Topic
video
- Herbie Hancock's start with Miles
Herbie Hancock on his introduction to Miles Davis. Herbie got his start with Donald Byrd. And Byrd gave him the push to go seize the opportunity to join Miles's second great quintet).
- Making a Steinway piano
I ran across this documentary about the making of a Steinway grand piano. The process of constructing one of these takes a year or more. It’s a great example of handmade craftsmanship in a world where we’ve mechanized…
- Wes Montgomery, Live in '65
Wes Montgomery, Live in '65.
- Ahmad Jamal in France
Ahmad Jamal live in France, 1971.
- The Abstraction of AI
OpenAI launched a major update to Sora yesterday. There's something about AI video that just doesn't get me excited. Sound on. pic.twitter.com/QHDxq6ubGt— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 30, 2025 Sure, it's impressiv…
- Essay Architecture
I just watched this excellent interview with Michael Dean on the How I Write podcast. Michael is an architect and writer, and his writing project is fascinating. He's built a framework for thinking about writing that…
- Joe Henrich And Dwarkesh Patel
Great interview with the author of one of my favorite books from the last several years, Joe Henrich. _The WEIRDest People in the World_ is a fascinating look at the origins of human culture and the evolution of human…
- Angelz
MF DOOM / Ghostface Killah - Angelz, 2004.
- Blue Ghost Moon Landing
Firefly Aerospace became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon when Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon on March 2nd. What an incredible achievement – and that 4K video from the lunar…
- Dana Gioia on Writing
This is a phenomenal extended (3 hour!) interview with Dana Gioia on his background, poetry, his writing process, and the habits he's curated that make him into a prolific and interesting writer.
- New Space
Jason Carman's S3 project has been relaunched (no pun intended) as The Story Company, continuing his incredible work on documenting the hard tech scene. At the start of the year they published their first feature docu…
- Things Hidden
I found and watched this this morning. Phenomenal documentary on the life and ideas of Rene Girard. A lot of direct interviews with Girard himself, as well as many of his colleagues, collaborators, and those influence…
- Herbie Hancock Headhunters
The Headhunters perform “Sly”, 1974.
- How Shellac is Made
I'm in the process of building some cabinets, and yesterday I was working on the drawers. I decided to use shellac as the finish for the drawer interiors. Never used it before, but heard that it applies easy, cures fa…
- Amor Towles
Amor Towles is one of the most articulate and interesting writers working. I loved this conversation from EconTalk. The discussion on constraints and the meaning hidden in “inconveniences” was great.
- Woodworking
The absolute most wild woodshop anyone’s ever built.
- Madvillainy's Secret Ingredient
Brandon from Digging the Greats breaks down Madlib and MF DOOM's epic collaboration: I remember in this extended interview with MF DOOM him talking about the lackadaisical approach to making the record. Madlib would m…
- Nick Pedulla's Roubo Workbench
The novelty, design, craftsmanship, execution, cinematography, all unmatched. Absolutely incredible work. He took a centuries-old, classic bench design and added function to support his specific workflow needs. I have…
- Interview with Richard Rhodes, on the Making of the Atomic Bomb
This is a phenomenal interview with Richard Rhodes, author of the legendary The Making of the Atomic Bomb, an expansive history of the Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear weapons technology. Dwarkesh Shah…
- Patrick Collison and Sam Altman at Sohn 2023
An interesting discussion between Patrick Collison and OpenAI founder Sam Altman on a predictably fascinating assortment of subjects. AI developments, stagnation, long-term bets, and what's preventing us from having m…
- The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds Apart
This is a fascinating video on the Wallace Line, which separates to biogeographic regions: The wildlife on each side differ tremendously from one another, even the line cuts through straits that aren't wide at all. Na…
- Starship Flight Test
It's amazing we get to watch these on livestreams. SpaceX willing to expose its R&D process and high-risk work to the world in real-time. The world definitely needs more companies taking big risks and pushing forward.
- Starship Mission to Mars
Beautiful and inspiring stuff from SpaceX: A convincing case for Elon to put his focus all-in on SpaceX, and not 6 other ventures at once.
- 37signals Live Design Review
This is an interesting look into how an effective team works through the weeds of a product design review. I love how it shows the warts and complexities of even seemingly-simple flow of sending a batch email in an em…
- Devon Zuegel on Inflation, Argentina, and Crypto
Argentina has become infamous for its decades-long struggles with inflation and economic instability. For an otherwise fairly well-off nation, it's surprising to outsiders how deep the problem on this has been. In thi…
- The Spread of Writing
The spread of written language around the world, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to today.
- Chris Spiek and Ryan Singer on Shape Up
Reading Ryan Singer's Shape Up a few years ago was formative (or re-formative, or something) in my thinking on how product development can and should work. After that it was a rabbit hole on jobs-to-be-done, Bob Moest…
- Steve Jobs on Ideas vs. Products
A lot of Steve Jobs content is hagiography at this point, but this clip is fantastic: There's an enormous delta between idea and execution. Someone can take a great idea and squander it. Or conversely, someone could t…
- Tools and Craft with Andy Matuschak
The latest episode of Notion's Tools & Craft podcast features the excellent Andy Matuschak, talking about his research, productivity practices, and more. Also check out Andy's work on smoothly-ratcheting goal tracking…
- My Analog Journal’s Jazz from Japan
This is a new genre for me, but one I’ve gone deep on in the past week: Japanese jazz and soul. Like always with YouTube, the rabbit hole is deep (and rewarding!). This guy is a YouTube DJ that picks a genre and a geo…
- Making Cast Iron
I'm a sucker for a How It's Made episode, and this tour of the Lodge factory combines that with my Food YouTube-watching obsession. What's amazing here is to see the reuse at work, and how few inputs are required to g…
- Constitution of Knowledge
Jonathan Rauch's latest book The Constitution of Knowledge just dropped, which sounds sort of like a sequel, or at least a redux of his classic Kindly Inquisitors. Brookings held a panel on his book's release with his…
- DeFi Explainers
I've gone over off the deep end the last couple weeks trying to wrap my head around DeFi. To date I've only dabbled in crypto, being lucky enough to ride some small waves, though nothing life-changing. DeFi (decentral…
- Hammock-Driven Creativity
Here's Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) on the benefits of stepping away from the computer, in his talk on "hammock-driven development": He differentiates what the "waking" mind and "background" mind are good at, whic…
- Intro to Areography
The resemblance between Martian and Terran topography is amazing. Mars has volcanism, plains, valleys, and hard evidence of water formerly everywhere. Great shots here with renderings of Martian topography.
- The Forest Cube
There's a YouTube channel I linked a couple months back called "Modern Self Reliance" where a group of guys built an off-grid cabin. In a new series, they're adding a neighboring cabin in the form of an 8'x8'x8' cube,…
- The 1980s Dream of a Free and Borderless Virtual World
Reason Magazine has put together a 4-part documentary series on the cypherpunk movement, the early-90s collective of hobbyist computer enthusiasts that believed in an open and free internet. Their philosophies influen…
- Clyde Stubblefield
A Slack chat this morning led to a discussion of Funky Drummer and how often its been sampled. I ran across this good clip of the player himself, drummer Clyde Stubblefield, who played with James Brown's band during t…
- Project Natick
Microsoft's Project Natick is exploring the feasibility of underwater datacenters. They sunk a container with 864 servers off the coast of the Orkney Islands. So far they've seen reliability numbers that best the same…
- PogaÄŤar's Climb
You don't have to be an avid cycling fan to be impressed with Tadej Pogačar's incredible time trial on stage 20 of this year's Tour de France. He bested the 2nd and 3rd place riders by a full minute, 1:21 better than…
- Off Grid Cabin
I fell into a rabbit hole of videos from these guys and their off-grid cabin in the woods. This one gives you a time-lapse of the project from start to finish, with no narration. In COVID times, there's something very…
- Tiago Learns Roam
Tiago Forte and Conor White-Sullivan call a truce in the Twitter knowledge management feud.
- Talk Notes: Spolsky on Pluralism
One of my favorite evening activities is watching talks, interviews, and presentations on YouTube. I often take notes on these for myself, so this is an experiment in brushing up those notes and sharing them publicly.…
- Digital Organization with Roam Research
YouTube creator Ali Abdaal put together a great extended overview video on Roam. Good examples of the core features of the product, and interesting techniques for how to organize notes.
- The Best of The Blue Train: 2001 L'Alpe d'Huez
With this year's Tour de France delayed (as of now, til late August), the guys from The Move have been going over some of the best stages from the US Postal years. It's a cool format, sort of like a commentary track o…
- Weekend Reading: Quarantine Talks
🛠Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Progress Joel Mokyr’s talk on the most recent session of The Torch of Progress series. 🧠How to Be a Neo-Cartesian Cyborg A recent talk from Maggie Appleton on the "building a second brai…
- Wood Whisperer
I’m a sucker for YouTube content of makers and craftsmen at work. I’ve posted before about channels like Black Beard Projects restoring old shop tools, and recently Kenji Lopez-Alt’s first-person cooking show. I grew…
- Kenji's First Person Cooking
- The Torch of Progress with Tyler Cowen
This is the second episode of the "Torch of Progress" series that the Progress Studies for Young Scholars program is putting on, hosted by Jason Crawford. Tyler Cowen is unbelievably prolific in projects he's got goin…
- War, Revolution, Socialism
I linked a couple weeks ago to Stephen Kotkin's discussion with Lex Fridman. That was so interesting to me I went out looking for other interviews and lectures of his on YouTube and found this great one from Dartmouth…