital [55:41] simulations of other types of stuff we [55:43] would normally do, including stuff [55:44] outside. That's often where you get [55:45] things like peace and challenge. It's [55:48] relaxing, but also I'm building [55:49] something, I'm racing, I'm running, I'm [55:52] working on, you know, a project or [55:53] whatever. Um, men will just simulate [55:56] this by like I got to the next level in [55:57] my video game. So definitely there's a [55:59] connection between the screens being [56:01] more attractive keeping us away from [56:04] activities like being outside. So that's [56:06] one of many reasons why a life spent [56:09] increasingly on screens really isn't a [56:11] good one. All right, we also have a case [56:13] study this week. This is where people [56:14] write in to talk about their own [56:16] personal experience wrappling with the [56:18] type of ideas and advice we discuss on [56:20] this show. Um it's also our excuse to [56:22] play the case study theme music. [56:34] Now, Jesse, I think I cut the name off [56:36] of this case study. You remember who who [56:38] this was? [56:39] >> Um, let me check. It was Jeff. [56:42] >> Jeff. All right. So, Jeff wrote in uh to [56:44] talk about his struggles with trying to [56:45] create a deep life. All right. Here we [56:46] go. Jeff says, "Five years ago, I sold [56:49] part of my company when I was just 27 [56:51] and effectively achieved financial [56:52] freedom. However, unsure what to do with [56:55] my life, I kept a vaguely I kept vaguely [56:58] striving for more. And by doing so, I [57:01] fell into one of the pitfalls that Cal [57:03] talks about. After a year-long break, I [57:05] knew I wanted to do something ambitious. [57:07] Applying the grand goal strategy, I [57:09] pondered working in biotech or producing [57:11] movies and eventually got a prestigious [57:13] job in finance. I just wanted something [57:15] big and was convinced an impressive [57:17] enough job would make my life all around [57:19] better. Over the following year, it [57:21] became clear that this wasn't the case. [57:23] While the role was prestigious, I didn't [57:25] care for the work. During this time, the [57:28] company I still own spun off a brand new [57:30] uh a new brand in the rock climbing [57:32] industry. I was a passionate rock [57:34] climber, so I thought that's what my [57:35] real calling was and I should walk away [57:37] from prestige prestige and instead work [57:39] on something I was passionate about. The [57:41] first months were exhilarating, but then [57:43] reality quickly set in and my day-to-day [57:45] life consisted of the same company [57:46] related admin I had successfully gotten [57:48] out of years prior. I then stepped out [57:50] of the that business last year and took [57:52] the question what to do with my life [57:54] seriously. I was able to focus on what [57:56] my daytoday should look like. First, I [57:58] got disciplined and organized. I was [58:00] able to tackle a bunch of home admin [58:01] stuff that was bothering me. Now, I'm [58:03] studying philosophy and literature [58:05] basically full-time, sitting in cafes, [58:07] reading or attending lectures, and [58:08] meeting with my study groups. I host [58:10] short story dinners. I run every morning [58:12] and play tennis several times a week. [58:13] I'm spending more quality time with my [58:14] kids. I only check my email on [58:16] Wednesdays and Fridays. I leave my phone [58:18] in the car after 5:00 p.m. and I'm only [58:20] reachable via backup phone. I've also [58:22] reduced my total travel time. Overall, [58:24] I'm calm and without haste most of the [58:26] time. All right, this is a great example [58:28] of lifestylecentric planning. So, what [58:31] we see in Jeff is actually two different [58:33] philosophies. He ends up with [58:35] lifestylecentric planning, but he begins [58:36] with what he called the grand goal [58:37] strategy. Um, in my new book, I think of [58:39] this sometimes as the phase shift model, [58:41] the deep life. This idea of like one big [58:43] radical change will make your life all [58:46] the way better. [58:47] Oh, I'm now in a very prestigious job [58:49] that will fix everything. And we often [58:51] think the radicalness of the change [58:53] correlates to the radicalness of the [58:55] improvement it will give. The problem is [58:57] your life is built up of many different [58:59] parts. [59:01] And what matters to how you feel is your [59:04] daily subjective experience with these [59:05] different parts of your life. So making [59:07] a single radical change or producing it [59:10] or chasing a single radical goal, it [59:12] might take one area of your life and [59:14] like make it better or maybe temporarily [59:16] make it better, but it might make a lot [59:17] of other areas of your life worse. Like [59:18] we see this classically with like very [59:20] prestigious jobs. This idea of like I [59:22] have respect uh for what I do or what I [59:24] do has like big financial impact that [59:26] goes up and that's good but it might [59:29] step on every other part of your life. [59:31] your time with your kids, your your [59:33] physical health, you know, your ability [59:35] to like enjoy the world, other types of [59:37] interest you have. All of those are made [59:39] worse and so you add these things up. [59:41] Negative, negative, negative, negative. [59:42] This one positive and and you end up net [59:45] negative. So like the single change [59:47] fixing everything doesn't really make [59:48] sense. Lifestyle center planning says, [59:50] why don't I just actually survey my [59:52] entire life and say, what do I want my [59:53] daily experience to be like? So think [59:54] about all these different buckets. What [59:56] types of things do I want on a regular [59:58] basis? Great. How do I engineer my life [60:00] to have those things? And that's what [60:03] Jeff ended up doing finally. The details [60:05] don't matter. What matters is he was [60:06] thinking about I want to be [60:08] intellectually engaged. I want to spend [60:09] time with my kids. I want to be on top [60:11] of things. I I want to, you know, [60:13] exercise. He like has this vision for a [60:15] life and he's like, oh, I could make [60:17] that happen because of my current [60:18] financial resources or this or that. And [60:20] that is making him much happier than [60:22] pursuing like a single thing that was [60:24] very prestigious. So lifestyle planning [60:26] can lead you to all sorts of different [60:27] places. There is no template for what a [60:29] deep life looks like, but there is a [60:32] template for how to get there, which is [60:34] imagining the reality of your daily [60:35] lifestyle across many different areas of [60:37] your life and engineering towards what [60:38] you want that daily lifestyle to be [60:40] like. Making progress in the book, by [60:43] the way, Jesse, I'm at I'm in the most [60:45] epic chapter of the book, which is [60:48] you've figured out what resonates, what [60:50] doesn't resonate. You've translated this [60:52] into an ideal lifestyle vision. You've [60:55] formatted, you know what your plan, how [60:58] to format your plan, like what it should [60:59] cons the different elements your plan [61:01] for moving close to that vision should [61:03] should include. You figured out how to [61:05] connect your plan into your life. Like, [61:07] okay, how am I going to keep checking in [61:09] with this plan and making sure I execute [61:11] it? Now, you got to fill in the details [61:12] of what that plan is. and I'm in the [61:14] middle of this like epic 15,000word [61:16] chapter where it's just idea after idea [61:20] based on all sorts of different stories [61:22] and examples and science about different [61:24] tools and techniques or building plans [61:27] that work for moving closer to your [61:29] ideal vision. So it's like where all [61:31] it's like where all the fun stuff [61:32] happens. [61:33] >> So like whereas your last book there was [61:35] three rules per se this one there's [61:38] >> it's linear. The book is linear. It's [61:41] like do this now we're going to do this [61:43] now we're going to do this and now we're [61:45] going to do this and then at the end [61:47] like okay and here's a couple things now [61:49] not some complications but really it's [61:51] like okay um let me explain to you why [61:54] lifestyle strength plan is better than [61:55] phase shift model. How do you figure out [61:58] what you care about? Great. That's what [61:59] we're doing in this chapter. We're going [62:01] to get these journals. We're going to [62:02] walk around. We're going to keep these [62:03] notes. We're going to process them. All [62:04] right. How do we translate that into a [62:06] vision of your lifestyle? Because again [62:08] we want to we want to work towards a [62:09] vision of your complete lifestyle. not [62:10] just pursue a single goal. Well, let's [62:12] get into it. That's what we're doing [62:13] next. Here's how you format it. Here's [62:14] how you do it. Here's a bunch of [62:16] examples. Here's a bunch of like listers [62:17] sent theirs in. Okay. Now, you're you [62:19] have the you filled your notebook. Now, [62:21] you have the plan. I mean, not the plan, [62:23] the vision. All right. Well, how do we [62:25] now move closer to that vision? Well, [62:26] first, let's work through just like how [62:28] we format the plan. Here's what's going [62:29] to be in it. Uh here's literally where [62:31] you write it. It's going to be written [62:32] right under your vision. How do we [62:34] connect this to your life? Okay. where [62:35] you're going to start doing these sort [62:36] of daily metric tracking grids and these [62:38] weekly check-ins to to put stuff onto [62:40] your calendar. Great. Now, how do we [62:42] figure out what actually goes in here? [62:43] Ah, huge chapter of like now we're lots [62:47] of ideas for how to actually fill that [62:48] stuff in there. Um, all right. How do we [62:51] now like execute this and not get [62:52] overwhelmed? Okay, let's break it down. [62:54] Let's go area by area. So, it's really [62:55] like moving through linearly. Uh, do [62:57] this, do this, do this, do that. Um, and [63:00] then a few things at the end where it's [63:02] like this might not apply to everyone or [63:04] like a lot of the what we would have [63:06] thought of is like the lower layers of [63:07] the deep life stack I have coming [63:08] towards the end of like but what if [63:10] after all now you have the step by step [63:13] what if you don't feel at all capable [63:15] like I can't do anything that's like I'm [63:17] my life's a mess I'm not disciplined [63:18] like I'm not I'm never going to be able [63:20] to execute these steps all right let's [63:22] do a crash course becoming more capable [63:24] like that's sort of at the end now [63:25] >> um like like let's just get the idea [63:27] like what is lifestyle planning How does [63:29] it work? Let's walk you through it. And [63:30] now you're fired up. That's the right [63:32] time, I realize, to be like, "Oh, and if [63:34] you're feeling like your life's a mess, [63:36] but you really want to do this." All [63:37] right, now we'll talk about, you know, [63:39] becoming more capable, getting your [63:40] disciplined up, managing your time, [63:42] stuff like that. [63:42] >> Have you contemplated writing a book on [63:44] AI ever? [63:45] >> Yeah, I have an idea for my next book [63:47] that would like be in reaction to AI. It [63:50] wouldn't be a like this is just about AI [63:52] or a theory of AI, but it would be in [63:54] reaction to AI. Mhm. [63:56] >> Yeah, I got that idea. I actually [63:59] uh I can't give any details details [64:00] about anything, but there's a [64:01] potentially major article I'm writing in [64:03] the new year that would um for a big [64:06] publication that would uh kind of [64:08] introduce a lot of those ideas I want to [64:10] tackle in my in that next book. So, [64:11] we'll see how that goes. Always [64:13] something, Jesse. Always writing. All [64:16] right. Do we have a call this week? [64:17] >> We do. [64:17] >> All right. Let's hear this. [64:19] >> Hey, Kyle. My name is Jennifer. I'm [64:22] probably one of your younger longtime [64:24] listeners and readers. I graduated [64:26] college last spring and this fall I [64:28] moved across the country to DC to start [64:30] grad school. Go NATS. My grad program is [64:33] very demanding and I find myself engaged [64:35] in a lot more deep work or focus time [64:38] than I did in undergrad. Because of [64:40] this, I decided to ditch Instagram, [64:43] which was my only form of social media. [64:46] I have been much more time efficient and [64:48] focused since removing it from my life. [64:51] This brings me to my question. Since my [64:53] friends are still very active on [64:55] Instagram and post pictures wherever we [64:57] go, I often wind up in photos, but now I [65:01] don't have a way to see, comment on, or [65:03] moderate the photos of me that are [65:04] shared online. I'm wondering if you have [65:07] any advice on how to deal with this. [65:09] Thanks a bunch. [65:11] >> Well, welcome to DC. Um, hopefully [65:13] you're joining NAT fandom on an upswing. [65:17] We could do a a whole episode on the [65:18] youth movement over at the NATS, but we [65:20] won't for now. Um, a couple points. Good [65:23] for you for leaving Instagram as a grad [65:25] student, right? Your job is to use your [65:27] brain. That gets in the way of using [65:29] your brain. It's smoking to a [65:30] professional athlete. The grad program [65:33] who brought you on is expecting you to [65:34] use your brain. Don't do things to make [65:36] you worse at doing that. So, I think [65:37] it's it's a really good idea for anyone [65:39] in one of these sort of timelited elite [65:41] intellectual types of positions like [65:43] being a grad student to be like, I [65:44] really don't get near any type of [65:46] algorithmically curated short form [65:48] content. Like, I that's cigarettes to an [65:50] athlete and I'm trying to make the the [65:51] major league squad. I can't deal with [65:53] that. So, good decision. I'm not [65:55] surprised that you're seeing uh [65:57] advantages. All right. So, what do you [65:58] do about your concerns of not being able [66:00] to comment on or curate photos of you [66:01] online? [66:03] That's all fine. Don't comment on or [66:04] curate photos of you online. your [66:06] friends will quickly learn, oh, she's [66:08] not on Instagram right now because she [66:10] stopped using it while she's at grad [66:11] school and they move on. That's it. Part [66:14] of the issue that [66:16] I would say part of what makes social [66:19] media clever is maybe the better way of [66:20] saying it. Part of what makes it clever [66:22] was it sort of sold us on this idea that [66:27] uh I don't want to sound dismissive, but [66:30] that we're more important than we are. [66:31] And what I mean by that is it creates a [66:34] sense of that you have an audience and [66:36] even whether it's people you know even [66:38] right not necessarily like a broad [66:39] audience but that like you're part of [66:41] this is part of what made it so [66:42] compelling early on. Uh you have you're [66:45] you have this audience you're part of [66:47] this great conversation and they want to [66:48] see what you're posting and they're [66:49] commenting on and you're commenting on [66:50] other people's stuff and it's like [66:51] you're part of this great conversation [66:53] and you'll be missed if you leave. But [66:54] that's never really been the case. It's [66:56] why in my 2016 book, Deep Work, I had a [66:58] chapter that said, "Quit social media." [67:00] And what it really meant, if you read [67:01] the chapter, it said, "Leave it for 30 [67:03] days without telling anyone and see if [67:04] anyone notices." Because what would [67:06] happen is people in their mind, they [67:09] imagine all these like friends and [67:10] people who are commenting are [67:12] essentially in like the seats of a [67:13] theater like really eagerly waiting for [67:15] you to come out on stage and be like [67:17] look around really solemnly and then [67:19] say, "Poto my dinner." And they're all [67:21] like, "Yeah, there it is. We've been [67:22] we've been waiting for that." and [67:23] they're all like high-fiving each other [67:25] and like you know whatever but that's [67:27] not really what happens. There's [67:28] actually a collectivist attention model [67:30] where the Facebook was the one to [67:31] innovate back in 2004 2005 is like it's [67:34] just like I will comment on things you [67:36] comment if you comment on things I [67:37] comment on that's just the game and then [67:38] we all feel like people are commenting [67:39] and when people would do this experiment [67:41] from deep work like oh god no one [67:42] noticed I was gone I I I wasn't at the [67:44] center of this like grand conversation I [67:46] wasn't this this uh this u producer on [67:48] stage everyone was waiting for it was [67:50] all just sort of a game of like showing [67:52] fake attention to each other no one [67:53] cared great I'm not going to go back and [67:55] I think you'll have a similar experience [67:56] right um it make these these services [67:59] want to make you feel like you're it's [68:01] very important what you're doing but for [68:03] the most part it really isn't you will [68:05] be fine the few friends that notice will [68:08] learn pretty quickly like oh you don't [68:09] use Instagram anymore good for you and [68:11] that'll be that so stay with the course [68:13] that type of stuff is not as important [68:14] as it wants you to think these are all [68:16] the things that are going to hurt these [68:18] companies as they move towards becoming [68:19] television to go back to our deep dive [68:21] because as you move towards television [68:23] those type of hooks disappear you [68:24] discourage people from creating their [68:26] own content or partic participating as [68:28] you move towards television. You get [68:29] higher minutes used per day because [68:33] honestly algorithmically curated short [68:34] form video is more interesting than your [68:36] friend's photos. But you don't get that [68:39] deep social hook like the thing that [68:40] you're worried about like my god my [68:42] friends are going to wonder where I am. [68:43] That goes away with a service like Tik [68:45] Tok. No one knows you're on there or [68:46] cares and they lose their hooks. That's [68:48] why I think it's going to become such an [68:50] ungrounded competitive marketplace. It's [68:51] hard to dominate internet-based [68:54] television in a way you could dominate [68:56] friendbased Instagram. So, I think it's [68:57] a good case study, that dynamic that I'm [69:00] worried about. All right, let's go on [69:02] now to our final segment. [69:05] All right, the first podcast of every [69:06] month, I like to talk about the books I [69:08] read the previous month. I usually aim [69:09] to read five books per month. I've [69:12] grouped them this month, Jesse, by [69:15] topic. I kind of like two major topics [69:17] here just kind of randomly, but that's [69:19] the way I grouped them. All right. Uh, [69:21] my first two, these are both Disney [69:24] related because I guess that's how I [69:25] deal with my stress these days. That's [69:27] my hard drinking is Disney related [69:30] topics. I read David Cohen's David [69:32] Cohen's book, Reality Land. Uh, it's a [69:36] book about just the business history of [69:39] the Florida resort as opposed to the [69:42] California resort because I read that [69:43] other book [69:45] >> about Disneyland because we went to [69:46] Disneyland and so this was a book about [69:48] Disney World and it was about like how [69:49] they got the land and how they acquired [69:51] it and the growth strategy and like that [69:53] stuff is my it's so different than [69:55] anything I do in life. It's very [69:56] non-stressful. It was very good. It was [69:58] a very well-ressearched book. I guess [69:59] it's one of the big ones. Um, then I [70:02] read the other Disney Disneyish book. It [70:04] was really about the Sherman brothers, [70:05] but it was called Becoming Mary Poppins. [70:06] New book just came out, Todd James [70:08] Pierce. It's about the making of that [70:10] movie in the early 1960s, but it's also [70:12] a lot about the songwriting duo, the [70:14] Sherman Brothers, um, who really helped [70:17] innovate the cinema form of the family [70:20] musical as a thing that became big again [70:24] in the 1960s. And so, it's interesting [70:26] hearing about what the world of [70:27] professional songwriting was like in [70:29] mid-century or prior to mid-century. [70:31] their their dad was like a early 20th [70:34] century songwriter. That was really [70:35] interesting. Uh some of the the Disney [70:38] stuff was interesting too. Like they [70:39] really were kind of betting the farm on [70:41] this movie succeeding. It was it was [70:43] interesting to hear also how the Disney [70:45] live action film studio was very small [70:48] compared to the big ma major studios. [70:50] Like they couldn't they couldn't really [70:52] do these epics on the scale that like a [70:55] Paramount or Universal could do. And so [70:57] like that that stuff was interesting. [70:59] Then I moved on to a pair of religious [71:00] books. One it was like they couldn't be [71:03] more opposite. [71:05] One is very very popular audience. The [71:08] other is an academic audience. So the [71:09] popular audience one I read was Rob [71:12] Bell's book what is the Bible. So I've [71:14] been reading these books about like how [71:15] to understand and interpret the Bible. [71:18] Uh like what who wrote it? How do they [71:20] wrote it? Like why what about it is you [71:22] know what about the writing is so [71:24] interesting or profound because if you [71:25] just kind of read it through a modern [71:26] context like these are weird stories. uh [71:28] you don't get a great experience. So, I [71:30] read that book a couple months ago. I [71:31] like popular book. Rob Bell wrote a book [71:33] on it. Bell's an interesting guy. I [71:36] think he's a he's a he's a Christian [71:38] pastor. I don't know if he's evangelical [71:40] or not or with one of the main mainline [71:42] Protestant denominations. He's super [71:45] well educated, right? Like I think he [71:47] speaks Greek, he speaks Hebrew. He's [71:49] really studied this stuff, but he writes [71:52] definitely for a super mass audience. I [71:53] mean, it's like incredibly [71:54] conversational with a lot of single line [71:56] paragraphs and bolding and it's like [71:58] really um [72:01] really like simplified style but some [72:03] really good points captured in it. So, [72:05] it was a quick read but I found it kind [72:06] of interesting. Then I went and read [72:08] Jonathan Saxs book tradition in an [72:10] untraditional age. Uh so you know I'm a [72:12] big fan of Rabbi Jonathan Saxs his [72:15] public facing books that connect [72:17] religion with other schools of thought [72:20] in the broader world uh like science and [72:23] religion morality culture. These are [72:26] fantastic books. He's a fantastic [72:27] fantastic writer. I wanted to get more [72:29] acquainted with his more academic style [72:31] writing. So God help me Jesse. I went [72:32] back and found this book which is a [72:34] collection of uh more like academic [72:36] essays he wrote. really these essays [72:39] were dealing with like orthodoxy and its [72:41] collision with modernity uh and [72:44] grappling with a bunch of sort of like [72:46] big thinkers in that field. 450 page [72:48] beast of a book. But even his academic [72:51] writing I was like this is I learned a [72:53] lot. It was really interesting to learn [72:54] about I I I learned about this like the [72:58] collision of modernity with other types [73:00] of uh traditional [73:03] thought worlds itself. I felt like was [73:06] really useful even for like the [73:06] technocriticism I do. U so it's a more [73:09] academic book. You know, you're going to [73:11] hear about like these like very specific [73:13] thinkers and it's so it's if you're not [73:14] used to academic writing, I don't know, [73:16] it's not like a fun read like Rob Bells, [73:17] but I really enjoyed it. I learned a [73:19] lot. Uh the final book I read was uh [73:21] Scott Galloway's new book, Notes on [73:23] Being a Man. I like Scott. I like, you [73:25] know, I've been on his podcast. [73:27] Uh I think he's a great broadcaster, [73:30] interesting character. Um, this book, [73:32] you know, the book captures like the [73:34] stuff he talks about in book form. Um, [73:36] it's exactly what you would want. It's [73:37] like he writes in the style that he [73:39] talks. So, if you like his podcast, [73:41] you're going to like the book. It's not [73:42] a super bogged down in numbers. So, he [73:46] has statistics and it's not bogged down [73:48] in stories of other people. It's really [73:49] like him talking a lot about his own [73:51] life and his own thoughts and kind of [73:52] riffing, which is probably the right [73:53] format for Scott. I also think the book [73:55] has been killing it because he's [73:56] everywhere. Mhm. [73:57] >> His podcasts are super popular, but he's [73:59] very good on TV. So, he he does like [74:02] every remaining legacy TV show with an [74:05] audience that author can go on. He did [74:07] all of them. The Morning Shows, The [74:09] View, Bill Maher, The Morning Joe, [74:12] because he's very good on TV. Um, so [74:16] there you go. That's all of them. So, [74:17] that was good. There you go. So, that's [74:18] what I read. Uh, Thriller December is [74:21] underway. I was going to start with the [74:24] Dan Brown book he got me, but I got [74:25] intimidated. 600 something pages and I [74:27] was like I need to get more momentum [74:29] going into I can't start Thriller [74:30] December on a book that I need to get a [74:32] few under my belt quick. So I I went [74:34] back and I'm starting with uh Michael [74:37] Kryton's 199 something classic Airframe. [74:40] >> Is that a reread? [74:41] >> Uh yeah, that's all they're all rereads, [74:43] but it's been a while since I've read [74:44] that one. Um so I'm excited about [74:46] >> Michael's your favorite author, right? [74:48] >> Just for thrillers. Oh, [74:50] >> okay. [74:50] >> Yeah, for thrillers. Yeah. Uh the 90s [74:52] stuff began to get kind of weird and [74:54] reactionary, but like writing [74:57] through in 90s I liked Prey Timeline and [75:00] Airframe. Um but like next and the the [75:05] climate change one like this Disclosure [75:08] I don't know Rising Sun is like some of [75:10] those are little uh like you'd recognize [75:13] it today as like someone redpilled back [75:16] before that was a thing. He was kind of [75:18] so which is [75:18] >> red pills the Matrix. [75:20] >> Yeah. But it means like you get exposed [75:22] to like conservative ideas and realize [75:24] like wait I think all the media is like [75:25] has a left leaning tilt and so like I am [75:28] going to [75:29] >> uh I'm going to like I've been revealed [75:31] that we've been like kind of had and I [75:33] so he kind of got which is fine but it's [75:35] not what I want in a thriller. [75:36] >> Um [75:37] >> so it kind of petered out a little bit [75:39] but yeah I've read I'm a completist aon [75:41] completist. I've read all of his [75:42] postumous ones and of course you know [75:44] what the masterpiece is from his canon. [75:46] The book is maybe one of the finest [75:48] books of the last century. Eruption, [75:53] co-authored with James Patterson at the [75:56] Volcano. [75:58] H the worst one of the worst books I've [76:00] ever read. I should be nice though [76:01] because the the Kiteon Family Foundation [76:04] sent me a nice note after I wrote an [76:05] article about him last year. So I should [76:08] outside of that I do like a lot of [76:09] Kiteon stuff. Um so I'm going to do [76:10] Airframe. I have a couple other books [76:12] I'm going to read. I'm reading I I I got [76:14] a used version of the Raymond Williams [76:16] book television we talked about. Um I [76:18] want to really read that carefully. So [76:19] I'm going to read that. Um I'm probably [76:21] going to read uh Geraldine Brooks's book [76:23] about the aftermath of of her husband [76:25] dying. So I have some non-thrillery [76:27] stuff in there that I'm [76:27] >> Oh, she wrote that book Horse, right? [76:29] Yeah, [76:29] >> that was good. [76:30] >> Yes, I'm reading her book after that. [76:31] Yeah. Um so I have some non-thriller [76:33] stuff in there, but I am going to read [76:34] the Dan Brown. Couple other thrillers in [76:36] mind. It'll be good. I like thriller [76:37] thriller December, but Airframe is like [76:39] perfect. That's like my sweet from the [76:41] 90s. I read it as a kid. It's like he [76:43] brings you into like a world of like air [76:44] traffic control and incident reporting [76:47] after plane crashes and all this [76:49] technical stuff is happening and there's [76:52] a mystery and it's great but like the [76:54] stakes are low. I like it. I think [76:57] there's a dinosaur in there or is that a [76:58] different one? I don't know. I mix it [76:59] up. Twist ending. Little known fact [77:03] after 1994 almost every Michael Kryton [77:05] book involved at some point in usually [77:07] like very in Congress weighs dinosaurs. [77:10] Rising Sun is like a lot about like [77:12] financial tensions with Japan and like [77:14] the cover up of a murder. Um, but also [77:17] it's a trannosaur that does the murder. [77:19] So like he did a lot of that [77:21] disclosure was about gender power [77:23] dynamics with sexual harassment. Um, and [77:27] also she was a velociraptor. So like [77:28] there, you know, he was really kind of [77:30] pulling on [77:32] what worked. You got to you got to play [77:34] the hits. All right, that's enough [77:35] nonsense for now. We'll be back next [77:36] week with another episode. And until [77:39] then, as always, to stay deep. If you [77:42] like today's discussion about how the [77:43] internet is becoming television, you [77:45] might also like episode 372, [77:47] in which I decode how Tik Tok's [77:50] algorithm works. It's a great companion [77:52] to what we talked about today. Check it [77:54] out. I think you'll like it. The big [77:56] news in the world of social media [77:58] recently is the announcement made last [78:00] week that US interest would be taking [78:03] over operation of Tik Tok in America. [78:06] Yeah.  ## 📺 Video ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0) --- # 📝 Full Notes (Deep-Read Analysis) # 🏷️ Title: Is The Internet Becoming Television? ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Time block daily to resist distraction — prevents continuous mental arguments about when to take breaks #productivity - [H2] Consider video for content creation — major podcasts need video to be serious players by 2026 #media-strategy - [H3] Prepare for easier abstention from internet media — as it becomes TV-like, cultural acceptance of "not watching much" increases #digital-minimalism ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [Derek Thompson's "Everything is Television" Essay](https://example.com) - [Raymond Williams' Television: Technology and Cultural Form](https://example.com) ## 📝 Summary - Cal Newport explores Derek Thompson's thesis that all internet media is converging toward television's "flow" model of continuous, non-specific video content - The shift affects social media (80-90% of time now spent watching videos from strangers), podcasts (moving to video), and AI tools (generating endless video streams) - Key stakeholders include content creators, social media platforms, and users experiencing cognitive/social consequences - Risks include decreased thinking ability and increased loneliness; tradeoffs involve lucrative market opportunities vs. societal costs - Bottom line: Internet-based media is becoming upgraded television due to economic incentives, not technological determinism ## 📖 Main Content Thompson's core argument draws from Raymond Williams' 1974 concept of television as "flow" - continuous, non-specific multimedia streams rather than discrete content pieces. Modern internet platforms exhibit this same pattern: Facebook and Instagram users spend 80-90% of time watching videos from strangers, podcasts are moving to video formats, and AI tools generate endless video streams. The convergence occurs because television represented a $730+ billion market in 2025 - far larger than books ($151 billion) or combined Meta/TikTok revenue (~$200 billion). When internet and smartphone infrastructure enabled "upgraded television" (portable, algorithmically curated, better-targeted ads), entrepreneurs naturally pursued this lucrative opportunity. However, not all media became television. Books and movies maintain their traditional forms and continue growing. The phenomenon specifically affects internet-based media due to economic rather than technological determinism. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=0) — [H1] Derek Thompson's thesis introduction - Key idea: "Everything that is not already television is turning into television" - Evidence: "A spooky convergence is happening in media" #### ⏱️ [03:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=225) — [H2] Death of social media evidence - Key idea: Meta's legal brief reveals 80-90% of platform time is watching stranger videos - Evidence: "More than 80% of time spent on Facebook and more than 90% of time spent on Instagram is now dedicated to watching videos" #### ⏱️ [06:12](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=372) — [H2] Financial Times data on social media decline - Key idea: Social media usage peaked in 2022, especially among young people - Evidence: Average daily social media use peaked around 2.5 hours in 2022 #### ⏱️ [08:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=510) — [H2] Podcasts moving toward video - Key idea: Video podcast consumption growing twice as fast as audio-only - Evidence: "The consumption of video podcast is growing twice as fast as audio only" #### ⏱️ [09:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=585) — [H2] AI video generation examples - Key idea: Even AI tools are organized around endless video consumption - Evidence: OpenAI Sora and Meta Vibes demonstrate "even AI wants to be television" #### ⏱️ [11:20](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=680) — [H1] Raymond Williams' "flow" concept - Key idea: Television defined by continuous sequence rather than discrete content - Evidence: "The characteristic organization and therefore the characteristic experience is one of sequence or flow" #### ⏱️ [14:15](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=855) — [H1] Television as media attractor state - Key idea: All media systems evolve toward television's continuous video flow - Evidence: "Television seems to be the attractor of all media" #### ⏱️ [16:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1005) — [H2] Consequences of television convergence - Key idea: Moving from literacy to orality culture harms thinking abilities - Evidence: "We get worse at thinking as we move from a culture of literacy to a culture of orality" #### ⏱️ [19:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1170) — [H1] Not everything became television - Key idea: Books and movies maintained traditional forms and continue growing - Evidence: "Global book market in 2025 reached $151 billion and has been growing steadily" #### ⏱️ [22:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1320) — [H1] 1980s television usage patterns - Key idea: Television was background distraction tool, on 7+ hours daily in households - Evidence: "84.9 million American households kept them in use seven hours and eight minutes a day" #### ⏱️ [25:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1545) — [H1] Economic determinism explanation - Key idea: Internet became television due to economic opportunity, not technological inevitability - Evidence: "Global television video market is over $730 billion in 2025" #### ⏱️ [28:30](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1710) — [H1] Prediction: Video required for major content - Key idea: Podcasts and newsletters will need video components to remain competitive - Evidence: "Major podcasts are going to have to have video to be a serious player" #### ⏱️ [31:15](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=1875) — [H1] Prediction: Bad news for social media giants - Key idea: Television convergence eliminates social graph competitive advantages - Evidence: "Only 7% of time spent on Instagram is looking at content produced by a friend" #### ⏱️ [34:00](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=2040) — [H1] Prediction: Easier abstention from internet media - Key idea: As internet becomes TV-like, cultural acceptance of non-participation increases - Evidence: "It became very culturally normal... 'Yeah, I don't watch a lot of TV'" #### ⏱️ [37:45](https://youtu.be/Z_WEmjygNK0?t=2265) — [H2] Time blocking prevents distraction - Key idea: Structured time blocks create clear rules that reduce continuous mental negotiations - Evidence: "If you don't time block... your brain is going to have a continuous argument with yourself" ## 📚 References - [Derek Thompson's Plain English Podcast](https://example.com) - [Raymond Williams' Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)](https://example.com) - [Financial Times data visualizations by John Burn-Murdoch](https://example.com) - [Christian Science Monitor 1985 television usage article](https://example.com) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Internet platforms are abandoning social features in favor of algorithmic video feeds that mirror 1980s television's "background distraction" model - The convergence toward television format results from economic incentives rather than technological determinism - entrepreneurs target the massive $730+ billion television market - Traditional media like books and movies resist this convergence, suggesting the phenomenon specifically affects internet-based platforms rather than all media universally ## 📰 Newsletter The internet is becoming television - and that changes everything for content creators and digital citizens. Derek Thompson's viral essay reveals that 80-90% of time on Facebook and Instagram now involves watching videos from strangers, not friends. This isn't technological inevitability but economic opportunity: the global TV market exceeds $730 billion, dwarfing other media sectors. For WordPress professionals, this means video integration becomes essential. Major podcasts will require video components by 2026, and even newsletters may need multimedia elements to remain competitive. However, there's a silver lining: as internet media becomes obviously TV-like, cultural acceptance of digital minimalism will grow. The shift also threatens social media giants by eliminating their competitive moat - social graphs become irrelevant when platforms focus on algorithmic video feeds rather than friend connections. Resources: [Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/), [Developer Docs](https://developer.wordpress.org/), [WP-CLI](https://wp-cli.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Create video content explaining technical concepts, measure engagement across platforms - Education: Develop multimedia workshops combining traditional documentation with video walkthroughs - Developer experience: Consider video-first onboarding flows and interactive tutorials - Developer marketing: Invest in video production capabilities for technical content - Community management: Prepare for shift from text-based forums to video-centric discussions #### OSPO - Policy & Governance: Document video content policies for open source projects - Developer Support: Create video training materials for contribution processes - Community Engagement: Consider video formats for project updates and governance discussions - Strategic Alignment: Track video engagement metrics alongside traditional KPIs #### Community - Maintainers: Support video documentation and demo creation initiatives - Contributors: Provide video onboarding materials and walkthroughs - Ecosystem: Coordinate video content standards across related projects #### WordPress - Core: Prioritize video-friendly features and multimedia handling improvements - Community: Create video-based meetup kits and WordCamp presentation templates - Training: Develop video lesson plans and interactive learning experiences - Documentation: Add video explanations to complex technical concepts - Design: Optimize themes and interfaces for video content integration ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Video-first content strategies will outperform text-only approaches in audience growth and engagement by 2026 - Social media platforms that maintain friend-focused features will lose market share to algorithm-driven video platforms - Traditional media consumption (books, movies) will remain stable despite internet media's television convergence - Cultural attitudes toward internet media consumption will shift to mirror television viewing norms within 5 years ### 📊 Methodology - Track engagement metrics across text vs. video content formats over 12-month periods - Survey audience preferences for content consumption across different media types - Monitor social media platform usage patterns and feature adoption rates - Analyze cultural discourse around digital media consumption in mainstream publications ### ❓ Questions - How quickly will video production costs decrease enough for individual creators to compete with platform algorithms? - Will regulatory responses to television-like internet media mirror historical broadcast television regulation? - Can traditional social media features coexist with television-style content flows, or is the shift irreversible? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal studies of cognitive effects from television-style internet media consumption - Economic analysis of content creation cost curves and democratization timelines - Cross-cultural comparison of media convergence patterns in different regulatory environments ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Content creators must develop video production capabilities or risk obsolescence - Policy: Platform regulation may shift from social media frameworks to broadcast media models - Security: Video-centric platforms create new attack vectors and content moderation challenges - Education: Teaching digital literacy requires addressing television-style consumption patterns - Funding: Investment priorities should shift toward video production tools and infrastructure ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: Grade 12-14 (College level) #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Video examples, data visualization charts, platform interface screenshots - Improve: Interactive timeline of media evolution, platform comparison infographics #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Podcast format with clear audio narration and examples - Improve: Audio-only summary version highlighting key statistics and predictions #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Clear definitions of "flow," "attractor state," detailed analogies - Improve: Historical narrative structure connecting past and present media patterns #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Actionable predictions and practical implementation steps - Improve: Interactive exercises comparing platform interfaces and usage patterns #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Clear data progression, economic reasoning, systematic predictions - Improve: Decision trees for content strategy, quantified comparison matrices #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Discussion of cultural implications and community effects - Improve: Group discussion prompts about personal media consumption changes #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual reflection on media consumption patterns - Improve: Self-assessment tools for digital media usage and preferences #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Ecosystem metaphors for media landscape evolution - Improve: Environmental impact considerations of video-heavy internet infrastructure ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Clear heading hierarchy, descriptive video content summaries - Improve: Detailed alt text for data visualizations, audio descriptions for video examples #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard podcast player controls and chapter navigation - Improve: Keyboard shortcuts for section jumping, timeline scrubbing #### Contrast and readability - Present: High contrast video player interface - Improve: Customizable transcript formatting, adjustable font sizing #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: Responsive web design for various screen sizes - Improve: Zoom compatibility for detailed charts and graphs #### Media and captions - Present: Full transcript provided - Improve: Synchronized captions with speaker identification, downloadable formats #### Forms and interactions - Present: Simple playback controls with clear labels - Improve: Accessible sharing options, bookmark functionality ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: Global market statistics, international platform examples - Improve: Non-Western media convergence patterns, diverse cultural perspectives on television #### Inclusive language - Present: Gender-neutral terms, defined technical jargon - Improve: Plain language summaries for complex economic concepts #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Clear section breaks, consistent formatting structure - Improve: Content warnings for rapid video examples, processing time indicators #### Representation - Present: Diverse range of media platforms and creators mentioned - Improve: Include creators from underrepresented communities, varied socioeconomic perspectives #### Psychological safety - Present: Respectful analysis of technology impacts - Improve: Acknowledge potential anxiety around technological change ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Deductive strength: Clear logical progression from economic incentives to platform behavior - Inductive strength: Multiple data points support television convergence thesis - Causal reasoning: Well-supported connection between infrastructure development and media evolution - Analogical strength: Effective comparison between 1980s TV usage and modern internet patterns #### Fallacies - Hasty generalization: Some predictions extrapolate from limited current trends - Appeal to authority: Heavy reliance on Derek Thompson's analysis without independent verification #### Tone of voice - Overall tone: Analytical and measured, combining academic rigor with practical implications ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: No denial patterns observed - Attack: No --- # 📄 Full Transcript *Auto-generated from YouTube captions · timestamps roughly every 30 seconds · [watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0)* **[00:00]** Back in October, the journalist Derek Thompson published an intriguing essay on his Substack. It was titled Everything is Television. Now, it created a bit of a stir among those who study technology and the internet for a living. Here's Derek actually in his own words summarizing the thesis of this article. A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television. >> So, what did Derek mean by this? This is the question we're going to answer **[00:31]** today. I'm going to both unpack and expand on Thompson's arguments and then add my own conclusions, including three predictions about what I think is going to happen next. Hopefully, by the end of our discussion, you'll have a brand new way of understanding the sort of vaguely distressing but difficult to define changes that seem to have been happening in internet culture in recent years and have some ideas about what to expect and what to do to best react to the future. So, let's get into it. As always, I'm Kell Newport and this is Deep Questions. **[01:15]** Today's episode is the internet becoming television and what does this mean for you? All right. So, I want to start by really diving into the big points from Derek Thompson's articles to see if we can make sense of what he's saying here. Uh, fortunately, on a recent episode of Thompson's podcast, Plain English, which is really good and you should listen to it, especially the episodes where I've been a guest, uh, Thompson read his piece out loud. So, we can actually, uh, hear passages from his article read in **[01:48]** his own voice. All right. All right. So, I want to go back and I want to replay that that initial clip because this is where uh Thompson started his article. So, Jesse, let's hear that original clip again. A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television. >> He then goes on in the article to immediately give three examples of what he meant by that claim. All right. Example number one, the death of social media. Thompson references a brief that **[02:20]** was filed last August by uh Meta as part of the antirust trial that the FTC brought against it. In the brief that is publicly available now, Meta made what Thompson described as a startling claim, which was the fact that their social networks, namely Facebook and Instagram, really aren't that social anymore. Let me give you a couple statistics from that brief. More than 80% of time spent on Facebook, they revealed, and more than 90% of time spent on Instagram is now dedicated to watching videos, most **[02:53]** of them being videos created by people who the users do not directly know. So he's noting social media is now less about socializing and more about watching content from people you don't know like you would do on television. Over at the Financial Times, John Burn Murdoch, as you know, he does so well, has some nice data visualizations that capture this shift from social media to video. Let me put one of these graphs up here on the screen. This is for people who are um watching instead of listening. You can see it and I'll **[03:24]** describe it for everyone else. This is a graph from the Financial Times. Uh the title is time on social media peaked in 2022 with young people cutting back first. And what we see here on the the far left is average numbers of hours spent on social media per day uh seem to peak in 2022 around 2 and a half hours and it's been going down um ever since then. The biggest drop when you break it out by ages is young people. Older people are kind of stuck at that peak because I don't know I think they're still **[03:55]** updating their friendster profiles. I think the older people aren't necessarily up with it. All right. So it is true there's data to back this up. There's another uh chart I can show here from the Financial Times. This is one that Dererick had in his essay as well. This is labeled social media has become less social. Uh and what we're seeing is change and share of people reporting each reason for using social media. Um so the reasons to meet new people, to keep up with friends, and to share my opinion have drastically fallen since 2014 to 2024. While the reasons to **[04:26]** follow celebrities and to fill spare time have both increased. uh somewhat notably uh since 2014. So yeah, Derek is right about that as he supports with that type of data. Uh social media has become more about watching videos from strangers. All right. His second example he gave to back up his claim is that podcasts are moving towards video. Thompson notes that podcast used to be the radio for the internet, but now he quotes an analyst who says the consumption of video podcast is growing twice as fast as audio only. He talked **[04:59]** about his own pressure to film his own podcast which was just on audio. So it's another example of a technology that made sense as not a visual thing just becoming more visual. His third example was uh AI videos. Thompson references the rise of open AI Sora and meta vibes which are these AI tools that are organized around watching endless videos generated by artificial intelligence. As Thompson concludes, even AI wants to be television. Uh for those of you who **[05:30]** haven't seen what this sort of AI uh what this actually looks like, this AI uh video revolution, let me just put a clip up here on the screen. Uh it won't play audio, but you can just watch it. All right. These are examples of Sora videos. Uh so now we see someone having Bob Ross was painting one of his paintings on his face. Uh here is the person. This is just like a the person who generated the video is now on stage giving an Oscar acceptance speech. Here is an ASMR podcast with characters from famous European paintings from the **[06:02]** Renaissance interacting and drinking tea. Here's a another bespectled normal guy who's put themselves into the Braveheart scene. So yeah, this is um here's a cat skateboarding. There we go. This isn't exactly the future that we were promised by Star Trek, but that's what's going on. Even AI is now just producing uh video content. All right. So, that's what he that's what Thompson is arguing. That's what he means as examples of things becoming television. But what does he mean by television, **[06:34]** right? I mean, how is watching a cat skateboarding on Sora the same as like in 1997 watching an episode of American Gladiators on your TV? Well, to help make this connection clear, Thompson draws from an interesting book. It was written by Raymond Williams in 1974, which is called Television, Technology, and Cultural Form. This actually a really good book uh if you're someone who's studying the academic the academic study of technology studies. It has a really good upfront uh explanation of the difference between technological determinist **[07:05]** explorations of technology versus social construction based uh consumptions perspectives. he's much more on the social construction side. Um, anyways, Thompson draws from Williams' book to make a a couple key points. He notes that Williams says in that book, "Before TV, entertainment was discreet, like books or plays, something that had a beginning and an end, and when it was done, you could discuss that specific thing you just saw. Television, by contrast, became defined by the fact that it was continuous, and streaming and multimedia." Williams called this flow. It's not like a discrete thing. **[07:37]** It's just sort of something that flows by. Um, let me read you. I pulled some passages from Williams book here. Here's William talking about this concept. Here's Williams's words. In all developed broadcasting systems, the characteristic organization and therefore the characteristic experience is one of sequence or flow. This phenomenon of planned flow is then perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting simultaneously as technology and as a cultural form. In a later quote, he emphasizes the non-specific nature of television versus something like a book or a play as being **[08:07]** critical to its operations. I'm going to read a quote here. Yet, for all the familiarity of this model, the normal experience of broadcasting, which when we really consider it is different, and indeed this is recognized in the ways we speak of watching television, listening to radio, picking on the general rather than the specific experience. This has been true of all broadcasting, but some significant internal developments have greatly reinforced it. All right. So, Williams had this model of like the right way to think about why television is unique is that it gives you this flow of sort of non-specific multimedia **[08:38]** visual content. You you watch television more than you come to the television to engage with a particular discrete um element of of whatever you would call it entertainment or content. And that's really pretty similar to what we're seeing with like Tik Tok or these Sora videos. It's just stuff that's flowing by that's like it's on. It's interesting. you watch Tik Tok, you don't talk about going to Tik Tok to consume a very specific piece of content. All right, so let me play uh go back to Thompson here. Here's Thompson **[09:09]** summarizing the move towards this definition of television. When I say everything is turning into television, what I mean is that everything is turning into the continuous flow of episodic video. >> All right, so where does this leave us? I want to go back to Thompson here and he he's going to um elaborate his summary of this entire state of affairs. >> Whether the starting point is a student directory like Facebook radio or an AI **[09:41]** image generator, the end point seems to be the same. A river of short form video. In mathematics, the term attractor describes a state toward which a dynamic system tends to evolve. So to take a classic example, drop a marble into a bowl and it will trace several loops around the bowl's curves before settling to rest at the bottom. In the same way, water draining in a sink will ultimately form a spiral pattern around the drain. Complex systems often settle into recurring forms if you give them enough time. Television seems to be the **[10:14]** attractor of all media. >> Right? So here's Thompson's overall summary of of what he's arguing is that media in general is just inexraably heading back towards this Williams notion of television as a continuously like non-specific stream of of video content. This is some sort of attractor state for media and this is where the internet itself is pass uh heading. The past might be methane circuitous but it's something that uh attracts it in. Now I have to do a little bit I can't help myself Jesse. Um, I've a little bit **[10:46]** of of nitpicking on the use of dynamical system theory here. I've done a little bit of publishing on on dynamical systems. Uh, this is kind of the right use of the word attractor, but maybe not quite exactly accurate. So, in dynamical systems, you're often thinking of attractors would be like things like strange attractors, which comes out of uh chaos theory. A key thing about strange attractors though is in the most visible variable, they're not the the the recurrence or the the collapse onto like a steady recurrent state is not **[11:16]** visible. It's only when you create a more complex state space that includes multiple other sort of related variables that you actually find the structure going on. So it's like a structure that's hiding behind the visible chaos. Uh so this is why I think the marble moving around the toilet bowl, that's probably not a great example of like a strange attractor. That's actually like a physical system that's just what you see just like the position of that marble is very predictable because it's it's uh obeying laws of physics in a really clear way. A classic dynamical like chaotic system might be like a luren system which measures sort of um **[11:48]** fluctuations in temperature and sort of uh climate systems and they're famously if you look at the main variable that people care about which is the temperature variation itself that seems chaotic. You're like I can't predict this. It's all over the place and it's very sensitive to initial conditions. you make a little change to the initial conditions, this thing goes off somewhere else. But if you take that one variable of temperature variation, you combine it with two other carefully selected related variables and I don't know them exactly, but one is like temperature variations vertically through strata and one's about like a horizontal temperature distance and you plot that as a threedimensional point in **[12:19]** threedimensional space. Now suddenly you see a structure that's like spiraling around something and there has structure. So not to nitpick, but in dynamical systems often attractors are not visible to the naked eye. there's something that exists in the mathematical substructure that is only visible when you you uh plot points that are outside of just like the the the main information. Um I thought that was important, Jesse, that >> I thought that was great. >> Yeah, I think it's an important clarification. This is why my articles aren't as popular because I have the two-page thing about dynamical system theory. But anyways, it's a good the **[12:49]** idea is good. It's a clear idea. Media is pulled back to the state. So, it was inevitable that the internet would be pulled back to the state of the William style definition of television. This continuous non-specific flow of visual media. Um, is this a problem? Like, do we care about it? Uh, it's a natural follow-up question. Um, Thompson gets into this. Let me play a quick clip of him setting up this discussion. My beef is not with the entire medium of **[13:20]** moving images. My concern is what happens when the grammar of television suddenly conquers the entire media landscape. >> Right? So he say it's not bad that we have really interesting YouTube videos like this one or that you know maybe there's some interesting stuff happening on Tik Tok but the idea that all media is going towards this form he's worried about. He points to two particular consequences. One that we get uh worse at thinking as we quote move from a culture of literacy to a culture of orality. That's a Walter type of idea. A **[13:52]** lot of data backs that up that yeah, as we use especially short form video in particular, people have a harder time concentrating and thinking. So we do lose something as is if that's what everything becomes, we lose mental abilities that are important. His second issue is we know that classical television made people lonely as he points out. This was the at the core of Robert Putnham's famous book, sociologist from Harvard's famous book, Bowling Alone, that traditional television made people more isolated. And as we have television now being delivered through our phones, as the **[14:23]** internet becomes television, we get even more isolated. We see this in the data as well. So, it's not that v video content itself is bad, but if everything becomes short form distracting video content, Thompson's pointing out, there's real consequences of that. All right. Well, overall I think Thompson has a this a really smart idea and a smart take. Like any good article, it gets you thinking and helps explain something you didn't understand before and gives you new things to think about or argue about. I want to get into uh my reaction. So, I agree with most of this, but there's some places where I would want **[14:54]** to complicate or caveat his explanation. I also want to make some predictions. I have three predictions about what is going to happen next in the world of media based on these trends that maybe will give you some ideas about what you should do to prepare for that. Before we get to my take and predictions, however, I have to take a quick break so we can hear from some of the sponsors that make this show possible. Are you looking for a gift for your family this holiday season that they'll find meaningful? Let me tell you exactly what you should get. An Aura digital picture frame. These are picture frames **[15:25]** to which you can easily upload your photos just straight from your phone and then the frame will rotate through those images displaying them like you are changing the photos out in the frame uh on a regular basis. We bought one of these for our in-laws so they could keep up with what we were up to with our kids and they loved it. So then we bought one for my parents to do the same thing and they love it as well. So you can take it from my personal experience. This is the perfect gift. They even have a feature where you can pre-upload photos so that when you give the frame to someone and they turn it on, there's already **[15:56]** pictures in there for them to see. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it. And here's the good news. For a limited time, you can save on the perfect gift by visiting or aura.com to get $35 off Aura's bestselling Carver Matte Frames. These were named number one by Wire Cutter. Now, to get this discount, you have to use our promo code deep questions at checkout. That's auraf frames.com and use the promo code deep questions. This deal is exclusive to our **[16:26]** listeners and these frames sell out fast. So, order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. And remember to support the show by mentioning our podcast at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Let's also talk about our longtime friends at Grammarly. Grammarly is the essential AI communication assistant that boosts both the productivity and the quality of your writing. Now, I don't think people fully realize how powerful this tool has gotten. Let me tell you about a particular feature that I've been enjoying, the proofreading agent. Here's **[16:56]** a real example. I had to write an email that was going out to a large group of people. So, I typed out a quick draft. Before sending, I had the proofreading agent take a look. In addition to finding a few grammatical mistakes, uh, I found that I could go much farther, right? So, I clicked, for example, on sharpen opening point, and the Grammarly proofreading agent actually suggested ways to rewrite my opening paragraph to be less wishy-washy. Uh, it actually made the email better. I'm not the only one to find Grammarly useful. 93% of professionals report that Grammarly **[17:27]** helps them get more work done. They even have a new feature called AI chat that can help you anytime, whether you want to come up with a new idea or just help polish one you already have and are trying to explain. Grammarly helps you produce better writing faster and that is incredibly valuable. You can sign up for free and experience how Grammarly can elevate your professional writing from start to finish. Visit grammarly.com/mpodcast. That's grammarly.com/mpodcast. All right, Jesse, let's get back into **[17:58]** our deep dive. All right, let's go on with my take and my predictions here. Look, I love this article. We had original ideas that helps us make sense of a phenomenon we're all living through. Let me add on a few additional thoughts. All right, here's thought number one. Not everything became television. There's actually a lot of media that did not become television. Now, I'll explain in a moment why I think this is important, but let me justify this point first. Right? A core idea in Thompson's **[18:28]** piece is that the sort of uh television style flow of undifferiated video is an attractor state that eventually draws in all media. That was his words. But that doesn't seem quite right because of the existing legacy media types that have basically stayed the same from the time before television existed to today and are actually doing fine as industries. They don't seem to be in states of collapse. Consider for example the global book market. In 2025 that market reached 155 $151 billion. And that market's been growing steadily. So it's not showing signs of collapse. That's a **[18:59]** big market. It's it's roughly uh it's a little smaller than the combined market of Meta and Tik Tok, but it's kind of in the same ballpark. So books are still books and they uh they're doing fine. They continue to grow. Uh movies are still around as well. The total domestic box office in 2024 was $8.7 billion. So we're at a lower order of magnitude in things like books and social media, but that's um non-trivial. Uh in 1974 when Raymond Williams wrote his book television, the **[19:30]** total domestic box office was 1.14 billion. Um if you adjust that for inflation, today's dollars, it's about 7.5 billion. So you know, it's it's like we can think of the global box office since like the rise of television as we know it today. I mean the domestic box office and today it's like kind of the same or it's grown modestly and so like movies are still around now. Of course to be fair in the 90s movies got way bigger than that and have kind of shrunk back down again but they're they're not below adjusted for inflation where they where they were back when television **[20:00]** began taking its move. So these are media that exist in the same form as they did before television and they're doing more than holding their own. So it's not really the case that all media becomes television. I think the real way to state this headline would be internetbased media is becoming television. Okay, but this is still really interesting. So why is this particular type of media so uh attracted to the television form? This brings me to my my second thought. **[20:30]** To understand why the internet in particular is becoming television, we have to remember the relationship that we used to have with television. You know, a lot of people I think like the younger members of my audience um when they think of television, they're probably thinking about growing up in the brief golden age where there was appointment viewing and on like Sunday night you would you watch the Sopranos on HBO. But back in the the 70s and the 80s and the early 90s when television became this like sort of massive market, the time when Raymond Williams was writing his book television, our **[21:02]** relationship with screens was different than a lot of people actually remember. I want to load up an article here. Uh I'll put on the screen for those who are watching instead of just listening. This comes from the Christian Science Monitor was published in June of 1985. All right? And it's looking at television back in the 80s. So let me just read to you from the beginning here. The figures are staggering. In 1984, 84.9 million American households, 98% of them had television sets. They kept them in use seven hours and eight minutes a **[21:34]** day, making television watching far and away the most popular leisure time activity ever. Even if those households had only one person watching for those 7 plus hours, which is a very conservative estimate, the American public would have invested 217 billion hours before it sets last year. That's more than double the number of hours spent by the American armed forces fighting in World War II for a full year. All right. So, this is what television was in the 80s, in the 90s, and the 70s. **[22:05]** It was just on all the time. Everyone on television on average that television was on in your household over 7 hours a day. I think we forget how staggering those numbers are. Now, here's what's interesting. If you dig deeper, so this article is really cool because what it does is they say, "Where did that number come from? How do we know that the average American household has a TV on 7.8 hours away a day? It actually came from the Neielson company using a tool called an audometer. So, it was actually like a tool with a **[22:36]** microphone that they would put in a random sampling of houses so it could listen to hear if the television was on or not because people lie when you ask them to write it down. And the audiometers were the ones that were measuring this average of 7.8 hours a day a television at least one television was on in these houses. Now, they make a key point in this article. That doesn't mean that for 7 hours and 8 minutes a day there was someone sitting in front of that television watching intently. The audometer doesn't know who's there or not, just whether or not the television is on. And what they're capturing is a a a truth we forget about how television was used. You would put **[23:08]** it on in the background in your house while you did other things. And sometimes you'd be sitting there watching a show all the way through if it was one of your favorites, but also you would just have it on if you were doing other things like housework. and uh during like boring moments, you would just kind of hey, what's going on over here? Or if like Oprah had on a particularly good guest, you might stop for a little bit to watch that interview. So, if you think about it, the way we were using television in the 1980s was exactly the way we use something like Tik Tok today. It was a tool we used to banish or eliminate any moments **[23:40]** of downtime or boredom, at least in the household context. So, I could just have it on and when I didn't have something interesting in front of me that I was dealing with, like I was on the phone or like trying to figure out something difficult, I could just immediately turn my attention to whatever it was showing because it was in that flow that Williams talked about. It's just you just had it on. You weren't watching a particular show. It was just there to fill in the moments that turned out to be um that's a very lucrative business model. I went and **[24:11]** tried to look up these numbers. The global television video market today, remember uh books 150 billion, Meta plus Tik Tok is a little shy of 200 billion. The global television video market is over $730 billion in 2025. This is a massive highly lucrative market, right? So what I think happened, here's my argument, is that as the internet infrastructure grew out in the 90s to include uh broadband **[24:41]** and then the smartphone infrastructure built out in the late 2000s, early 2010s, this made possible the creation of an upgraded version of exactly what people were doing in television with the 1980s and '90s. It made upgraded television possible. upgraded in three ways. It was now more portable, so you had access to it not just in your house, but wherever you went because it was on a smartphone. Upgraded because it had algorithmic curation. So now its ability to satisfy **[25:13]** your your distraction needs was better because before you would just go through a few channels and now of course we have algorithmically curated content. So it's just like a it's a more pure distraction um environment. Um and because the ads are now targeted much better than you could get on a broadcast medium like television. So they've become, you know, much more lucrative. So I think what happens is we had this massive market that was built on, it was the Tik Tok of the 1980s. this massive market that was built on you don't have to be alone with your own thoughts or bored just there'll be something to kind **[25:43]** of take the edge off of the onwei of just like I'm here sweeping and it's kind of boring and it was this massive market and once we built this infrastructure for other purposes right that we built the internet infrastructure thinking about the web and expression and connection and being able to get information from anyone around the world uh all just like distributed you know that was our vision for building that infrastructure we built smartphones because uh Steve Jobs said we shouldn't have to carry a separate iPod and a separate Razer Motorola Razer phone. Let's put them in **[26:15]** the same device so that you can make your calls and listen to music on the same device. Right? That was the point of smartphones. But these two things came along and other entrepreneurs were like well the money's in TV let's do that. So in this particular technology it was possible to build upgraded television and when you see the size of the television market and how dominant that was of course you're going to pursue that that has become the biggest economic engine the biggest economic activity opportunity in the internet age has been building a better version of **[26:48]** television. So let me refine my take you know even further here I would say the existing this is my headline set of everything is becoming television the existing television industry is so large and lucrative that it's not surprising that when a new technology came along that enabled the creation of an upgraded television experience a lot of investment energy went towards these goals so to me this is not a tale of technological determinism which is a tale of like all technology is going to come back to this form but instead a tale of economic determinism there is a lucrative market over here and this **[27:19]** particular particular technology made it possible to compete. So of course people would use it to compete. So it's not an argument about all media is going to become television so much as it is the internet plus smartphone infrastructure revolutions have been co-opted by media entrepreneurs that said now we can take a run at competing with television. So it's sort of specific to these particular technologies. Um those are just the details. Thompson's big point still stands which is a lot of internet based media is converging towards this other model. That's kind of the **[27:49]** interesting observation regardless of why that's happening. So our question is what is that going to do to us in the future? So what I want to end with here is three predictions for the future of internetbased media as it continues this convergence towards a television model. All right. Prediction number one. If you participate in internet-based media, then you have to be aware of this shift because it's going to be consequential. Major podcasts are going to have to have video to be a serious player. I think **[28:19]** even other types of internet media that we don't think about as being multimedia at all, like newsletters are going to eventually need to have some sort of video content if they want to be a part of the full like entertainment entertainment ecosystem. To be a little bit more specific, here's a couple things. Um, here's something I think you're going to see. The move of podcast on the streaming video services is going to be uh a big thing in 2026. This is already starting to happen. The Ringer just did a deal, I believe, with Netflix where they're going to have more of their podcast show up on there. We're going to see a lot more of this. The economics just make sense. **[28:52]** Podcasts have loyal audiences. And if you can just raise the production values a little bit, which is not that big of an investment. I mean, this is we're talking tens of thousands of dollars per episode, which is nothing if you are producing television for something like Netflix. They have loyal audiences and they produce a lot of content. So, if I'm a big fan of a, you know, you're a big fan of my show and it's on twice a week on Netflix with good production values, not that the HQ is not good production, but even better production values than the HQ and and you're you're going back and forth between YouTube and **[29:23]** other sorts of things in your TV anyways. Like, that might be a reason that you stay subscribed to Netflix. That's incredibly valuable to them. and it's much cheaper to build like an upgraded version of the HQ and to, you know, pay me some whatever fee. That's still going to be much cheaper than doing eight episodes of Nobody Wants This, which is only going to give you eight episodes of content and, you know, you're going to have to spend $20 million in that or $10 million. I don't know what it cost, but you know, cost a **[29:54]** lot of money to get Kristen Bell. She doesn't get out of bed for less than $4 million in a cut of the merchandising. That's what I hear. That's same with Jesse. He makes those same demands. Yeah. Every day he comes in and said, "I'm not going to get out of bed for less than $4 million in a cut of merchandising." Um, so that's my prediction. You know, note I I made this prediction not to pat myself on the back, but back in 2020, Jesse, you'll remember this when you first started working for me. I insisted on video for the podcast. I said, I can't tell you exactly why. It's not like I have a plan for in 2021, like why our YouTube channel is going to be important. I just **[30:25]** said video is going to be the future of internet media because of the the power of we've seen that video has over people and the way that television just ate the launch of radio and didn't even look back. Video is going to be so I made that prediction. That's why we've been on YouTube uh since the beginning is like we just I was like we have to be conversant in that that idiom. All right. Prediction number two. I think this convergence of internet media towards television is bad news for the existing social media giants. Now, this is an argument that I made in that 2022 article in the New Yorker that I talk about all the time, Tik Tok and the fall **[30:57]** of social media giants. I reference it all the time because I think it's like the most important article I' I've written that no one's read, but it actually like was getting at some really core idea. So, I keep coming back at it to push. The big point there is that the competitive advantage that the social media giants had that the the Facebooks and the metas and the Twitters of the world had was their social graphs. the fact that people painstakingly as first adopters put in the effort to click on people they wanted to follow or they knew. And as long as those services were built around using those social graphs **[31:28]** to produce interesting content, they had a moat that other competitors couldn't cross. Once the early Facebook excitement was gone, the early Twitter excitement was gone, no one was going to bother to like go through all that work of following people and building their friends on another platform. When internet media moves towards television, you got to throw out those social graphs. is not really that relevant anymore. And this is exactly what we see Instagram doing. It's exactly what we see, you know, Twitter trying to move towards. They want to be like Tik Tok. U what was the numbers we had before? It was something like only **[31:59]** 7% of time spent on Instagram is looking at content produced by a friend or keeping up with a friend. Everything else is just watching videos created by other people. Yes, that moves you more toward television, which is very lucrative. But now you're a a a television network without a competitive advantage that other people can't replicate. You're competing now with all other sources of short form video content. All the podcasts that are producing short-term video content, all the streamers like actual television that are putting hundreds of millions in the short form video content. Upstarts **[32:31]** like Tik Tok was an upstart because they didn't need a social graph. They had a pure experience and a better algorithm. Uh we have Sora now. We have Meta Vibes is trying to compete with Sora. Like it is a incredibly competitive world. It's a world where you don't have competitive advantages anymore when you move away from your social graph, but you have to in the television world. So, uh, legacy giant monopoly social platforms that their their time is cooked in a world where the internet media moves more towards television. It's going to be a much more aggressive sort of competitive landscape with winners and losers **[33:02]** shifting much more tumultuously. Uh, third prediction is I think there's a silver lining here for us as individuals. I believe that abstension from a lot of this becomes a lot easier as the internet-based media moves towards television. Why? Because this is what happened with television. Like we know what television is and it became very culturally normal. But yeah, it's maybe on average people have your TV on **[33:33]** 7 hours a day, but like if you were talking to, you know, Noom Chsky, he'd be like, "Yeah, I don't watch a lot of TV." like, "Yeah, of course you don't." Like, that's that's you you have other things you're doing that are more like intellectually demanding and you read more books or whatever. Um, it was very normal to be like, I don't watch a lot of TV. No one questioned it. And in fact, by the generation of like our kids, things had shifted and parents think a lot about screen time and like, I don't want you to watch too much TV. Like, that's not good for you. We be **[34:04]** we're very used to this idea that like it's not that TV is poison, but like you probably don't want to do a ton of it and it's completely normative to be like I self-defined by not watching a lot of TV. For a while, internet-based media had grabbed this sort of cultural high ground where they would basically argue um this is necessary to function in civic society. That somehow these services, these social media services, what you were doing on your phone was just part of being an informed citizen. It's how politicians were elected and news was spread. It's the new digital town square. It's where people are being **[34:35]** expressed where people could find other groups which where activism happened. There's this moment where it was like you have to use all these services, right? Uh or it's somehow weird or disengaged or eccentric not to. But as the internet based media moves more towards TV, it'll be so much easier not to use it or use less of it. No one is like, "What do you mean you don't listen to Bravo?" Like, no one would say that in 1996. Like, you don't watch Real Housewives. What's wrong with you? No one would say that. Whereas today, they're like, "Oh, you don't use TikTok. It still seems a little bit weird. I think that will change once things are TV. We know how to deal with TV. We know **[35:06]** it is not vital and we're completely uh okay with the idea of not being big TV watchers. So for people who listen and watch this show, this is good news. It's going to make it easier for you to live a deeper life because what you're moving away from is going to be more clearly coded as uh just distraction. It's it's uh Mory Povich. It's I'm trying to remember all those shows, the fight shows, the talk shows. Yeah, >> Jerry Springer. >> Yeah, >> my Povich is a deep dive. Jerry Springer, Phil Donahghue, you're like, yeah, it's it's light and actually good **[35:38]** for you for not watching it. >> All right, so there we go. Jesse, uh, no separate takeaways this week because I think my whole thing was a takeaway, but >> yeah. >> Um, that's it. I think it was a cool article and that's how I would but that's how I would uh evolve it. >> Do you watch any podcasts personally on video? >> Um, no. I'm trying to think about Neither do I. Yeah. Uh, but I don't >> I would never consider I mean I know it's important but personally I would never do it. >> I I mean I'm just thinking it through. Um I've seen clips like clips of **[36:10]** podcast. I'll watch the video if it's like an interesting clip. I'll I'll watch the video. >> Like you put it on when you're working out or something or you >> Well, no. More if like I'm researching something or like I'm at my computer and I'm you know writing about whatever. Like if there was an interview um like a clip from a podcast interview about the thing I'm researching, I would prefer to watch it than like if I had the choice, I'd prefer to watch it than listen. >> Mhm. >> I don't watch a lot of TV in general, but I think part of the thing that's happening is that people that like actually, which a lot of people do, spend more time in like front of a TV like normal people. Uh more of what **[36:42]** they're doing is like they're loading up the YouTube app >> and watching like I'm I'm going to watch a podcast episode instead of like a show on Netflix. Y >> so I think that's one way one way that's being consumed. I do think the video podcast numbers are somewhat inflated because of generationally Gen Z will often use YouTube as their podcast player. So in theory in their pocket the video is playing just like it does on Spotify, but they're not watching it like they're they're they're listening while they do other things. >> Um but I it is I mean I've looked at our numbers the watched on TV numbers is **[37:13]** growing >> because they can tell what device the podcast is download. >> Mhm. It's not as high as I've seen for other people I've talked to, but like we're on our way up. It's like number three. It's like computer phones and TV and TV is like in the mix. >> So, I think I don't, but I don't watch main the main things I watch is movies to be honest. >> Yep. >> Yeah. Who's got new TV actually? >> A lot of people did Black Friday last week. >> Yeah. Well, ours got broken. And by got broken, I mean one of my son's friends broke it, but it was an excuse to get **[37:43]** the latest OLED technology. And plus the new TVs aren't that that expensive, right? >> Yeah. I mean, >> unless you go >> if you want like a really good movie. If you start to care about film make if you use the the term uh filmmaker cont uh intent and are looking at the color correction options, it starts to get more not crazy, but >> expensive, >> more 2x than it needs to be. I would say it's probably 2x than what but it's worth it. We got a nice Blu-ray player, so I can really get the highest, you know, good **[38:14]** HDR10. Perfect contrast, color resolution, like just what the filmmaker wanted. Happy about that. All right, so anyways, let's uh move on to some questions. Sounds good. All right, who we got first? First question is from JS. As a software engineer, I have a web browser open constantly. This distracts me a lot. I started using claude.app instead of my browser. This has basically eliminated my distractions. What do you think about this? All right. So, I have a specific answer for you and then a larger, more **[38:45]** general answer for people thinking about their work in general. Uh, my specific answer is, look, I think that's great, right? Uh, if you had your browser open, because I'm assuming you had it open because you were looking up, just to give some context for non-computer developers to look up things that were relevant to the coding you were doing. This used to be the standard rhythm of doing computer coding, >> is that you would often have a site like Stack Overflow open, right? and you would search for um what's the function call here or how do I do this and and so now you had a browser open you could **[39:16]** look at other things if you're using cloud.app app, you could do things like uh tab complete, etc. where it will give you these answers like directly in the thing where you're writing the code. You don't have to go over to a web browser and look things up. Ironically, it was language models tuned in part on these humor interactions. It kind of just sucked it all in and replicating it to some degree. So, I think that's good. If you start using code agents, you're going to have a separate problem. So not to just to like quickly differentiate this, there's kind of two ways that AI **[39:47]** is intersecting development. One is what I think of as like the autocomplete tab complete type of tools, which is where you're writing computer code and you can say like, hey, finish this function for me or can you fill in this function header and it you like press tab and it like does it for you. Um, behind the scenes that's all implemented by a single call to a language model. So the thing you're typing in like makes a prompt to a language model. Hey, here's the existing code. Can you finish this like with a function that does whatever? Language models are good at that. You get the answer back and then the the **[40:19]** editing environment puts that right in there. Right? Agents on the other hand, coding agents are going to do many steps on your behalf. So, this is where you say like uh I need to build like this sort of prototype a simple application to do something internally is going to be useful. And you're gonna actually have a program that goes in a loop and it's going to ask the language model like okay give me a plan like a multi-step plan for doing this and then the program takes that plan and it's like great we're now going to do step one and so then it'll tell the language model okay here's the first step we want to do uh give me the maybe it's produce **[40:50]** code for whatever give me the code for doing that language model sends it back and then it and you go in this loop where you continually prompt the language model step by step what do you want to do next what do you want to do next until it thinks it's done so so coding agents allow you to sort of uh have AI I automate longer, more complicated steps than you can get with just asking it one time to do something. I've heard from a lot of developers who use those for producing prototypes or more complicated code is that there's downtime. It takes a while. There's a lot of back and forth with the language model and you know, language models aren't fast in returning their their **[41:21]** answers and so they have downtime in while they're waiting for their agents to finish things. So, you need a good deep distraction for those down times if you use a coding agent. uh something that's not going to be emotionally arousing and something whose context is very different than your work. That's usually my advice about deep distractions. Don't look at your email is that context is very similar to the work you're doing. That's going to confuse your brain. MLB trade rumors is probably fine because it's like a completely different context. It's not going to have as much uh interference, right? But here's the bigger point, and this this applies to everybody. **[41:52]** Why were you so distracted by having your web browser open? like why why not just be say I don't look at other things on my web browser when I'm working on this and the reason is because you're not time blocking. So the the the bigger point I want to make here is if you're time blocking so you're like this is what I'm working on and these are the minutes I'm working on it during like from 1 to 2:30 I'm working on code. When you time block, when you have a particular uh you know what you're doing and for how long, it's **[42:24]** much easier to say, here is my rule about time blocks. If it's like a deep work time block, I don't look at other things other than the work I'm doing. The only commitment you have to make now is do I follow my time block rule, my single rule? And so if you go off and you go to email or go to YouTube or something like that, it's very clear you're violating the rule. then you have to kind of live with that mentally like I guess I'm not able to to uh you know obey my own simple rules. If you don't time block like let me just kind of like work on stuff. The problem is that it's **[42:57]** very reasonable that at some points you need to take breaks. At some points you need to check email. At some point it makes sense you might want to go look at some YouTube. You can't just work like a robot all day long. But if you don't have a structure for your time you have to figure out when those breaks or context switch happens on the fly. And now your brain is going to have a continuous argument with yourself. What about now? What about now? What about now? What about now? Like any minute is a possible minute you could be taking a break. And that's not that unreasonable. And so now you're going to lose that argument like every six or seven minutes. And you get a much more distracted flow because there's no **[43:28]** simple rule you're violating. Your brain's like we're going to take a break. We have to check our email at some point and we checked it now. Like what did we do that was wrong? But if you time block, you say, no, I have an email checking block at 2:30 and I'm in a deep work block and I don't check email during deep work block. It is clear as day if you go and check your email anyways that you're violating a rule that you set up to make your own working experience better. So if you have that problem or generally whether you're a computer programmer or not, time block. That's one of the the hidden advantages of time blocking is it makes it much easier to stay on task. All **[43:58]** right, who do we got next? Next up is Bert. I work as an automation engineer at a major technology company. I split my time between hands-on mechanical work and debugging code. In my world, something like a single broken bolt could add hours to a task and urgent breakdowns regularly interrupt any planned time block scheduled work. How do I adjust? >> Well, first of all, I want to make clear that in your position as you describe it, this idea of like you you deal with unpredictable but urgent interruptions and then then do your best to get other **[44:29]** stuff done in between, that's your job. Like that's what they expect you to do. It's not as it feels like for a lot of knowledge workers that their job is X, but this other thing which is like really not that important keeps coming in and interrupting them from doing their job. And that's really frustrating because you're like, I'm measured on producing X, but you keep throwing like Zoom invites at me for nonsense and I can't do X, but you're never going to know it's your fault. You know, you're just like, why aren't you doing more X? Where your job is like, no, this is like Bert's job handle physical breakdowns **[45:01]** and there's these other things he works on as he can. So like there's there's nothing to be frustrated about here. This is like what you signed up for. So your goal is not to eliminate the disruptions because that's part of your job. Your goal is not to resent the interruptions because it's part of your job. It is to do the best you can with the time you happen to have in between interruptions, which some days could be very little and some weeks could be like a ton. And the key there is intention. All right, I build a time block plan at the beginning of the day so I have intention for my time that I can control. Then a bolt breaks and I have **[45:32]** to go spend three hours fixing it. When I'm done, I come back and say, "What's the best plan I can make for the time that remains?" It'll look very different than your initial plan, but you have intention for what you're going to do with the time that remains in the day. That's the name of the game here. Intention, not completion. Your goal is not to create a plan you're able to stick with. It's that you keep coming back to saying, "What can I do with the time I have that's going to be most useful?" Now, if you multiply that over many weeks and many months, what you get is someone who's handling the urgent **[46:03]** stuff and is doing as well as anyone could possibly do, making the most of the time that they have outside of it. So, you want to return to intention, but don't have any qualms about I have to fix my time block schedule three times a day because I'm constantly being interrupted by this other part of my job. The only exception would be if your bosses expect you to be doing more with that other time than is possible. Like, you're being very intentional. like why didn't you do these other optional projects? Well, now you have a record. Like, oh, I time block. I keep track of my time. Let me show you what's going on **[46:34]** here. On average, I'm getting like two interruptions on the scale of like 3 to four hours per day, which is leaving about like this many hours that is uh fractured between a few different um stretches. I'm very organized with my time. I I time block my time after every interruption. This is about how much progress I'm able I'm able to put about like 10 hours per week on one of these projects. these projects really take about 30. This is like a three-we project. Like, oh, okay. Well, you have the receipts. We get it. We get what you're saying. So, if that's the case, bring the receipts. But probably people **[47:05]** are just you're if you're doing this, you're time blocking the time you have left. You're doing much better than everyone else there who's in a similar automation engineering position. And they're probably already very impressed. So again, your your goal is to keep having intention. How do I make the most out of my time? Not to satisfy some sort of plan that you created earlier when you had a different understanding of what your day was going to be. All right. Uh, let's do another question here. >> Next up is Scott. How should I develop and manage my lists of what to read, listen, and watch? I get overwhelmed and don't have a good system for execution **[47:36]** and review. >> I mean, you really should only be reading my books and articles and watching this podcast. Let's be honest. And I I don't want to be hyperbolic, but if you don't, if you watch and read other things, there's like a 14 to 15% increased chance you die this month. It's my new marketing technique. Just threaten people with death if they don't watch our podcast. Uh, I'll tell you what, Scott, those type of lists stress me out. Some people love them. They stress me out. The way I see it is like, look, do I always have something **[48:07]** interesting to read? Yes. Do I have no shortage of like interesting things to watch when the time comes around? Yes. Do I have no shortage of podcasts to listen to when I have downtime? Yes. Then I'm happy because the problem is I make list of all this stuff, then I feel lost for not doing the stuff on my list. that I haven't gotten to. But the list are technically speaking could be unending. I mean, there's no shortage of books you could be reading. There's no shortage of like visual content you could be watching. So, why create loss, right? I **[48:37]** I'm just like, what am I excited about? Let me do that now. I I with my books, I definitely do this. It's like, what am I in the mood for right now as I get to this new book or movies? Like, okay, I have some time. Like, what am I excited about now? Because as long as I'm filling those things with stuff I'm happy with and is interesting, I don't want to feel bad about missing out on stuff on a list. So, if it stresses you out, Scott, just get rid of the list, you know? Or you can write down ideas, but don't stress about like crossing them all off. It's just like having as long as you're not just sitting there like, if I had I don't know what to do. If only I had a list, but I don't, so **[49:08]** now I'm just going to sit here and stare at the wall. Like, if you're not in that situation, I would just not sweat it. All right, we have some more good questions coming up. We also have a case study. We're going to talk, someone's going to talk about their experience with a deep life pitfall. We're going to learn a lesson from that. Um, we also have, speaking of books and list, I will talk about the five books I read last month because our first podcast of December. But first, we need to take another quick break to hear from our sponsors. Right, Jesse? We have to talk about Cozy **[49:39]** Earth. As listeners know, I'm a huge fan of their bamboo sheets. I absolutely love them. We own three sets, but I also recently got a pair of their bamboo pajamas. And I've really been enjoying these as well. Um, especially as the holidays are upon us and it's like officially pajama season and our household is kind of it's cold, the fire's going, it's thriller December, so we all want to sit in the living room and read. Uh, so I'm loving my bamboo PJs. They have a soft stretch knit that's really a gamecher. Not only are they super comfortable, but if you sleep warm, these are going to feel a few **[50:09]** degrees colder than cotton when you're in bed. So, it's like a more comfortable sleep experience. They also have a 100 night sleep trial. So, if you try out their sheets and you don't love them, you can return them hassle-free, but trust me, you won't. They're awesome. They also have a 10-year warranty because once you feel this level of comfort, you'll want it to last a decade. So, why don't you give the gift of everyday luxury this holiday season? Head to cozyearth.com and use my code deep for up to 40% off. Just be sure to place your order by December 12th to get **[50:42]** guaranteed Christmas delivery. All right, so order by December 12th to get that guaranteed Christmas delivery. Now, if you're listening to this episode after the 12th, don't worry. My code deep will still work year round to give you 20% off. And if you get a post-purchase survey, be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Hearth right here. Give the gift of comfort that lasts beyond the holidays and carries into a cozy new year. Head over to cozyearth.com. All right. I also want to talk about our friends at Indeed. Here's something I've **[51:12]** learned as we've grown this plucky little media company over here. Hiring is hard. Finding the right people with the right skills is like trying to find a needle in the haystack if that needle also had to be good at Adobe Premiere. Indeed makes this all easier. Here's why it's useful. You can give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed sponsored jobs feature. This will help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. The sponsored jobs will also boost your post for quality candidates so you can reach **[51:43]** the exact people you want faster. This works. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non-sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates. This is why more than 1.6 6 million companies that uh sponsor their jobs with Indeed. You need to hire. Indeed really is all you need. So spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get less stress, less time, more results now when you use Indeed sponsored jobs. Here's the good **[52:16]** news. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves if you go to indeed.com/deep. Just go to indeed.com/deep right now and support our show by saying you heard about it on this podcast. That's indeed.comdeep. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Do it the right way with Indeed. All right, Jesse, let's get back to some questions. **[52:46]** Next question is from Butterscat. As I become more aware of the attention economy and more intentional with how I spend my time, it's hard to see family and friends scrolling on TikTok as their main hobby and not feel judgment towards them. It's especially hard during the holiday season when I spend lots of time with them. What should I do? Uh, usually my recommendation and do this as many times as you can is when you see that like a young relative or something is on their phone kind of stuck in Tik Tok. Uh, come up quietly, knock the phone out of their hand, yell deep work, and then **[53:20]** sprint out of the room and just do that again. And, you know, it'll it'll be like kind of like a fun thing you'll build up for. It's a lot of like knocking the phone out of people's hands, yelling deep work, and running out of the room. That's what I do. Um, I'm not invited to a lot of parties anymore, but that's what I do. No, look, it is hard because you care about these people and you're like this is not great. Like I have this feeling when I see like my students or whatever or friends of my son just like looking into this phone all the time like this is just not great for you. Like you're missing out on the world. Like this is just abusing your brain. It's like I **[53:50]** don't know like you see a baby smoking a cigarette. It's funny. Don't get me wrong. I've given my share of babies cigarettes for the fun, but you know like long term this is probably not good for you. That's the way I feel about it. However, uh like with substance abuse or whatever, you can't force someone to change and lecturing them is not going to work. Demonstrate life without it so they see it going on and you have gratitude for all that you are able to enjoy because you're not on your phone all the time. And then in like a another occasion, so not in response to seeing **[54:22]** them using their phone, you can mention like one of my books or send them one of my podcast episodes, you kind of get them exposed to the world of deep living in a distracted world, but not as a luxury sort of heranging like, hey, you're on your phone right now, you know, listen to Cal Newport. Like that doesn't work well, but you can bring it up with them later. But again, it's hard to make people change. So be the change you want to see in the world. All right, who else have we got? Next up is Josh. Have you come across anything saying that endless scrolling makes people less motivated to be physically active as **[54:52]** well as adversely affecting their attention span? >> Yeah, there's data for both. We've talked about both on the show, mainly the attention span one. There's some good John Mur Murdoch data in the Financial Times. We we did some uh podcast about this earlier in the fall where as we get to the smartphone era, you see trouble with concentrating, trouble with attention just goes up. There's some new research out in September, a big meta study looking at short form video in particular like you get on Tik Tok or Instagram reels, and they found a definite impact on attention. So, your attention goes down **[55:23]** the more that you use these this uh those particular types of content. So, we know that's out there. John Height talks about the connection between more phone usage and spending more time indoors. So, we spend less time outdoors as we spend more time on our phone. Scott Galloway in his new book, Notes on Being a Man, talks about this idea that the phone offers for like digital simulations of other types of stuff we would normally do, including stuff outside. That's often where you get things like peace and challenge. It's relaxing, but also I'm building something, I'm racing, I'm running, I'm working on, you know, a project or **[55:53]** whatever. Um, men will just simulate this by like I got to the next level in my video game. So definitely there's a connection between the screens being more attractive keeping us away from activities like being outside. So that's one of many reasons why a life spent increasingly on screens really isn't a good one. All right, we also have a case study this week. This is where people write in to talk about their own personal experience wrappling with the type of ideas and advice we discuss on this show. Um it's also our excuse to play the case study theme music. **[56:34]** Now, Jesse, I think I cut the name off of this case study. You remember who who this was? >> Um, let me check. It was Jeff. >> Jeff. All right. So, Jeff wrote in uh to talk about his struggles with trying to create a deep life. All right. Here we go. Jeff says, "Five years ago, I sold part of my company when I was just 27 and effectively achieved financial freedom. However, unsure what to do with my life, I kept a vaguely I kept vaguely striving for more. And by doing so, I fell into one of the pitfalls that Cal talks about. After a year-long break, I **[57:05]** knew I wanted to do something ambitious. Applying the grand goal strategy, I pondered working in biotech or producing movies and eventually got a prestigious job in finance. I just wanted something big and was convinced an impressive enough job would make my life all around better. Over the following year, it became clear that this wasn't the case. While the role was prestigious, I didn't care for the work. During this time, the company I still own spun off a brand new uh a new brand in the rock climbing industry. I was a passionate rock climber, so I thought that's what my real calling was and I should walk away **[57:37]** from prestige prestige and instead work on something I was passionate about. The first months were exhilarating, but then reality quickly set in and my day-to-day life consisted of the same company related admin I had successfully gotten out of years prior. I then stepped out of the that business last year and took the question what to do with my life seriously. I was able to focus on what my daytoday should look like. First, I got disciplined and organized. I was able to tackle a bunch of home admin stuff that was bothering me. Now, I'm studying philosophy and literature basically full-time, sitting in cafes, **[58:07]** reading or attending lectures, and meeting with my study groups. I host short story dinners. I run every morning and play tennis several times a week. I'm spending more quality time with my kids. I only check my email on Wednesdays and Fridays. I leave my phone in the car after 5:00 p.m. and I'm only reachable via backup phone. I've also reduced my total travel time. Overall, I'm calm and without haste most of the time. All right, this is a great example of lifestylecentric planning. So, what we see in Jeff is actually two different philosophies. He ends up with lifestylecentric planning, but he begins with what he called the grand goal **[58:37]** strategy. Um, in my new book, I think of this sometimes as the phase shift model, the deep life. This idea of like one big radical change will make your life all the way better. Oh, I'm now in a very prestigious job that will fix everything. And we often think the radicalness of the change correlates to the radicalness of the improvement it will give. The problem is your life is built up of many different parts. And what matters to how you feel is your daily subjective experience with these different parts of your life. So making a single radical change or producing it **[59:10]** or chasing a single radical goal, it might take one area of your life and like make it better or maybe temporarily make it better, but it might make a lot of other areas of your life worse. Like we see this classically with like very prestigious jobs. This idea of like I have respect uh for what I do or what I do has like big financial impact that goes up and that's good but it might step on every other part of your life. your time with your kids, your your physical health, you know, your ability to like enjoy the world, other types of interest you have. All of those are made worse and so you add these things up. **[59:41]** Negative, negative, negative, negative. This one positive and and you end up net negative. So like the single change fixing everything doesn't really make sense. Lifestyle center planning says, why don't I just actually survey my entire life and say, what do I want my daily experience to be like? So think about all these different buckets. What types of things do I want on a regular basis? Great. How do I engineer my life to have those things? And that's what Jeff ended up doing finally. The details don't matter. What matters is he was thinking about I want to be intellectually engaged. I want to spend time with my kids. I want to be on top **[60:11]** of things. I I want to, you know, exercise. He like has this vision for a life and he's like, oh, I could make that happen because of my current financial resources or this or that. And that is making him much happier than pursuing like a single thing that was very prestigious. So lifestyle planning can lead you to all sorts of different places. There is no template for what a deep life looks like, but there is a template for how to get there, which is imagining the reality of your daily lifestyle across many different areas of your life and engineering towards what you want that daily lifestyle to be like. Making progress in the book, by **[60:43]** the way, Jesse, I'm at I'm in the most epic chapter of the book, which is you've figured out what resonates, what doesn't resonate. You've translated this into an ideal lifestyle vision. You've formatted, you know what your plan, how to format your plan, like what it should cons the different elements your plan for moving close to that vision should should include. You figured out how to connect your plan into your life. Like, okay, how am I going to keep checking in with this plan and making sure I execute it? Now, you got to fill in the details of what that plan is. and I'm in the **[61:14]** middle of this like epic 15,000word chapter where it's just idea after idea based on all sorts of different stories and examples and science about different tools and techniques or building plans that work for moving closer to your ideal vision. So it's like where all it's like where all the fun stuff happens. >> So like whereas your last book there was three rules per se this one there's >> it's linear. The book is linear. It's like do this now we're going to do this now we're going to do this and now we're **[61:45]** going to do this and then at the end like okay and here's a couple things now not some complications but really it's like okay um let me explain to you why lifestyle strength plan is better than phase shift model. How do you figure out what you care about? Great. That's what we're doing in this chapter. We're going to get these journals. We're going to walk around. We're going to keep these notes. We're going to process them. All right. How do we translate that into a vision of your lifestyle? Because again we want to we want to work towards a vision of your complete lifestyle. not just pursue a single goal. Well, let's get into it. That's what we're doing next. Here's how you format it. Here's how you do it. Here's a bunch of **[62:16]** examples. Here's a bunch of like listers sent theirs in. Okay. Now, you're you have the you filled your notebook. Now, you have the plan. I mean, not the plan, the vision. All right. Well, how do we now move closer to that vision? Well, first, let's work through just like how we format the plan. Here's what's going to be in it. Uh here's literally where you write it. It's going to be written right under your vision. How do we connect this to your life? Okay. where you're going to start doing these sort of daily metric tracking grids and these weekly check-ins to to put stuff onto your calendar. Great. Now, how do we figure out what actually goes in here? Ah, huge chapter of like now we're lots **[62:47]** of ideas for how to actually fill that stuff in there. Um, all right. How do we now like execute this and not get overwhelmed? Okay, let's break it down. Let's go area by area. So, it's really like moving through linearly. Uh, do this, do this, do this, do that. Um, and then a few things at the end where it's like this might not apply to everyone or like a lot of the what we would have thought of is like the lower layers of the deep life stack I have coming towards the end of like but what if after all now you have the step by step what if you don't feel at all capable like I can't do anything that's like I'm **[63:17]** my life's a mess I'm not disciplined like I'm not I'm never going to be able to execute these steps all right let's do a crash course becoming more capable like that's sort of at the end now >> um like like let's just get the idea like what is lifestyle planning How does it work? Let's walk you through it. And now you're fired up. That's the right time, I realize, to be like, "Oh, and if you're feeling like your life's a mess, but you really want to do this." All right, now we'll talk about, you know, becoming more capable, getting your disciplined up, managing your time, stuff like that. >> Have you contemplated writing a book on AI ever? >> Yeah, I have an idea for my next book that would like be in reaction to AI. It **[63:50]** wouldn't be a like this is just about AI or a theory of AI, but it would be in reaction to AI. Mhm. >> Yeah, I got that idea. I actually uh I can't give any details details about anything, but there's a potentially major article I'm writing in the new year that would um for a big publication that would uh kind of introduce a lot of those ideas I want to tackle in my in that next book. So, we'll see how that goes. Always something, Jesse. Always writing. All right. Do we have a call this week? >> We do. >> All right. Let's hear this. >> Hey, Kyle. My name is Jennifer. I'm **[64:22]** probably one of your younger longtime listeners and readers. I graduated college last spring and this fall I moved across the country to DC to start grad school. Go NATS. My grad program is very demanding and I find myself engaged in a lot more deep work or focus time than I did in undergrad. Because of this, I decided to ditch Instagram, which was my only form of social media. I have been much more time efficient and focused since removing it from my life. This brings me to my question. Since my **[64:53]** friends are still very active on Instagram and post pictures wherever we go, I often wind up in photos, but now I don't have a way to see, comment on, or moderate the photos of me that are shared online. I'm wondering if you have any advice on how to deal with this. Thanks a bunch. >> Well, welcome to DC. Um, hopefully you're joining NAT fandom on an upswing. We could do a a whole episode on the youth movement over at the NATS, but we won't for now. Um, a couple points. Good for you for leaving Instagram as a grad **[65:25]** student, right? Your job is to use your brain. That gets in the way of using your brain. It's smoking to a professional athlete. The grad program who brought you on is expecting you to use your brain. Don't do things to make you worse at doing that. So, I think it's it's a really good idea for anyone in one of these sort of timelited elite intellectual types of positions like being a grad student to be like, I really don't get near any type of algorithmically curated short form content. Like, I that's cigarettes to an athlete and I'm trying to make the the major league squad. I can't deal with that. So, good decision. I'm not surprised that you're seeing uh **[65:57]** advantages. All right. So, what do you do about your concerns of not being able to comment on or curate photos of you online? That's all fine. Don't comment on or curate photos of you online. your friends will quickly learn, oh, she's not on Instagram right now because she stopped using it while she's at grad school and they move on. That's it. Part of the issue that I would say part of what makes social media clever is maybe the better way of saying it. Part of what makes it clever was it sort of sold us on this idea that **[66:27]** uh I don't want to sound dismissive, but that we're more important than we are. And what I mean by that is it creates a sense of that you have an audience and even whether it's people you know even right not necessarily like a broad audience but that like you're part of this is part of what made it so compelling early on. Uh you have you're you have this audience you're part of this great conversation and they want to see what you're posting and they're commenting on and you're commenting on other people's stuff and it's like you're part of this great conversation and you'll be missed if you leave. But that's never really been the case. It's why in my 2016 book, Deep Work, I had a **[66:58]** chapter that said, "Quit social media." And what it really meant, if you read the chapter, it said, "Leave it for 30 days without telling anyone and see if anyone notices." Because what would happen is people in their mind, they imagine all these like friends and people who are commenting are essentially in like the seats of a theater like really eagerly waiting for you to come out on stage and be like look around really solemnly and then say, "Poto my dinner." And they're all like, "Yeah, there it is. We've been we've been waiting for that." and they're all like high-fiving each other and like you know whatever but that's not really what happens. There's actually a collectivist attention model **[67:30]** where the Facebook was the one to innovate back in 2004 2005 is like it's just like I will comment on things you comment if you comment on things I comment on that's just the game and then we all feel like people are commenting and when people would do this experiment from deep work like oh god no one noticed I was gone I I I wasn't at the center of this like grand conversation I wasn't this this uh this u producer on stage everyone was waiting for it was all just sort of a game of like showing fake attention to each other no one cared great I'm not going to go back and I think you'll have a similar experience right um it make these these services want to make you feel like you're it's **[68:01]** very important what you're doing but for the most part it really isn't you will be fine the few friends that notice will learn pretty quickly like oh you don't use Instagram anymore good for you and that'll be that so stay with the course that type of stuff is not as important as it wants you to think these are all the things that are going to hurt these companies as they move towards becoming television to go back to our deep dive because as you move towards television those type of hooks disappear you discourage people from creating their own content or partic participating as you move towards television. You get higher minutes used per day because **[68:33]** honestly algorithmically curated short form video is more interesting than your friend's photos. But you don't get that deep social hook like the thing that you're worried about like my god my friends are going to wonder where I am. That goes away with a service like Tik Tok. No one knows you're on there or cares and they lose their hooks. That's why I think it's going to become such an ungrounded competitive marketplace. It's hard to dominate internet-based television in a way you could dominate friendbased Instagram. So, I think it's a good case study, that dynamic that I'm worried about. All right, let's go on now to our final segment. **[69:05]** All right, the first podcast of every month, I like to talk about the books I read the previous month. I usually aim to read five books per month. I've grouped them this month, Jesse, by topic. I kind of like two major topics here just kind of randomly, but that's the way I grouped them. All right. Uh, my first two, these are both Disney related because I guess that's how I deal with my stress these days. That's my hard drinking is Disney related topics. I read David Cohen's David Cohen's book, Reality Land. Uh, it's a **[69:36]** book about just the business history of the Florida resort as opposed to the California resort because I read that other book >> about Disneyland because we went to Disneyland and so this was a book about Disney World and it was about like how they got the land and how they acquired it and the growth strategy and like that stuff is my it's so different than anything I do in life. It's very non-stressful. It was very good. It was a very well-ressearched book. I guess it's one of the big ones. Um, then I read the other Disney Disneyish book. It was really about the Sherman brothers, but it was called Becoming Mary Poppins. **[70:06]** New book just came out, Todd James Pierce. It's about the making of that movie in the early 1960s, but it's also a lot about the songwriting duo, the Sherman Brothers, um, who really helped innovate the cinema form of the family musical as a thing that became big again in the 1960s. And so, it's interesting hearing about what the world of professional songwriting was like in mid-century or prior to mid-century. their their dad was like a early 20th century songwriter. That was really interesting. Uh some of the the Disney **[70:38]** stuff was interesting too. Like they really were kind of betting the farm on this movie succeeding. It was it was interesting to hear also how the Disney live action film studio was very small compared to the big ma major studios. Like they couldn't they couldn't really do these epics on the scale that like a Paramount or Universal could do. And so like that that stuff was interesting. Then I moved on to a pair of religious books. One it was like they couldn't be more opposite. One is very very popular audience. The **[71:08]** other is an academic audience. So the popular audience one I read was Rob Bell's book what is the Bible. So I've been reading these books about like how to understand and interpret the Bible. Uh like what who wrote it? How do they wrote it? Like why what about it is you know what about the writing is so interesting or profound because if you just kind of read it through a modern context like these are weird stories. uh you don't get a great experience. So, I read that book a couple months ago. I like popular book. Rob Bell wrote a book on it. Bell's an interesting guy. I think he's a he's a he's a Christian **[71:38]** pastor. I don't know if he's evangelical or not or with one of the main mainline Protestant denominations. He's super well educated, right? Like I think he speaks Greek, he speaks Hebrew. He's really studied this stuff, but he writes definitely for a super mass audience. I mean, it's like incredibly conversational with a lot of single line paragraphs and bolding and it's like really um really like simplified style but some really good points captured in it. So, it was a quick read but I found it kind of interesting. Then I went and read Jonathan Saxs book tradition in an **[72:10]** untraditional age. Uh so you know I'm a big fan of Rabbi Jonathan Saxs his public facing books that connect religion with other schools of thought in the broader world uh like science and religion morality culture. These are fantastic books. He's a fantastic fantastic writer. I wanted to get more acquainted with his more academic style writing. So God help me Jesse. I went back and found this book which is a collection of uh more like academic essays he wrote. really these essays were dealing with like orthodoxy and its **[72:41]** collision with modernity uh and grappling with a bunch of sort of like big thinkers in that field. 450 page beast of a book. But even his academic writing I was like this is I learned a lot. It was really interesting to learn about I I I learned about this like the collision of modernity with other types of uh traditional thought worlds itself. I felt like was really useful even for like the technocriticism I do. U so it's a more academic book. You know, you're going to hear about like these like very specific **[73:13]** thinkers and it's so it's if you're not used to academic writing, I don't know, it's not like a fun read like Rob Bells, but I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot. Uh the final book I read was uh Scott Galloway's new book, Notes on Being a Man. I like Scott. I like, you know, I've been on his podcast. Uh I think he's a great broadcaster, interesting character. Um, this book, you know, the book captures like the stuff he talks about in book form. Um, it's exactly what you would want. It's like he writes in the style that he talks. So, if you like his podcast, you're going to like the book. It's not a super bogged down in numbers. So, he **[73:46]** has statistics and it's not bogged down in stories of other people. It's really like him talking a lot about his own life and his own thoughts and kind of riffing, which is probably the right format for Scott. I also think the book has been killing it because he's everywhere. Mhm. >> His podcasts are super popular, but he's very good on TV. So, he he does like every remaining legacy TV show with an audience that author can go on. He did all of them. The Morning Shows, The View, Bill Maher, The Morning Joe, because he's very good on TV. Um, so there you go. That's all of them. So, **[74:17]** that was good. There you go. So, that's what I read. Uh, Thriller December is underway. I was going to start with the Dan Brown book he got me, but I got intimidated. 600 something pages and I was like I need to get more momentum going into I can't start Thriller December on a book that I need to get a few under my belt quick. So I I went back and I'm starting with uh Michael Kryton's 199 something classic Airframe. >> Is that a reread? >> Uh yeah, that's all they're all rereads, but it's been a while since I've read that one. Um so I'm excited about >> Michael's your favorite author, right? **[74:48]** >> Just for thrillers. Oh, >> okay. >> Yeah, for thrillers. Yeah. Uh the 90s stuff began to get kind of weird and reactionary, but like writing through in 90s I liked Prey Timeline and Airframe. Um but like next and the the climate change one like this Disclosure I don't know Rising Sun is like some of those are little uh like you'd recognize it today as like someone redpilled back before that was a thing. He was kind of so which is **[75:18]** >> red pills the Matrix. >> Yeah. But it means like you get exposed to like conservative ideas and realize like wait I think all the media is like has a left leaning tilt and so like I am going to >> uh I'm going to like I've been revealed that we've been like kind of had and I so he kind of got which is fine but it's not what I want in a thriller. >> Um >> so it kind of petered out a little bit but yeah I've read I'm a completist aon completist. I've read all of his postumous ones and of course you know what the masterpiece is from his canon. The book is maybe one of the finest books of the last century. Eruption, **[75:53]** co-authored with James Patterson at the Volcano. H the worst one of the worst books I've ever read. I should be nice though because the the Kiteon Family Foundation sent me a nice note after I wrote an article about him last year. So I should outside of that I do like a lot of Kiteon stuff. Um so I'm going to do Airframe. I have a couple other books I'm going to read. I'm reading I I I got a used version of the Raymond Williams book television we talked about. Um I want to really read that carefully. So I'm going to read that. Um I'm probably going to read uh Geraldine Brooks's book **[76:23]** about the aftermath of of her husband dying. So I have some non-thrillery stuff in there that I'm >> Oh, she wrote that book Horse, right? Yeah, >> that was good. >> Yes, I'm reading her book after that. Yeah. Um so I have some non-thriller stuff in there, but I am going to read the Dan Brown. Couple other thrillers in mind. It'll be good. I like thriller thriller December, but Airframe is like perfect. That's like my sweet from the 90s. I read it as a kid. It's like he brings you into like a world of like air traffic control and incident reporting after plane crashes and all this technical stuff is happening and there's a mystery and it's great but like the **[76:54]** stakes are low. I like it. I think there's a dinosaur in there or is that a different one? I don't know. I mix it up. Twist ending. Little known fact after 1994 almost every Michael Kryton book involved at some point in usually like very in Congress weighs dinosaurs. Rising Sun is like a lot about like financial tensions with Japan and like the cover up of a murder. Um, but also it's a trannosaur that does the murder. So like he did a lot of that disclosure was about gender power dynamics with sexual harassment. Um, and **[77:27]** also she was a velociraptor. So like there, you know, he was really kind of pulling on what worked. You got to you got to play the hits. All right, that's enough nonsense for now. We'll be back next week with another episode. And until then, as always, to stay deep. If you like today's discussion about how the internet is becoming television, you might also like episode 372, in which I decode how Tik Tok's algorithm works. It's a great companion to what we talked about today. Check it out. I think you'll like it. The big news in the world of social media **[77:58]** recently is the announcement made last week that US interest would be taking over operation of Tik Tok in America. Yeah.