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Dialectic

Jackson Dahl

Conversational portraits of original people, across technology, media, business, and creativity. By Jackson Dahl.


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  • 27 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 58 min
  • English

Episodes 27

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  • #42
    March 30 · 2 hr 19 min

    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 subscribers. She has also written for The Atlantic, Asterisk Magazine, and more. I discovered Celine with her reflection on two years of writing her newsletter, where she made the case for living a life of the mind, reading great things, and writing online: "After 2 years, I’m convinced that reading and writing are the most dignified and worthy activities that anyone can do—and, in fact, are activities that everyone should do." She also has written viral essays on research as a leisure activity and a case for reading Marcel Proust’s 3,000 page novel, In Search of Lost Time. In another favorite, she critically analyzes the mechanics of how great writers begin. Celine makes intellectual life and very serious books feel accessible and exciting rather than obligatory. We spoke about much of her writing, taking your intellectual growth seriously outside of academia, and how she has become an influencer in a good way. She believes you can expand the market for what you love, and her success is evidence that there is a market for more than the low-hanging fruit that dominates much of the internet. Celine sees reading and writing through the lens of becoming, and I was inspired to raise my own bar. I hope you can say the same. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams create their best work. Notion recently launched custom agents: helpful AI teammates that handle recurring work across your entire suite of tools. Automate you and your team’s repetitive tasks so you can focus on the deep work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic, and check out their latest round of updates here. --- Timestamps: (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:35) Intro to Celine (4:25) Thanks to Notion (6:18) Start: Pursuing a Life of the Mind, Personal Curriculum, and Contextualizing the Present in History (24:53) Research as a Leisure, Self-Cultivation, and Calibrating Rigor (39:59) Effectiveness, Tools & Process, and Letting Output Drive Your Learning (59:35) Parasocially Influencing People to Do Good Things (Like Reading and Writing) (1:09:39) Drawing the Reader in and Expanding the Market for What You Love (and for Proust) (1:24:07) Aspiration, Posing, and Pretending Your Way into Enthusiasm (1:34:37) Preparation is Not Progress (1:46:07) Copying, Writing Process, Mechanics, and Design (1:57:25) Commitment, Finishing, Substack, Life Extension and Closing (2:18:31) Thanks Again to Notion

  • March 15 · 34 min

    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 at https://writing.tobyshorin.com/body-futurism/. It is provocative and feels increasingly prescient. Toby suggests that we must return to the body—and not just bodies in theory but quite literally your, my, our physical bodies, as the starting point for how we think about what is good for how we live and how we design and improve our societies. It was published Feb 25, 2026. I'm calling this format Independent Study. You can think of it as curated audiobook versions of internet writing. We'll see if I do more of these, and feedback is welcome. But let me know what you think!

  • #37
    January 20 · 2 hr 18 min

    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 company behind Lil Miquela that was acquired by Dapper Labs; Founder of FWB (Friends with Benefits); early artist in residence at Spotify; and a touring DJ who performed as DJ Skeet Skeet, was part of the rap group Shwayze, and produced for a range of artists. Trevor’s work emerges from a tension he’s lived with throughout his career: the gap between who creates cultural value and who captures it. Growing up poor in Iowa and entering the dying music industry in the late 2000s, he witnessed firsthand how the instruments that capture value rarely benefit the creative people who generate that value. This has run across his entrepreneurial work, from building virtual pop stars to a range of crypto projects that hope to give creative people more upside. Trevor bridges culture and technology, art and capital, and high and low. I’ve met few people who are as consistently ahead of culture. His perspective challenges both the art world’s disdain for commerce and Silicon Valley’s shallow engagement with culture, arguing instead for creative people to play the game on the field and build the instruments that will make them rich. Today, he’s focused on how that may end up being as much about predicting what’s next with stakes as it is actually making things. We also talk about authenticity and honesty, why he continues to spend time in crypto despite it being low status, why speculation is rational and selling out is punk, how power comes from consensus, his keen nose for weird—especially on the internet, briefly working with Kanye West, and his forever optimistic curiosity. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams build their best work. Notion is also where I compile research for episodes and the home of my new site where you can find all links and transcripts. You can read more about why Notion embodies Dialectic’s values and our partnership announcement here. My “What are You Building This Year feature with Notion on Instagram.

Showing 21–27 of 27 episodes