Podcast Episodes

Ep. 353: Summer Schedules

Episode 353

Summer is here. It’s time to slow down. In this episode, Cal discusses his radically simplified summer schedule and then suggests you similarly inject some “seasonality” into your life, offering tips…

Published on 4 months ago

Ep. 352: It’s Okay to Slow Down

Episode 352

When we think about important accomplishments, we think about grinding through long hours of work. But is this really necessary? In this episode, Cal turns to the lives of two famous authors to argue…

Published on 4 months, 1 week ago

Ep. 351: Making the Internet Good Again

Episode 351

Tyler Cowen recently wrote an article arguing that spending lots of time online is in fact a good thing. In this episode, Cal looks deeper at Cowen’s argument and finds some surprising common ground.…

Published on 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Ep. 350: Is Inbox Zero Possible?

Episode 350

The white whale of modern productivity discourse is achieving an empty email inbox; a goal state that’s often referred to simply as “inbox zero.” In this episode, Cal looks at why the original advice…

Published on 4 months, 3 weeks ago

Ep. 349: Sam Altman On Productivity

Episode 349

Cal talks a lot about his ideas for producing meaningful work in a distracted world. But how do other people tackle this goal? To help better under this question, Cal reacts to a 2018 article from Op…

Published on 5 months ago

IN-DEPTH: Architecting a Deep Life (w/ David Dewane)

In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal is joined by David Dewane, the architect responsible for the “eudaimonia machine” featured in DEEP WORK. In this wide-ranging conversation, Cal and David talk about t…

Published on 5 months ago

Ep. 348: Manage Your Time in 5 Minutes a Day

Episode 348

Cal has been writing about time management for a *long* time. In this episode, he returns to a chapter from a book he wrote twenty years ago that is titled “manage your time in 5 minutes a day.” He r…

Published on 5 months, 1 week ago

Ep. 347: The Forgotten Phone Harms

Episode 347

Phones have been receiving a lot of criticism recently, but what if these concerns are missing the mark? In this episode, Cal introduces the difference between primary and secondary phone harms, and …

Published on 5 months, 2 weeks ago

Ep. 346: Getting Smarter in a Dumb World

Episode 346

In last week’s episode, Cal discussed data that indicate that the rise of the smartphones is making humans measurably dumber. Here he discusses aggressive strategies for resisting this reality. He th…

Published on 5 months, 3 weeks ago

Ep. 345: Are We Getting Dumber?

Episode 345

Multiple listeners recently sent in a Financial Times article that asks whether humans have passed “peak intelligence.” In this episode, Cal looks closer at the data in this article to try to underst…

Published on 5 months, 4 weeks ago