RadReads 128 — Mini-Issue
This Week: T, I, (and semicolon) shaped professionals; a Podcast bonanza
Good Morning, RadReaders!
👋 Paternity leave has been a blissful (though somewhat stir-crazy inducing) dream and I found some time to crank out another mini-issue. It’s heavy on the podcasts, because I’m mostly bouncing around the apartment rocking Amelie to sleep. And New Yorkers, don’t miss Happy Hour on 7/25, sign up here!
Thank you, to our new patrons (Chris ⚡️, Dan 🔥) — click here to join the squad or the button below.
Semicolon-Shaped People
8 mins | Breaking Smart with Venkatesh Rao | (Plus Khe’s Response at Bottom)
I woke up last Saturday to an e-mail newsletter, challenging not one, but two of my deeply-held beliefs: T-Shaped Individuals and Deep Work.
I’ve often spoken about striving to be a T-Shaped individual (including here, with Patrick O’Shaughnessy) My embrace (and borderline evangelism) of Deep Work has even frustrated some of my friends as I’ve created extremely strict and precise boundaries around huge chunks of my life (not to mention tons of hacks to fight distraction). As a result, I’m typically unresponsive to texts/emails and significantly limit my meetings each day. So how do I feel when my one of my internet man-crushes states:
“I personally find T-shaped people boring.”
[Read the rest of my rant, covering Kanye West, Bitcoin, and Full-Stack Freelancers, 3 more mins]
“Is this all there is?” with Kate Bednarski
67 Minutes | iTunes | Google Play | Show Notes | Rad Awakenings Podcast
I often get asked the questions: What is a life coach? What does life coaching consist of? Does it work? Meet my coach, Kate Bednarski, hands down one of the most impactful people in my life. I’ve asked Kate to throw out all patient confidentiality constraints and crack open all of her notes from our coaching sessions.
We start with our first meeting, where I showed up “jacked up on caffeine” a 34 year old guy rife with many internal tensions. I had a messed up relationship with time — there was never enough, yet I wanted to accomplish so much that it was affecting my marriage and relationship with my daughter. I was also in the midst of a successful career in hedge funds, yet lived from a scarcity perspective, clinging to the belief that delayed gratification was the only way to live and that money was the ultimate scoreboard for life. At the end, as you guys will know, most of these anxieties emanated from a deep rooted fear of my own mortality. Kate coaches many hard-charging, high achievers, many of whom reach inflection points in their career and find themselves asking “Is this all there is?” Read more about Kate’s amazing work at 5 Stepping Stones.
More Podcasts!
Rocking sleeping baby = tons of podcast listening (H/T: @BabyAmelie)
🎸 Song Exploder: The Postal Service (15 Mins): Such a fun and short pod deconstructing great music. Main link goes to an episode with Postal Service, this one with The National is great too. (The latter’s performing in NYC soon)
🍽 Longform Podcast: Samin Nosrat (60 mins): I’m not really into cooking, but immediately bought “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” after listening. It’s effectively a mental model for cooking, transcending genres/cuisines. And Samin just seems Rad AF.
💚 Rad Awakenings with Srini Rao: (60 mins): A self-proclaimed “late bloomer,” Rao was a “failure in his 20s” and went on to build a digital media powerhouse.
😷 Avik Roy and Ezra Klein debate the Senate GOP’s health bill (60 mins): Delightfully informative, and some respectful, fact-oriented debate between a conservative and progressive. Sigh, why can’t all politics be like this?
💉 Charlie Rose: Keith ‘Bang Bang’ McCurdy (14 mins): Keith is the tattoo artist for the stars (and to my knowledge, two RadReaders including yours truly have been tattooed at this shop). It’s also funny to watch Charlie Rose ask some BASIC Tattoo questions.
📖 New Yorker Fiction: Mary Gaitskill Reads John Cheever (60 mins): I’ve recently discovered the short stories of John Cheever. This one starts tame, until it takes quite a turn.
💸 Capital Allocators with Ted Seides: Thomas Russo Buy and Hold, and Then What (60 mins): What does it take to hold a stock for a decade (hint: the capacity for suffering).
