We all know that where you live is one of the most important decisions you can make, but it may be more important than you think. And with more people working remotely, there is no more freedom than ever in deciding where you call "home." In this episode, Steph and Cal discuss how to think about where you should live, why it matters more than you think, and how you can make a decision when it involves two people who have different desires from a location. In one of our next episodes, w...
Apr 13, 2022•51 min
Life feels like a bunch of micro-decisions, yet a few macro-decisions often end up determining how you spend most of your time. Perhaps one of the most significant are the degree you choose and the first job you take. The decisions that follow those are inevitably pulled by their inertia. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the importance of exploring the diversity of jobs out there and how many people become fixed in a singular path. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and leav...
Mar 28, 2022•54 min
We believe that the desire to give is universal, but is just as much a skill as anything else in life. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the how you can make a difference during your limited time on this earth, with the limited resources you have -- especially during times like these. They dive into... Creative ways that people have supported Ukraine Striking a balance between hedonism and altruism Making difficult problems tractable A breakdown of the gender pay gap Impact starting with sm...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Language is one of the most powerful tools that humans have accessible to them. Don't believe us? Consider the fact that someone could walk up to you and say something that could immediately change your mental state. Nothing around you has changed, other than the words echoed through the air. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the power of words and how language can shape the way we think. They use untranslatable words to convey these concepts and share how language has been shown to im...
Feb 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
The allure of getting rich quick is intoxicating. It's even more intoxicating when you're trapped inside and it seems like all your friends have cashed in big. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss Cal's experience with active investing over the last 20 months and ultimately, why it's time to walk away from the casino. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and leave a review . You can also read Calvin's article on the topic here . And if you're also stu...
Feb 11, 2022•56 min
"The only constant is change", they say. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss just how drastically the world has changed and will continue to change. From the iPhone... to the Internet... to antibiotics... to human flight... to to the sequencing of DNA... to perhaps the most important fact that humans now live more than double as long... these developments all happened within the last 100 years. Given that things within a single lifetime can go from being inconceivable to ubiquitous,...
Feb 06, 2022•1 hr
There's an endless sea of advice online. Whether it's from a vague Twitter thread or a clickbait blog post, the advice sounds catchy, but if we're honest... often holds little water. However, we all know from experience that the right lessons, sometimes even sitting in plain sight, can genuinely change the trajectory of one's life. In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the few pieces of advice that they think matter most and shouldn't be ignored. Love this episode? Give...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 11 min
In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the hidden side of risk: the infrequent, often unpredictable events that make the biggest differences in our lives. If you look around, rare, high-impact events are everywhere. A small number of days in the stock market drive the bulk of the returns. Large businesses like Google, Amazon, and Best Buy have tested thousands of products, yet have a single profit puppy. Insurance companies make money on most customers, but have to pay out very large claims to a...
Jan 15, 2022•47 min
In this episode, Steph and Cal break down the best of 2021. You'll find out the... Best New Idea Best New Skill Best New Life Hack Best New Experience Best/Worst Purchase Best/Worst Investment Best/Worst Trend Best Podcast Creator of the Year Best Personal Win/Accomplishment #1 Goal for Next Year Prediction for the New Year Jumpstart 2022 by doubling down on the best activities and avoiding the worst. It's going to be an awesome year. PS: If you liked the sound effects in this episode,...
Jan 08, 2022•1 hr 1 min
What do airplanes, railroads, and jazz music have in common? They were all innovations that people feared. In fact, if you look into any key technology shift from the past, you'll find a wealth of fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding it. And while this shouldn't be surprising, we can still learn from the skeptics of the past. We can learn just how difficult it is to predict what's to come and look toward our future with a humble perspective, an acceptance that we probably will...
Dec 28, 2021•50 min
Death is universal part of the human experience. During our lives, we often must confront the painful reality of death around us, and eventually, we face that reality ourselves. What's odd is that despite death being at the core of the human experience, many people avoid talking or thinking about it. So when people pass away or we face a health scare that brings us into contact with the fragility of life, we often don't know what to do. In this episode, Calvin shares his experience wit...
Nov 29, 2021•2 hr 58 min
In the second part of this series on the future of work, Steph and Cal dive into new products and services, alongside macro trends that they predict are in full flux. These include mass migration, global tax infrastructure, opportunities for services to specialize, increased isolation, UBI, and of course... the metaverse. :)
Nov 16, 2021•50 min
People say that COVID was an accelerator, forcing trends that may have taken decades to develop, to instead take hold in much less time. Remote work was one of those trends. But we're not done yet! The future of work is constantly evolving and it doesn't just impact whether you can Zoom without pants. :) In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the second and third order effects of the remote revolution and what's to come. And in part one of this series, they discuss how this equati...
Nov 10, 2021•1 hr 7 min
The information age gives us access to so much advice that it can be hard to see through the noise. 4AM morning routines that don't make sense for you. Productivity hacks that hardly move the needle. Hindsight bias cloaked as success stories. Most advice is well-intentioned, but rarely translates to improvements in another person's life. So this week, Cal and Steph took a step back to ask the simple question: what are the 80/20 habits, beliefs, and products that had an outsized impact ...
Oct 15, 2021•36 min
With the exception of a few companies like Buffer and GitLab, 99.99%+ of companies opt to keep their salaries closed. This closed nature creates information asymmetry and at times, inequity in the workplace. Lack of transparency gives companies a hall pass to not develop a robust compensation system, but at the same time, sharing salaries openly isn't without its pitfalls, including privacy and the tendency for people to over-compare themselves to others. In this episode, Steph and Cal deba...
Sep 30, 2021•51 min
Wealth inequality has been increasing for decades, and recently, there has been a heightened focus on billionaires as we debate what to do about the concentration of large swaths of wealth in a few hands. In this episode, Steph and Cal discuss whether or not billionaires should exist, common proposals for dealing with billionaires, and a few policy proposals for how we can start thinking about tackling wealth inequality. Whether you find yourself saying, "billionaires are evil and don'...
Sep 19, 2021•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, Cal and Steph discuss the subjective nature of pricing. They explore how a value extends beyond utility or the physical nature of an asset (think luxury items, NFTs, etc) and use these ideas to explore new pricing models, including tiered, retention-based, and completion-based pricing. They also explore how our own psychology can inhibit use as consumers to spend on what's most meaningful and the importance of unlearning certain spending habits. If you find the psychology o...
Sep 12, 2021•41 min
In this episode, Steph and Cal dive deep into traditions, the societal defaults that shape how we think and act in the world. They start by exploring the origins of the 40-hour work week, modern alternatives, and how we can rethink the idea of retirement. In the second half of the episode, they explore how the ways in which commonly held beliefs about monogamy, love, and marriage may not set people up for the life they want to live. If you're interested in questioning the norms and designin...
Sep 04, 2021•1 hr 5 min
The big failure of most productivity advice is the focus on efficiency – getting things done more quickly. We should be focused on effectiveness – making sure we're doing the right things. In this episode, Steph and Cal explore how we can rethink productivity to get more out of how we spend our most valuable resource: time. They cover a variety of topics, including many practical ideas about getting more out of every day, including the Eliminate, Automate, Delegate, and Iterate framework fr...
Aug 07, 2021•32 min
We're all familiar with how to increase physical security – locking our doors, paying attention to our surroundings, putting valuables in a safe, etc. – but what about our digital security? With an increasingly digital world comes a less perceptible risk – the risk of having your information hacked and exploited by someone with whom you will never see or interact. In this episode, Steph and Cal explore the basics of digital security, the risks involved, where many people go wrong, and what ...
Jul 06, 2021•37 min
At a time where several asset classes are at all-time highs, there's a lot of talk about whether we're in a bubble. That, coupled with crypto assets falling to ~half of their highs, prompted Cal and Steph to dive in to try to answer this question. In this episode, they discuss the markings of past bubbles, the innovation hype cycle, the difficulty in profiting from nascent innovations, the importance of educating yourself and building your own conviction behind your decisions, managing...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Travel is fun, but it becomes even more enjoyable once you know how to do it well. Collectively, Steph and Cal have visited over 70 countries while working remotely, learning a bunch of useful tips for better travel along the way. In this episode, they share some of the most useful learnings, including: - How to avoid getting scammed - How to choose a location and plan a trip - How to choose an accomodation that's suitable for work - How to interact with a place - How to get the most out of...
Jun 18, 2021•47 min
30 days ago, Calvin and Steph set out to record 30 pods in 30 days. Today was the final episode of their challenge, where they reflect on what went well, what didn't go so well, and if they plan to continue recording.
Jun 10, 2021•29 min
The world is run by incentives, but what happens when those incentives go wrong? In this episode, Calvin and Steph talk through the Cobra Effect, a phenomena incentives designed to improve society actually end in negative consequences, often resulting in actions counter to the original goal. They discuss several examples of the effect and how people can not only be more aware of it, but also how they can design better incentive structures moving forward.
Jun 09, 2021•21 min
Drinking alcohol is embedded within the social fabric of society, but how do we take control of our relationship with alcohol? For all of the fun it supports, alcohol is a poison that causes unnecessary physical, mental, and emotional harm for many people. In this episode, Steph and Cal interview Taylor Platt, a Princeton graduate and NBA strategist who went sober 3 years ago. Taylor shares why he made the decisions, how he did it, the challenges he faced, and what he learned that might be helpf...
Jun 08, 2021•35 min
Whether we'd like to believe it or not, age is a signal that people judge others by. In a professional setting, it can signal your level of experience and for that reason, it can be difficult to earn the trust of a team, if they happen to be older than you. In this episode, Calvin and Steph talk through their experiences managing at a young age and what tips they have for effective leadership.
Jun 07, 2021•33 min
In recent episodes, Calvin and Steph have discussed lifestyle creep and how when you make more, you have the tendency to spend more. In this episode, they brought on a friend and colleague Ethan Brooks, to discuss in what circumstances it does make sense to splurge. In particular, they discuss their experiences in hostels and when it was time to upgrade.
Jun 06, 2021•27 min
We all accumulate possessions throughout our lives, but how often do we evaluate whether or not all that stuff is helping or hurting us? In this episode, Steph and Calvin talk about what they learned from living out of backpacks for 4 years, how expensive items carry a psychological burden, and how to think about what you buy over time.
Jun 04, 2021•19 min
No matter how talented you are, you'll inevitably be a victim of imposter syndrome. But, there's a flipside to every coin and for imposter syndrome, it's the compulsion to always be better. Is is possible to get the upside and limit the downside? In this episode, Calvin and Steph discuss how they've managed imposter syndrome and balance their ambition to improve, with the tendency to compare yourself to others.
Jun 04, 2021•16 min
Most of us walk around thinking that the world is getting worse. But is this actually true? In this episode, Steph and I walk through a quiz that shows us just how wrong our instincts are about the state of the world and why we consistently believe that things are far worse than they actually are.
Jun 02, 2021•21 min
