Advertise on podcast: Dialectic

Josh Miller (X, LinkedIn) is co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, makers of Dia and Arc. The Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian last year. Before The Browser Company, Josh was an investor at Thrive Capital, Director of Product in the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, and co-founder of Branch, which was acquired by Facebook. He studied sociology and has always been thoughtful about environments: institutions, companies, and digital and physical spaces. We talk about his effort to improve the space many of us spend our days in: the browser. We discuss the tension between Josh’s creative and commercial instincts, optimizing for feelings, and hiring unlikely stars. Josh reflects on much of the journey with Arc and Dia and why he’s still betting on the browser in the AI era, now as part of Atlassian. I hope you are inspired to believe in people and leave your fingerprints on what you create. Full transcript & links: https://dialectic.fm/josh-miller --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life’s work and a hub for all the context you and your team use to work with each other and with AI. New models are available in Notion the day they launch, and you can work with agents you build in Notion or any other agents and tools you already use. As tools change, Notion is the Switzerland in the middle that keeps your context consistent across all of them. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro: Josh Miller (1:55) Start: Not Commercial Enough & Optimizing for Feelings (9:14) Sociology, the Obama White House, Thrive, and the 5% Favicon (15:38) Bowling Alone, James Turrell, and Roden Crater (22:12) Betting on People, Leaving Thrive, and Where Computing Goes (34:54) “Assume You Don’t Know” and What Was Sacred at The Browser Company (41:58) Intuition, Road Trips, and Leaving Fingerprints on Things (53:57) Building in Public, Pulling Back, and the Road to Atlassian (1:03:23) The Internet Computer in the AI Era: Codex, Cloud Browsers, and Why Everything Is Converging (1:13:30) How Dia Wins (1:17:07) Agents, Muse, and the Red Giraffe (1:22:43) Software Is Becoming Art (1:32:13) Believing in People, Leaving Facebook for the White House, and What’s Next (1:47:17) Closing Questions Subscribe at newsletter.dialectic.fm for email updates.

Patrick Hsu (X, Website, Arc lab) is co-founder and core investigator of Arc Institute, assistant professor of pathology at Stanford, and venture partner at Thrive Capital. Patrick has always been precocious: he began college as a young teenager and contributed to early CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing breakthroughs as part of Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Today, the Hsu Lab at Arc works where genome engineering meets AI, from bridge recombinases that can rearrange up to a million bases of DNA at once to Arc's Evo biological foundation models. We discuss Patrick’s pace and ambition, infinite games, and why he was drawn to biology. Then, we traverse power laws in biotech and the reach of GLP-1s, research taste and success, Arc’s multidisciplinary model, data limits in AI-enabled bio, and cell and bio foundation models. We also discuss how AI and new science will help us solve diseases, design life, and push the boundaries of sci-fi when it comes to human health. I hope you are inspired to raise your bar, commit to reinvention, and hold a lightness that makes the long and challenging journey fun. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life's work, and it works with whatever AI you use. New models are typically available in Notion the day they launch, you can tag agents from inside Notion, and you can tag Notion from your other AI tools. As the tools around you change, Notion stays the one place that holds your context. Notion is also hiring across product, engineering, design, storytelling, and more. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- This episode is supported by Google. Gemini 4 Argon recently launched and is built for long-horizon work. I used it inside Antigravity and gave it all 60 Dialectic transcripts: more than a million words. Instead of summarizing episodes one by one, Argon synthesized across them, tracing how ideas from early conversations connect to later ones. Together we made The Dialectic Compendium, an interactive book of the themes that run across the show, with a dossier on every episode and a 3D version you can page through on the web. Gemini 4 Argon is available in the Gemini app, Antigravity, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini API. Compendium: https://jacksondahl.com/dialectic/compendium --- Timestamps (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:39) Intro: Patrick Hsu (4:29) Start: Boldness, Infinite Games, & Ambition (12:54) GLP-1s and Power Laws in Biotechnology (20:17) Expelled at 13 and Falling for Biology (25:51) What Makes a Good Biologist, Research Taste, and Biology’s Data Challenges (37:58) The Arc Model: Full-Stack Science (52:01) Betting on People, Style, & Learning to Simplify (57:22) Perturbation, World Models, and Evo (1:03:27) Virtual Cell Models (1:09:56) Designing Life: From Stem Cells to Genome Writing (1:18:39) Testing, Bro Science, and Human Data (1:24:26) Can It Exist vs. Will It Exist: Science Meets Markets (1:29:59) Biofuturism: Interoception, Peptides, Muscle Modulation, Sleep, and New Forms of Life (1:43:47) Fun, Obsolescence, Going Slow, and the Future (1:54:27) Outro

Joe Gebbia (Website, X, LinkedIn, Wikipedia) is the first U.S. Chief Design Officer, leading the National Design Studio. He is also the co-founder of Airbnb and Samara. The NDS and this role were created by executive order of President Trump in August 2025. I met Joe Washington, D.C, to reflect on the past year and talk about bringing the care and ambition of great product design to the digital services that every American uses. Joe & NDS just launched America.gov, their flagship project of the last year: the central entry point for how Americans get what they need from the government. Joe believes that design is how you respect and value the people who use a product or service. At Airbnb, that meant helping strangers feel comfortable in each other’s homes. In government, it means refusing to accept a low bar for the websites and processes that Americans use to interact with the government. We begin with CritBuns, Joe’s RISD project that taught him that design is as much about storytelling as it is about product. Then, we discuss what he learned about designing for trust at Airbnb and his initial work at DOGE, streamlining and digitizing the federal retirement process. Joe walks me through America.gov, a single, AI-powered front door to government services. We discuss the challenges of scale and designing for people who are skeptical of both government and AI, including what it means to pass the “grandma test.” We wrap up with why ambitious technologists should aspire to work in government and his collaboration with Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk. I hope this conversation raises your expectations for the things we’ve learned to tolerate, and inspires you to think about how you might serve your community or your country. Full transcript & links at dialectic.fm/joe-gebbia --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. As new models and agents arrive constantly, Notion acts as a context and consolidation layer for all the ways you and your team work with AI: a command center or simply a resilience layer, so your context comes with you even if you switch models or agents. You can also work with agents right inside Notion and share skills with your team through the Skills API. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps: 0:00 Opening Highlights 1:26 Intro: Joe Gebbia 4:12 CritBuns & Why Design is Half Story 15:24 Airbnb, The Feeling of Belonging, & Designing for Trust 28:29 Public Service & Fixing Federal Retirement 42:16 Speed, Craft, and Respect 48:43 ND Studio Projects: TrumpRx, Trump Accounts, and Realfood.gov 56:18 America.gov: A New Front Door to Government 1:05:35 Trust, Privacy, and Government AI 1:15:30 America.gov’s Roadmap 1:19:54 Recruiting for ND Studio and Public Service 1:23:41 Reflecting on Year One & Passing the Grandma Test 1:31:05 A Ticking Clock Toward 2028 & Building Beyond One Administration 1:35:44 AI & Product Development 1:38:36 Closing Questions: Charles & Ray Eames, AirBnB Co-Founders, & Trust in People

Adam Mastroianni (Website, X) is an experimental psychologist and the writer of Experimental History. He earned his PhD in psychology at Harvard before leaving academia to pursue research and writing independently. I first came across Adam through “Good conversations have lots of doorknobs,” which remains one of my favorite essays on Substack. We talk about why psychology is stuck, why science needs people willing to look stupid, and how prestige can lead you toward a life you don’t want. From there, unpack Adam’s coffee bean test for figuring out what to do, getting “de-bogged,” and what improv teaches us about better conversations (or: create doorknobs). We also discuss writing that surprises its author, his upcoming book, The Strangest Idea in the World, and the prayer he says before publishing: “Let me be useful.” I hope you leave a little more willing to question what seems obvious, risk looking stupid, and spend your time in ways you actually enjoy. Transcript & links: https://dialectic.fm/adam-mastroianni --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Notion AI works across your documents and context, while custom workers can automate recurring tasks and connect with your other tools. You can also explore Notion’s Knowledge Board, which evaluates how AI models perform on real knowledge-work tasks. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- This episode is supported by Google. Google Antigravity is Google’s agentic development platform. Describe what you want to build, and its agents can plan the work, write and run code, and test the result, with plans and changes you can review along the way. Gemini 3.5 Transcribe turns audio into text with a choice of verbatim and Smart modes. Verbatim mode keeps fillers and false starts, and supports speaker labels and word-level timestamps to help you check the transcript against the recording. Smart mode removes filler words and repetitions and formats speech into readable text. I used Antigravity and Gemini 3.5 Transcribe to build a Mac app for producing and reviewing Dialectic transcripts. --- Timestamps: 04:33 Start: Why Psychology is Stuck & The Focus of Adam's Blog 14:43 The Scientific Virtues of Stupidity and Rebellion & Escaping the Prestige Trap 25:08 Patronage for Weirdos 33:53 Progress in Psychology 52:15 Figuring Out What to Do, The Coffee Bean Test, and Unpacking Adam's Day-to-Day 01:03:22 Getting De-bogged and Making Ideas Land 01:14:11 Conversational Doorknobs: Giving and Taking 01:22:23 Blogging, Community, and Rules we Invent 01:28:35 Writing Advice, Thick Art, Giving The Reader an Egg to Crack 01:44:03 Adam's First Book: The Strangest Idea in the World 01:53:23 Closing Questions

Immad Akhund (⁠X⁠, ⁠LinkedIn⁠) is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠Mercury⁠. He is also a prolific angel investor and co-hosts the ⁠Founders in Arms⁠ podcast. Mercury is a fintech banking platform used by one in three startups. It is Immad's fourth company in 20 years of entrepreneurship. Mercury is in the process of becoming an FDIC-insured bank and recently launched ⁠Mercury Books⁠, AI-powered accounting software. Immad grew up in Pakistan, moved to London at nine, and left for San Francisco at 23 to become an entrepreneur "for real." Mercury is built on something rare in finance: a willingness to spend a disproportionate amount of energy on details, the kind of care Immad admits "seems irrational.” We start with a simple question (what is a bank?) and discuss why banking stayed bad for so long, what stays hard as AI makes software easy to build, and why Mercury's motto is "be extremely helpful." Entrepreneurship has shaped Immad's life, and he hopes Mercury can empower a generation of entrepreneurs. I hope you come away a little more annoyed by the mediocre things we've all learned to tolerate and inspired to put an irrational amount of care into making them better. ⁠https://dialectic.fm/immad-akhund⁠ --- Dialectic is presented by ⁠Notion⁠. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams ⁠think together⁠ and create their best work. It works with all of your agents and keeps context across them and your team. ⁠Check out the new Notion Skills API⁠. You can learn more at ⁠notion.com/dialectic⁠. --- Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:50) Intro: Immad Akhund (4:16) Start: Banks and Why Immad Was Suited to Build One (20:30) What Traditional Banks Do Well & What Mercury Got Right (29:33) Why Mercury Wants a Bank Charter (35:57) What's Scarce When Software Is Easy (49:00) Becoming the Default for New Entrepreneurs (53:34) Product: 100 Little Things Better (1:06:51) The Right to Win (1:09:19) Brand as Care (1:15:19) Culture and Being Extremely Helpful (1:22:51) Command, Agents, and AI (1:34:26) Ambition, Investing, and Leading (1:46:54) Family, Pakistan, and America (1:52:56) Money, Freedom, and Energy (1:59:14) Outro

Independent Study is a series of bonus episodes to accompany the interviews on Dialectic. I read essays and other writing that has influenced me. "Personal Renewal" was given as a speech by John W. Gardner to a group at McKinsey & Company in Phoenix, AZ on November 10, 1990. The transcript is available at PBS here. John W. Gardner was a public servant, educator, and public reformer. Learn more at PBS. This is one of my favorite things I've ever read. I hope you are similarly inspired. Transcript and audio for the also mentioned David Foster Wallace's "This is Water" available here, from Farnam Street. https://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html⁠

Miles Grimshaw (X, LinkedIn) is an investor at Thrive Capital. He’s spent most of his career there, there, partnering with founders at the early stages of company building, including Cursor, Turbopuffer, Chai Discovery, Mesh Optical, Revel, XDOF, Socket, Benchling, GitHub, and many more. Miles was also briefly an investor at Benchmark before returning to Thrive in 2024. The conversation focuses on Miles’ appetite for change and continuing to begin anew, again and again. That starts with “adventure racing” as a teenager, and continues through his career as an investor in search of world-changing companies. We talk about how Miles proactively puts himself in position to work with great founders in a style that resembles courtship, his disposition of impatient patience, and why he loves change. The latter includes the dramatic shift in his primary domain: software. As the underlying assumptions for software businesses change due to AI, what traits will great companies have? And what moats if any will persist? Is software investing over? Miles also talks through how great companies and founders go where they are looking, prioritizing customers that help you live in the future, the learned intuition of greatness, and joining the expedition squad alongside the founders Thrive partners with. Finally, we talk a bit about Thrive, his departure to and return from Benchmark, and endurance. I hope you are inspired to find an infinite game where you are excited to see the stone roll back down the hill and begin to push again. Transcript & links available at https://dialectic.fm/miles-grimshaw Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are the speaker's own as of the recording date and are subject to change. Thrive funds and their affiliates have investments in certain companies discussed in this episode. References to those companies are illustrative, do not represent all investments made by Thrive, and should not be viewed as recommendations or indications of future investment performance. Past performance is not indicative of future results. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Notion's custom agents are AI teammates that handle recurring work across your tools. Learn more about their new developer platform and workers here. Notion is hiring across product, storytelling, design, engineering, and more. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:37) Intro: Miles Grimshaw (4:30) Infinite Games, Adventure Racing, and Starting Anew, Over and Over (11:01) Staying Hungry: Proactive Hunting and the Turbopuffer Story (17:35) Impatiently Patient: Courtship, Cursor, Recruiting, and Joining the Team (25:33) Loving Change: London to America, the Himalayas, and Learning New Sports (31:36) The Genetics of Companies: "What Is It?" and "Who Cares?" (38:08) House Cats & Tigers: Where Is the Founder Looking? (47:00) Confidence in Uncertainty and Customers That Pull You Into the Future (54:25) What Remains for Software: Moats, Cities, Wall-Clock Time, and the Barbell of Scale & Luxury (1:04:54) Craft, Trust, and Why Software Isn't Over (1:11:13) Intuition: Gradient Descent and Seeing Greatness Up Close (1:18:07) "I Don't Know" and "I'll Figure It Out" (1:22:12) Commitments, Not Bets: Closing People and Board Work (1:29:06) Joining Thrive, Being a Punk, and Music Studios over Jury Trials (1:36:18) Leaving for Benchmark and Returning to Thrive (1:43:18) Dream Bigger: Lessons from Josh, Teaching Agency to Kids, and Going the Distance (1:51:36) Outro

“Art is For Seeing Evil” was published by Agnes Callard for The Point Magazine on July 15, 2022. My thanks to Agnes and The Point for permission to share this audio version of her essay on Dialectic’s feed. https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/art-is-for-seeing-evil/ Agnes Callard (UChicago, Substack, X, Wikipedia) is a professor of philosophy at The University of Chicago, focused primarily on ancient philosophy and ethics. She also writes for The Point, The New York Times, and more. I particularly enjoyed her recent conversation with Derek Thompson on her theory of the “uni-context.” This essay was shared with me by Nan Ransohoff, (Ep. 51). I hope you enjoy it!

Dan Lilienthal (X, LinkedIn) and José Chayet (X, LinkedIn) are childhood friends and cofounders of [untitled] (X, Instagram), a platform for musicians that they describe as a sacred place for work-in-progress music. It is where a song lives between recording and streaming. [untitled] is closer to the Photos app than to a social network: a private place to store, listen to, and slowly share demos, with no feed. Dan and José are not trained musicians, engineers, or designers, but they have built a product artists love by “method acting” their way into deep empathy. The platform has grown to 50K paying users and now allows artists to share unreleased music directly with fans. Lorde recently released XRAYS on [untitled]: 49 demos and works in progress from her album Virgin, creating a kind of museum behind the record. We discuss music as a form of communication and a connection to the divine; why they have resisted adding a feed; product inspirations like the iPod and Snapchat; how empathy and QA underpin their product philosophy; designing for 16-year-olds and superstars; AI as an instrument; which parts of the creative process are worth sharing; what it means for software to be sacred; and building a company with your best friend. I hope you’re inspired to consider what is sacred, share and live with the things you make, seek out music that inspires you, and stay untitled a little longer than is comfortable. Full transcript and all links: dialectic.fm/untitled This episode on [untitled]. - Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. - Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:24) Intro to Dan & José & Thanks to Notion (4:42) Start: Brackets, How Creativity Makes the World Bigger, and Music's Connection to the Divine (20:40) Duchamp, Music as a Set of Choices, and The Museum Behind the Work (27:52) [untitled]: A Medium for Music In-Progress (45:03) From a Better Dropbox to a Creativity Company (52:13) Empathy as a Product Philosophy and The Collaboration's Origins (1:01:04) Scaling the Sacred Place and Product Intuition (1:10:33) Lorde's XRAYS Drop and Designing for a Wide Range of Artists (1:17:26) 10K Unheard Songs and Whether Process Should be Seen (1:24:10) Brand, Trust, Alignment with Artists and the [studio] (1:30:54) The Word "Sacred" and Resisting the Feed (1:40:52) AI as an Instrument: Building Tools Artists Actually Want (1:49:27) Building a Company with Your Best Friend (1:56:31) Closing Questions: Dream Users, Rapid Fire Brackets, and Titles (2:08:52) Thanks Again to Notion

Full transcript and all links and references: ⁠dialectic.fm/ian-rogers⁠. Ian and I made a playlist with albums/songs mentioned here (Apple, Spotify). Ian Rogers (X, LinkedIn) is Chief Human Agency Officer of Ledger, the Paris-based security company whose hardware wallets secure much of the world's crypto. He now focuses on how Ledger can enable us to work with AI agents while maintaining our secrets and value. His career has spanned music, culture, brand, and "the technolog(ies) people are going to hate next." He built and ran the Beastie Boys web presence in the 90s before working on music on the internet for over a decade: file sharing Nullsoft (Gnutella and WinAmp), early streaming at Yahoo!, direct-to-fan commerce at Topspin, Beats Music, and finally Apple, as an abbreviated list. He then joined LVMH as its first Chief Digital Officer, working with Bernard Arnault and its many Maisons to bring them into the internet era. More recently, he joined Ledger to improve its product experience, including collaborating with Tony Fadell to create Ledger's flagship form factor, Ledger Stax. Ian's roots are skateboarding and music, which formed alongside a punk rock ideology while growing up in Indiana in the 1980s. I am glad to have captured a long conversation that covers the many flavors of Ian, and the threads that have persisted through his many lives. That includes: individuality; being a participant, not a spectator; what makes a scene; building brands; trying to help Kanye; and why new culture is always being made—it's just that you have to find the 1% that's awesome. Also: ushering forward and translating frontier technologies; being pushed by Jimmy Iovine; why security matters in the AI era; why AIs aren't people; what he wants to automate; learning to fail; advice on relationships across work, parenting, and love; and a whole lot of love for music—from his 2026 pick Twisted Teens to his desert island albums to tea with Paul McCartney. I hope you're inspired to participate in the world and make great things. Thanks to our friends at Ledger for hosting me. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:37) Intro to Ian & Thanks to Notion (5:22) Start: Tattoos, Individuality, and Punk Rock: Spectator vs Participant (16:44) What Makes a Scene? (25:24) New Culture, 99% of Everything is Garbage, Finding the 1% (40:09) Niche, Quality, and The Blockbuster vs. The Snowball (53:35) Brand, Selling Culture Before Product, and The Age of the Individual (1:08:12) Aggression, Patience, and Being Pushed (1:16:52) Translating New Technologies, Empowerment, and Agency (1:25:19) Interfaces, Ledger, Security, and Ideology (1:39:56) Ian's New Role: Chief Human Agency Officer (2:06:03) Seeing What is Real, Comfort Being Wrong, Chasing What's Fun and Cool (2:13:45) Lessons from Skateboarding and Favorite Albums (2:22:56) Working with Your Friends, Parenting, Love, and Remembering to Stay a Participant (2:35:47) Thanks Again to Notion

Zhengdong Wang (Website, X, LinkedIn) is an AI researcher based in London. He writes annual letters (inspired by Dan Wang), mainly about AI progress, and his 2025 letter blew me away and inspired me to meet him. In it, he describes his ‘compute theory of everything,’ and makes the case that it would be stranger if AI progress slowed down than if it continued. Put a different way, reading his letter helped me get closer to truly feeling the wave of AI progress. It took Zhengdong a long time to become “AGI-pilled,” despite years of feeling like he was late to AI and working as a research engineer for the last five. I talked to him about what it will take for the rest of us to see what he sees, and feel what he feels. We also discuss why AGI may be a hazier target than simply seeing AI progress as “the model does the eval,” and why recursive self-improvement may be both happening and less fantastical than it may seem. ZD makes the case that based on the rate of progress and scaling, skeptics will simply be proven right or wrong soon. We talk a bit through what narrative and political challenges the AI industry faces ahead of this transition. Then there are the implications of all of this—namely how AI progress accelerates the question of what we each value, how we will spend our time, and where we will find or create meaning. ZD takes a stab at some of those impossible questions and shares some other favorite miscellanea that is reflective of the range of his letters. I hope this conversation helps you feel the wave a bit yourself, and that you remember that, regardless of how much change lies ahead, we still get to make our meaning. We get to choose. Full transcript and all links: dialectic.fm/zhengdong --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:16) Intro to Zhengdong & Thanks to Notion (4:33) Start: Why Research: "I Just Want to Know" (12:25) The Model Does the Eval: AGI as a Moving Target, RSI, and Laser Beams (33:17) The Compute Theory of Everything and Feeling the Wave (53:17) The Myths AI Needs, Competition vs. Power Concentration, and Whether Progress Is Inevitable (1:13:42) "Who Could Possibly Compete?": Post-AGI Meaning, Work, and Questing (1:29:28) Are You Having Fun? Vacations, Mattering, and How to Live (1:47:13) Annual Letters, Economist Obituaries, London, and Burke (2:06:33) Closing & Thanks to Notion

Full transcript and all links: ⁠dialectic.fm/jack-conte⁠ Jack Conte (Patreon, YouTube, YouTube Pt2, X, LinkedIn) is the co-founder and CEO of Patreon. He is also a lifelong artist and musician, who at his peak released 100 music videos per year between his bands Pomplamoose (a duo with wife Nataly Dawn) and Scary Pockets (a funk collective), and was a longtime YouTuber. Jack is not a tech CEO who happens to like music. He is an obsessive, prolific artist whose first conventional job is running Patreon. This has shaped him as a founder and executive, and his mission at Patreon is to build an enduring and truly creator-first company that empowers creators to earn a living from their work. We began with how he manages to do it all, where his energy comes from, and what it’s like to be “post-chaos.” Then, we talked about art, content, and commerce, Patreon’s model (that isn’t actually pure patronage), and why Silicon Valley undervalues art, brand, and narrative — and Patreon. Jack shared the benefits of a business model that is fully aligned with creators, why he hates the word influencer, and why he’s still the right man for the job after 13 years of leading Patreon. We also covered what great leadership looks like, building fans and community, filmmaking, authenticity (from Charlie Kaufman to Prince), and remembering to take risks until the very end. I hope you’re inspired to make things you are proud of and to draw the next page even when you have no business doing so. While I have you: I’d strongly recommend Jack’s recent SXSW talk on AI, creativity, and change. -- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Learn more about Notion's new developer platform and workers here. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. -- Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:38) Intro to Jack & Thanks to Notion (3:44) Start: Prolific Output, Energy, Juggling, Endurance, and Becoming Post-Chaos (22:04) Combining Creativity and Business and Art vs. Content (33:21) Advertising vs. Membership & Patronage vs. Patreon (44:06) Jack's First and Only Job, and Silicon Valley's Undervaluing of Creativity, Brand, and Storytelling (and Patreon) (55:17) Building for Creators First, Incentive Alignment, Trust, 100 Years of Patreon, and Why Jack is the Right CEO for Now (1:04:49) Leadership: Types of Ambition, Obsession, Self Reflection, Bias to Action, Learning from Others (1:12:59) Talent vs. Enthusiasm, Being Proud of What You Make, Making Fans and Being True, Managing Parasociality, and Community (1:28:30) Filmmaking, Labels and Collectives vs Individuals, Breaking Patterns, Creative Intimacy, Music, Patreon's Origin, Persistence, Lucid Dreaming, and Taking Risks (1:49:26) Thanks Again to Notion

Nan Ransohoff (X, Substack, Website) is Head of Public Goods and former Head of Climate at Stripe. This includes Frontier (which she co-founded): an advance market commitment that accelerates carbon removal by guaranteeing demand for it before it exists. They also recently launched Intercept Fund, a new effort to end respiratory infections, led by Nan and Charlie Petty. Nan has written extensively about Stripe’s efforts and philanthropy broadly, including her call for general managers for the world’s pressing problems, and on what she calls the third wave of American philanthropy. We talk about what a "Nan" is and why we need GM’s: ambitious founder-like people who obsess over an outcome and work backwards from it, wearing whatever hat the problem requires. We discuss taste in big problems, slicing them up and making them tractable, and why vision is in short supply. We also discuss the coming wave of new philanthropic dollars (est. ~$40B/year), primarily driven by The OpenAI Foundation, Anthropic Founders, and Anthropic employee matching, and how the ecosystem will need to mature to effectively deploy this much capital. Nan also reflects on her unlikely turn toward philanthropy and what it felt like to get off the ladder of a specific kind of ambition. We wrap up with a range of miscellanea and some fun debates. I hope you are inspired to notice problems you can’t ignore, be optimistic and specific about the world you hope for, and choose an (unlikely) path that you are proud of. Transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/nan - Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Watch here for more on Notion's new developer platform and workers. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. - Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:15) Intro to Nan (3:18) Thanks to Notion (4:53) Start: What is a Nan? Nerd-Sniped by Orphaned Problems (12:39) GMs, Seeing the Chessboard, and Working Backwards from Outcomes (18:55) Good Taste in Problems, Vision, and Good Finish Lines (35:43) Advance Market Commitments Tactically Solving Carbon Removal (41:35) Focus and Sketching Out or Slicing Up Messy Problems (49:39) Legibility, Public Rallying, and Ambition in Philanthropy (54:38) Third Wave Philanthropy and Hard to Quantify Problems (1:06:50) Risk Tolerance in Philanthropy and Scarcity of Funders and Allocators (1:15:22) The $40B Tidal Wave of New AI-Money and Why Start Now (1:19:53) Amount of Capital, Government Philanthropy, and Making Philanthropic Founders Rich (1:31:44) Nan's Mid-Career Inflection Point and Getting Off the Obvious Path (1:39:47) Grab-bag: Why Stripe Funds Public Goods, Making Things with Friends, Creative Partnership, Iceland Drone, and Scone Heads (1:49:39) Syllabi for the Squishy Topics & Study vs. Experience (1:57:01) Inputs & Outputs and GLPs for Attention (2:04:38) Closing: Interviewing Parents and Imagining an Obituary (2:09:58) Thanks Again to Notion

Tyler Cowen (Website, X, Marginal Revolution, Conversations with Tyler) is an economist at George Mason University, leads the Mercatus Center, and is the author of many books including The Great Stagnation and Average Is Over. He has blogged nearly daily at Marginal Revolution for over 20 years, has interviewed hundreds of world-experts on Conversations with Tyler, and runs Emergent Ventures, a prolific grants program that has funded multiple Dialectic guests. Nabeel S. Qureshi (Website, X, Substack) is an entrepreneur, writer, and researcher. He runs a stealth startup. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at Mercatus and spent nearly eight years at Palantir. He writes some of my favorite essays, including "What Makes Art Great" and "Rented Virtue", and was previously a guest on Dialectic for episode 13: "The Will to Care." Tyler and Nabeel are good friends, and given how prolific Tyler is, I decided to use Nabeel as an entry point and interview them together. We discuss sacred commitments, AI acceleration, mentorship, friendship, and more, but I focused the majority of the conversation on art and aesthetics. Tyler and Nabeel are unlikely aesthetes given their day jobs, but in fact take art deeply seriously. They have a shared love for and similar tastes in art, music, and film, in particular. We discuss strange and beautiful art, aesthetic stagnation, and a wide range of favorites: The Beatles, Mozart, Mondrian, Springsteen, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West, Cassavetes, The Sopranos, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and more. Please enjoy, and thank you for supporting, listening, and watching through fifty episodes of Dialectic. I can't wait for the next fifty! Transcript and all links: dialectic.fm/tyler-nabeel --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Learn more about Notion's new developer platform and workers here. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:18) Intro to Tyler & Nabeel (3:02) Thanks to Notion (4:38) Start: Sacred Commitments, AI, Markets, and Acceleration (20:23) How Art Moves Us (27:08) "Beauty," Strangeness, Great Art, Music, and The Beatles (44:09) Film, Critics, Learning to Appreciate Depth, More Music, "Lowbrow" Art (1:02:25) New Aesthetics, Sources of Inspiration, Optimism & Pessimism (1:11:22) The Internet & Twitter's Virtue, Group Chats, and Cities (1:21:35) Mentors, (Possibly Quitting) Writing Books, Friendship (1:34:54) Interviewing, Identifying Talent, and Agency (1:47:21) Closing Questions (1:53:38) Thanks Again to Notion

Jasmine Sun (Substack, X, LinkedIn) is an independent writer and journalist. She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and also writes for other major publications, like The New York Times. She previously led core product at Substack. Jasmine focuses on Silicon Valley and AI, and is something of a participant observer, living among the strange and inspiring people pulling the future forward in San Francisco. In her writing, she plays to both sides: focusing on a more endemic audience with her newsletter while telling the broader world about what she learns in flagship pieces for major publications. Several of these anchor around memes that she thinks may deeply matter: “the permanent underclass,” “chinese peptides,” and “claude code psychosis,” to name a few. Jasmine has done many interviews about these individual topics, so I wanted to focus on her and her approach: playing to both audiences, her taste in questions and topics, doing both “serious” journalism and more personal writing, how going independent wasn’t so risky, what she admires in great writing, AI and her coming “AlphaGo moment,” China, and more. Please enjoy. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams think together and create their best work. Learn more about Notion’s new developer platform and workers here. Check out Brian’s X/Twitter sync worker. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic. Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:30) Intro to Jasmine (2:13) Thanks to Notion (3:24) Start: Being a "Historian of Vibe" and Learning to Look (15:00) Taste for Questions & The Depth Behind Memes (24:28) Translating Between Silicon Valley and The World (40:27) Substack vs. "Serious" Journalism and Integrity as a Writer (47:35) Integrity when Using AI and the AlphaGo Question (58:42) Strategy Across Publications & Maximizing an Idea's Reach (1:06:45) Going Independent, Risk, and Commercial Tradeoffs (1:24:35) Great Writing: Style, Voice, and Resisting Summary (1:35:35) Literary Inspirations, Favorite Essays, Writing vs. Thinking, and Getting Better (1:51:09) Writing to Publish, Authenticity, and Art (2:00:38) Grab Bag: China, Silicon Valley's Virtues and Problems, AI Transition, The Relational Economy, Parties, Debates, Self Belief, and More (2:35:16) Thanks Again to Notion Select Articles From Jasmine Silicon Valley is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass (NYT) ‘Chinese Peptides’ Are the Latest Biohacking Trend in the Tech World (NYT) Claude code psychosis (Substack) Notes on AI, labor, and China (Substack) America against china against america (Substack) The Human Skill That Eludes AI (The Atlantic)