PODCAST · business
Dialectic
by Jackson Dahl
Conversational portraits of original people, across technology, media, business, and creativity. By Jackson Dahl.
Episodes
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61: Josh Miller - A Good Rectangle
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…
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60: Patrick Hsu - Speedrunning the Infinite Game
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...
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59: Joe Gebbia - Design We Deserve
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…
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58: Adam Mastroianni - Let Me Be Useful
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,”…
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57: Immad Akhund - The Art of Irrational Effort
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...
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Independent Study: Personal Renewal by John W. Gardner (Speech)
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...
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56: Miles Grimshaw - Back Down the Mountain
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…
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Independent Study: Art is For Seeing Evil by Agnes Callard (Essay)
“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,...
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55: Dan Lilienthal & José Chayet - As [untitled] as it Comes
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...
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54: Ian Rogers - Never a Spectator
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…
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53: Zhengdong Wang - Feeling the Wave
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...
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52: Jack Conte - Draw the Next Page
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…
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51: Nan Ransohoff - Power Laws for Philanthropy
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…
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50: Tyler Cowen & Nabeel Qureshi - An Appetite For More
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,...
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49: Jasmine Sun - Close Enough to See Clearly
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...
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48: Henri Stern - Principled Enough to Be Pragmatic
Henri Stern (X, LinkedIn) is the co-founder and CEO of Privy. Privy builds wallet infrastructure for developers, enabling them to let their users hold and use crypto, including stablecoins. Privy was acquired by Stripe in 2025, and remain an independent organization within the company. They work...
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47: Paul Scherer - A Friend That Brings Us Closer
Paul Scherer (X, LinkedIn) is the founder of Eigen (check out their beautiful website), where he’s building a mutual friend: an AI that brings people closer together and helps us belong. Paul grew up in a small town outside of Frankfurt, Germany, and dropped out of high school at seventeen to…
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46: Nicole Seah (Nix) - Loving What is Real
Nicole Seah (X, Substack, LinkedIn), aka Nix, is a writer at Starting From Nix and investor at Costanoa Ventures. She recently launched New Ontologies, where she profiles founders and companies thinking ambitiously about the future. Her first piece is live now, on Ando: the team building a chat...
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45: Nicholas Thompson - A Life of Long Form
Nicholas Thompson (Website, X, LinkedIn, Wikipedia) is the CEO of The Atlantic, an elite distance runner, and the author of The Running Ground—a memoir about his father, his life, and the sport of running. Full transcript and all links at dialectic.fm/nick-thompson. Nick has led The Atlantic to...
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44: Jared Weinstein - Within Earshot, Out of Camera Shot
Jared Weinstein (LinkedIn, X) is an investor, advisor, civic leader, and founder of Overton. This is his first interview. Full transcript and all links at dialectic.fm/jared-weinstein. Jared spent his twenties in the George W. Bush White House, starting as a scheduling intern and rising to become...
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43: Mario Gabriele - Reality is Story-Shaped
All links and transcript at dialectic.fm/mario-gabriele Mario Gabriele (X) is a writer, investor, and analyst. He is founder of The Generalist and Partner at Hummingbird. He aims to bring the rigor of investment analysis with writing quality and style that is closer to the New Yorker. His…
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42: Celine Nguyen - Nurturing Your Mind in Public
All links and transcript available at dialectic.fm/celine-nguyen Celine Nguyen (Website, Substack, X) is a writer, software designer at Watershed, and literary critic. She writes personal canon, a newsletter about literature, design, art, and technology that has grown to tens of thousands of...
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41: Henrik Karlsson: Strolling Through Life's Labrynths
Transcript and all linked references: https://dialectic.fm/henrik-2 Henrik Karlsson (Substack, X) is a writer and essayist. His newsletter, Escaping Flatland, explores attention, agency, relationships, and the inner life of making things. He is one of my favorite essayists, and I spoke to him...
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Independent Study: Body Futurism by Toby Shorin (Essay)
A new experiment: I thought it would be fun to share audio versions of essays or writing from past or future Dialectic guests. Toby Shorin (ep. 7: The Shapes of Culture) recently published 'Body Futurism,' a piece based on a talk I heard him give in 2024 and that I loved. You can read this piece…
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40: Charles Broskoski - Everything is Personal
All links and transcript: dialectic.fm/cab Are.na channel for this episode: are.na/jackson-dahl/dialectic-cab Charles Broskoski (Website, Are.na, X), aka Cab, is an artist turned entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO of Are.na, a platform for collecting, connecting, and self-directed learning. I...
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39: Andrew Reed - Don't Flinch
Full transcript and links: https://dialectic.fm/andrew-reed. Andrew Reed (X, Website, Sequoia) is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital, where he has invested in companies including Robinhood, Figma, Klarna, Phantom, Vanta, and ElevenLabs. He is quietly one of the best growth investors of his...
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38: Molly Mielke McCarthy - The Art of Peopling
Transcript and all links: dialectic.fm/mmm Molly Mielke McCarthy (Website, X, Substack) is an investor, writer, and founder of Moth Fund, an early-stage fund focused on backing "moths": quirky, quiet, mission-driven founders who are often underpriced by traditional venture capital. Molly's career...
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37: Trevor McFedries - Creative People Should Be Rich
All linked references & transcript available at dialectic.fm/trevor-mcfedries. Trevor McFedries (X, Instagram, Wikipedia) is a musician, technologist, and entrepreneur. Today he is the founder of Runner and 1/2 of electronic dance duo SoFTT. Previously, Trevor was co-founder and CEO of Brud, the...
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36: C. Thi Nguyen - Measurement, Meaning, and Play
Full episode transcript and all linked references available at https://dialectic.fm/c-thi-nguyen. C. Thi Nguyen (Website, Philpeople.org, X) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah focused on values, games, agency, art, aesthetics, and data. His new book, The Score: How to Stop...
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35: Brie Wolfson - Loving Attention & Ease in Craft
Full transcript and all links: https://dialectic.fm/brie-wolfson Brie Wolfson (X) is a marketer, writer, storyteller, and curator. She’s Chief Marketing Officer of Positive Sum & Colossus, where she works closely with CEO Patrick O’Shaughnessy across investing and media and spearheaded Colossus...
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34: Ryo Lu - It's All the Same Thing
All links and transcript at dialectic.fm/ryo-lu Ryo Lu (Website, X) is the head of Design at Cursor. Prior, he was a designer at Notion, Stripe, and Asana, working on some of the most influential software tools of the last decade. He is now focused on building the next generation of tools for...
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33: TBPN (John Coogan & Jordi Hays) - Inside Tech's Water Cooler
John Coogan & Jordi Hays are the hosts of TBPN (X, YouTube, Spotify, Substack), a daily live show covering the technology business. TBPN was launched only about a year ago, but has become a mainstay in tech culture and a center of gravity forterminally online technologists. John was previously an...
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32: Chris Sacca - Drifting Back to Real
Chris Sacca is an investor and founder of Lowercarbon Capital and Lowercase Capital. Prior to becoming an investor, Chris grew up in Buffalo, NY; studied around the world by way of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service; turned his student loans in $12M in the tech bubble of 2000 before losing…
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31: Gabe Whaley - Playing the Crowd & Outlasting the Hype
Gabe Whaley is co-founder and CEO of MSCHF (Instagram, Wikipedia), the art collective, fashion and footwear brand, startup, and fill-in-the-blank, famous for its viral products and cultural interventions. A few notable works include Jesus Shoes (Nike Air Max filled with holy water), Severed Spots...
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30: David Senra - The Clarity of Commitment
David Senra (Website, X) is a podcaster and loves that title more than anyone. He hosts Founders, where he teaches the lessons of history's greatest entrepreneurs by way of the biographies he reads of them. This week, he launched a second show, David Senra, where he talks to the greatest living...
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29: Billy Oppenheimer - Attuned to Clues
Billy Oppenheimer (Website, X) is a researcher and writer who works closely with Ryan Holiday and Rick Rubin, and publishes the “Six at 6” newsletter. Billy is also working on his first book, The Work is the Win. We kick off by discussing one of my favorite new ideas: "looking for clues," a…
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28: Maxwell Meyer - Starships & Road Trips
Maxwell Meyer (X, Newsletter) is the founder and editor of Arena Magazine, an "American Propaganda" print and digital publication focused on technology, capitalism, and civilizational progress. Max also works with Joe Lonsdale at 8VC and is the proprietor of his Iowan farm, Henry Hills. He was...
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27: Mackenzie Burnett - Accounting for the American Dream
Mackenzie Burnett (Website, X) is the co-founder and CEO of Ambrook, financial software for independent businesses starting with farms and ranches. We trace her arc from a policy-first upbringing (USDA household, Congressional internships, climate-security research at Stanford) to a building...
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26: Cyan Banister - A Fool’s Dérive
Cyan Banister (Website, X, Substack) is an investor, artist, and co-founder and General Partner of Long Journey Ventures. Previously, Cyan spent four years at Founders Fund and has a legendary angel investing track record alongside her husband, Scott, including early rounds in SpaceX, Uber, and...
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25: Reggie James - Our Infinite Mirrors (Live at FWB Fest)
Reggie James (Substack, X) is a designer, writer, and entrepreneur. Reggie previously founded Eternal and recently edited and published Hardware 2024, a book highlighting recent attempts at creating a different hardware future. This conversation happened live on stage at FWB Fest 2025 in…
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24: Linus Lee - Engineering for Aliveness
Linus Lee (Website, X) is a builder, engineer, and writer who explores how software can amplify our abilities, humanity, and agency. He builds, researches, and advises on AI at Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm, and continues to write and hack on personal projects. Previously,...
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23: Tamara Winter - Tacit Trust & Caring Curiosity
Tamara Winter (X) is the Commissioning Editor of Stripe Press, where she exercises her taste to identify the knowledge and "ideas for progress" that matter most in alignment with Stripe's mission: to increase the GDP of the internet. "Tammy" worked at the Charter Cities Institute and the Mercatus...
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22: Nadia Asparouhova - Ideas that Infect
Nadia Asparouhova (Website, X, Substack) is a writer and researcher who has spent much of her career in service of the question: 'what's happening here?' across various parts of the internet. Nadia recently published her newest book, Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading. She explores why...
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21: Geoffrey Litt: Software You Can Shape
Geoffrey Litt (Website, X) is a designer, engineer, writer, and researcher at Ink & Switch, where he champions malleable software: the idea that ordinary people should be able to mold the digital tools they rely on every day. Ink & Switch is an independent research lab focused on how computers…
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20: Yancey Strickler - Constellations of Creativity
Yancey Strickler (Website, X, Metalabel) is a writer, entrepreneur, creative, and founder of Metalabel, a network and platform that allows creative people to release work together. He is also a board member, co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter and is currently working on establishing a new...
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19: Henrik Karlsson - Cultivating a Life that Fits
Full transcript and all links: dialectic.fm/henrik-karlsson Henrik Karlsson (Substack, X) is an independent writer focused on "writing a few good essays." Two of them are among my most consistently recommended: on designing your life and finding your wife (or husband). Henrik's always written…
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18: Tom Morgan - Wisdom in the Woo
Tom Morgan (X, Substack) is a "curiosity sherpa," writer, and podcaster who runs The Leading Edge, a community for leaders focused on personal transformation and authenticity. I first encountered Tom and his ideas during his talk at Sohn on Iain McGilchrist, left vs. right brain, and curiosity.…
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17: Alex Danco - Innovation Begins with Gifts
Alex Danco (Website, X, Substack) is a writer and Product Director at Shopify. Alex rose to prominence while writing his Snippets newsletter while at VC firm Social Capital in 2015. He wrote prolifically—about markets and financial systems, venture capital, startups, cities, culture, the...
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16: Anjan Katta - A Sunrise Over Computing
Anjan Katta (X) is Founder and CEO of Daylight, a new type of computer company. Having a conversation with Anjan is a bit like trying reign in a wild animal: his horsepower, wide-ranging philosophical interests, and unbelievable depth in the areas he cares about make him one of a kind.…
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15: D.A. Wallach - Serendipity & Systems
D.A. Wallach (Website, X, Substack, Spotify) is an investor, musician, writer, and polymath. Today he co-runs Time BioVentures, backing frontier life-science and healthcare startups. Before that, he was an investor in in SpaceX, Spotify, Emulate, Beam Therapeutics, and Ripple, among others, and...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Conversational portraits of original people, across technology, media, business, and creativity. By Jackson Dahl.
HOSTED BY
Jackson Dahl
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Dialectic have?
Dialectic currently has 63 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Dialectic about?
Conversational portraits of original people, across technology, media, business, and creativity. By Jackson Dahl.
How often does Dialectic release new episodes?
Dialectic has 63 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Dialectic?
You can listen to Dialectic on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Dialectic?
Dialectic is created and hosted by Jackson Dahl.
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