PODCAST
You Probably Shouldn't Read This
by David Gaynor
Unlike most of the internet, these words might make you happier. gaynor.substack.com
Episodes
-
Ep 66: Can you trust strangers?
How do I know when I can trust someone? If someone cold emails me and says "Hey David, I have a project you're really interested in, I'd love to chat", I'll likely ignore it. But if the same person tells me that same thing, face-to-face, at a conference, I'll happily take a meeting. Something…
more -
Dreaming about Team
The other day I was talking with some friends the source of our, respective, passions. Many of us have worked on startups, so building a good product came up. However, as we discussed further, it became clear that a product, as a source of passion, only went so far. One friend commented that he...
-
Ep 65: Good community, bad community
Communities are great. Usually. A "good" community can help us to transcend our naturally selfish instincts to work together as a team. They incentivize us to do things for others in return for status. Status, the positive regard of others, is something we all want and it's fortunate that earning...
-
Ep 64: Being Right To Death
There are many reasons I read. Sometimes I read for action. I want some new piece of knowledge that will change my behavior in some way. I might read about a programming problem I'm struggling with and try a new strategy as a result. Other times I read for entertainment. I want to consume…
more -
Ep 63: Mental Resets as a Service
I've written a lot in the last year about mental and emotional resets. Long time readers may remember a post discussing sleep as a convenient emotional reset. I talked about changing who we spend time with as a way to reset parts of our personality. I wrote about how meditating in a spa is an...
-
Ep 62: Sometimes I forget my Friends are Normal Too
I have some friends who consistently impress me with their cheerfulness. I'm amazed that they are able to maintain a cheerful demeanor through almost any problem. No matter how many plans go awry, these people are always able to find the silver lining. Or even when none is found, they are…
more -
Ep 61: Developing the Status Economy
The great crash of 1929 was a disaster. But it wasn't really a humanitarian disaster. It was a status disaster. During the 6 years after the great depression US life expectancy actually went up. The reality was that, by 1929, America had a powerful transportation network, advanced food growing...
-
Ep 60: The Benefits of Defeatism
I’m something of a defeatist. This might seem like a surprising statement. I like solving hard problems. I'll find creative solutions, work long hours, and do what is needed to get things done. I work on challenges that other people have given up on. That might not sound defeatist, but defeatism...
-
Ep 59: Castle for a Zithern
If it wasn't obvious from the title, this post is about Chinese names for foreign cities. Recently I was with a friend traveling through Scotland. When we're together we end up spending a lot of time talking about how weird the world is. We've both lived in lots of different countries, including...
-
Ep 58: Control Theory and a Stable Society
In college, as a "roboticist" I had to study controls. Like, how to control a robotic arm electronically. Controls is an important and interesting field, whose lessons are pretty hard to distill into one sentence, but I'll give it a shot: Never use positive feedback. Ok not never, but there are...
-
Ep 57: Digital Nationalism
Imagine this super sweet product: A subscription service that makes it safer and easier than ever for you and your family to travel and reside around the world. Includes clubhouses in most major cities. Check in any time for a safe, convenient place to meet other members. Includes educational...
-
Ep 56: The Joy of Being Inconsistent 2 (I changed my mind)
Yesterday I published an essay on how being around other people forces me to tell a story about myself that I don't like. I, as a normal human being (more or less) cannot be easily described in a few words or sentences. However, that is what we, as normal human beings, try to do when we're around...
-
Ep 55: The Joy of Being Inconsistent
This year was the first time I've lived with roommates for a while. While I definitely get joy out of living with those I care about, I also really, really like living alone. I have many reasons for this. For one I like owning basically nothing. My apartment in Oakland had no furniture other than...
-
Ep 54: Faith and Moonshots
Tonight I had dinner with a few friends, two of whom were structural engineers. For those who, like me, don't know the difference between a structural engineer and an architect, they described themselves as the people who make architects dreams come true. Or at least their building related ones....
-
Ep 52: A revolution you might not want to be part of
A few days ago I was playing a board game with some friends called Birmingham Brass. It's a game where each player is a captain of industry building out a capitalistic empire during the industrial revolution. Aside from being a fun game that I lost pretty badly, it also reminded me about how bad...
-
Ep 51: Changing minds to change the world
The world has a lot of problems today. From Global Warming, to nationalism, racism and overpopulation. Some places have rising crime rates, many previously flourishing nations are in decline. When you look at the solutions that are being proposed to these problems by governments and individuals,...
-
Ep 50: Outdated tech, outdated tech culture
Now, having studied 2 foreign languages that don't use the latin alphabet I've started to wonder how the english writing system got so messed up. Japanese, Chinese and Swahili, all use a phonetic writing system where words are pronounced exactly as they appear. Every character indicates a sound…
more -
Ep 49: The Circle of Change
Over the past few months, as many of my readers will know, I've been interested in what causes people to change. I've come to realize that most changes I observe in my life come from one of two sources: Source 1 is knowledge: Knowledge changes my life when I have experience in a domain and a...
-
Ep 48: Incongruity, My Dad's Office, Karaoke
Today, during a Zoom call with a friend, I joked that Zoom should let you customize your meeting room, the same way folks decorate their offices. In this world of remote working it seems like a shame to have to give up the mug with "world’s best boss", pictures of your family and framed...
-
Ep 47: Just Another Old Building in Tokyo
Today I went on a mission to try on some new Sennheiser Momentum 2 headphones. I'm trying to find a pair of noise cancelling headphones before flying to the UK, so I can jam out mid-flight These Sennheiser phones are pretty expensive, so I wanted to make sure they actually fit comfortably in my...
-
Ep 46: A Night at the Sento
Earlier tonight I went to a Sento. A Sento is just a Japanese public bath. Well, the way I say that it sounds like a public bath is no big deal, but that's wrong, it's a really big deal. Public baths, in addition to being, at one time, a massive innovation in public health are also super nice. We...
-
Ep 45: Let me Sleep on It
Last night I went out to dinner with a friend. We both had a long day so we were looking for something to distract us. I wanted to walk, she wanted to eat, so we meandered until she saw a restaurant that looked good. The restaurant was situated in a quiet neighborhood, beautiful and nearly empty....
-
Ep 44: Crying, Running and Making Good Decisions
Over the weekend I was running around a beautiful lake and, unsurprisingly, there were other people doing the same thing. One of these people was a woman with her daughter. The daughter was probably 6 years old, and was crying the entire time as she ran after her mom. Surely her mom was…
more -
Ep 43: The Secret Rules of Art
Over the weekend I went with a friend of mine to visit her brother's art exhibit, which was on display in a prominent art museum in Nagano. The twist is, her brother is 12, and he has Down Syndrome. Well, it wasn't a twist for me, I know her brother already and have been to his other exhibits....
-
Ep 42: Why I need to leave the house more often
This weekend I learned that it’s important for me to leave the house every once in a while. I went with a friend out to the countryside, saw a really cool art exhibit, stayed in a wonderful hostel and was awake the whole night because of a mosquito. These are things that don’t normally transpire…
more -
Ep 41: Judgement Day
If you've talked to me in the last few years you've probably heard me whine about judgement. By judgement I mean labelling someone or something as a worse than yourself. I'm allergic to this kind of thinking. The more I do it the sadder I get. Judging is useful for making sure we don't waste time...
-
Ep 40: What Facebook and Franz Ferdinand Have in Common
History seems to be a constant struggle between centralization and dissemination of power. Normally we think about centralization of power as something a government does, however the most powerful force in this regard is actually technology. Nearly every piece of technology ever created served to...
-
Ep 39: Guerrilla Learning
Recently I've been running some online groups where my friends and I work together to to answer one question: what do I want? They were inspired by a realization that we had around the start of Covid: We know more about basically everything than we do ourselves We could talk for hours about…
more -
Ep 38: Education is the new MVP
In tech, MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) are talked about a lot.An MVP is whatever product takes the least amount of work to build while allowing you to test demand.Sometimes MVPs are technical, like perhaps a website made with Wix.However, MVPS are often non-technical. In fact, usually you'd…
more -
Ep 37: How To Succeed When You've Already Failed.
One of the most frustrating things that I learned while working in education is that there is no quick fix for students who have been let down by the American school system. By 10th grade the average student of color has received $26,000 less in education investment than the average white…
more -
Ep 36: Racism and Cold Showers
Climate change and racial injustice are two big problems the US is struggling with. Both have the potential to destroy our society if left unchecked. And I think we can learn a bit by comparing how we deal with each. You may have read at some point about the different drastic changes we could…
more -
Ep 35: Why Wearing Glasses Makes You Smarter
I think identity plays a much bigger part in change than I thought, on a personal and societal level. Today I’m talking about people, tomorrow I’ll talk about society. Identity is basically a magical thing which allows us to derive joy and energy in arbitrary things. When you do something that...
-
Ep 34: Economic Propaganda
Recently I've been thinking about how certain countries went from totally impoverished to "developed" in the last 80 years. In particular, Japan, Singapore, China and, more recently, Malaysia, come to mind. 60 years ago China had nothing. Its infrastructure was ravaged by wars, it's agriculture…
more -
Ep 33: Identity and Ikigai
Would you shape your identity around your work if it would let you live to 100? Probably not, but still, happiness and longevity are definitely related. Japan has second longest life expectancy, and lots of people who mainly identify by their work. These people also seem to enjoy their work…
more -
Ep 31: Don't Predict, Build.
Trying out a new way of doing audio on Substack— sorry the quality isn’t great, but I swear the content is! And now I have transcripts!This is re-run of an episode I recorded before that never actually uploaded. How are the best products made? Are they the result of a brilliant seer who predicts...
-
33: Individualism and Ikigai
Japan has this concept of Ikigai, which loosely translated means “purpose for life”. For many people Ikigai is associated with their job. Those folks tend to work longer hours, for more years and, weirdly enough, live a lot longer than average. What’s up? This is a public episode. If you would…
more -
Ep 30: Identity and Change
Our lives are stable when joy + energy = fear + friction. We experience positive change when we do something to increase joy or energy, or decrease fear or friction. But how can we affect this kind of change? The answer, I think, is in the magic of identity change. This is a public episode. If…
more -
Ep 29: Dr. McGyver
What is the balance between proper medical care and practicality? How did we go so many months in Covid-land before we started recommending people to make masks out of t-shirts? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes…
more -
Ep 28: You can't spell Job without Jo(y)
Ok the title is a stretch, but the topic is great: Would I rather have a job that is 90% stuff I hate and 10% stuff I love or a job that is 100% meh? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gaynor.substack.com
-
Ep 27: Organic Entertainment
Organic foods are popular because inorganic foods pump too much tasty salt and sugar into us. Organic shampoo is popular because normal shampoo has sulfates that actually make our hair too clean. Do we need organic media as well? Does today’s media introduce too much much excitement and…
more -
Ep 26: Friendships, Challenge and Zoom
How can I build meaningful friendships? If you can answer that, my next question is, how do I do that over Zoom? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gaynor.substack.com
-
Ep 25: Plan-less Goals, Goal-less Plans and Other Bad Ideas.
Goals without Plans -> Urgency Plans without Goals -> Anxiety No thank you! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gaynor.substack.com
-
Ep 24: Irrationally Happy
When I try to logically justify the things that make me happy I build bad logical habits that cause problems in other parts of my life. I don’t need to justify what makes me happy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...
-
Ep 23: Knowledge Inheritance
What useful ideas or knowledge will I be able to pass on to the next generation? Will there be anything I learn that will still be relevant in 60-80 years?Note: I kind of botched the explanation about conservative communists. The point is, at some point it was conservative to be communist, but…
more -
Ep 22: Tell me how to be happy!
Beyond food and shelter, is there advice we can give to any arbitrary person that will make them happier? What does the life equivalent of the Paleo diet look like? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...
-
21: Onsens and Other Magical Things
Exercise, cold showers and healthy meals are things that I can add into my day to immediately get energy and clarity— with no apparent downsides. I just discovered that hot baths (particularly if they’re in a natural hot spring) have the same effect. What else am I missing out on? This is a…
more -
Ep 20: Purple Turkeys and other Creative Things
What does it be mean to be creative? What is the difference between productivity and creativity? Productivity = Energy + FearCreativity = Energy + Fearlessness This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...
-
Ep 19: Change who you are, not what you do.
We are often told something along the lines of “You can’t change who you are, but you can change the decisions you make”. However, reality is pretty much the exact opposite of that. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,...
-
Ep 18: A 100% Organic Podcast
Why do I use some organic products but not others? How do we end up with non-organic products in the first place given that they’re more complicated and often more expensive to produce? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus...
-
Ep 17: It's Just Semantics
I love semantics, and I think it’s really important. Two cautionary tales for when semantics goes wrong. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gaynor.substack.com
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Unlike most of the internet, these words might make you happier.
gaynor.substack.com
HOSTED BY
David Gaynor
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does You Probably Shouldn't Read This have?
You Probably Shouldn't Read This currently has 66 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is You Probably Shouldn't Read This about?
Unlike most of the internet, these words might make you happier. gaynor.substack.com
How often does You Probably Shouldn't Read This release new episodes?
You Probably Shouldn't Read This has 66 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to You Probably Shouldn't Read This?
You can listen to You Probably Shouldn't Read This 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 You Probably Shouldn't Read This?
You Probably Shouldn't Read This is created and hosted by David Gaynor.
URL copied to clipboard!