Every time I have given up on America, it has been a mistake. And yet, America has never, ever given up on me.

I turned 40 today. For my 35th I did principles, but for my 40th, I wanted to offer perhaps more useful reflections.

I first started compiling "How To Thought Lead" in my notes 5 years ago, at first as an ironic parody and then slowly becoming sincere, and never published it, 1) because I don't know if I ever really nailed it / have a complete picture, 2) I was somewhat worried if I published it then others might diminish the techniques through overuse.

You are of course aware that attention spans are shrinking. YouTube -> Shorts, Instagram Reels, Tiktoks, etc have taken over the world.

Through my 4 (!) podcasts I obviously have built up a lot of opinions on podcasting over the years. Here's some of them. The two outlier podcasts of our time are Dwarkesh and TBPN, and I will explain my mental model of them to the end - the following advice is what I strongly believe for the "average" podcast that wants to do well but not necessarily being full time top tier influencer level. Also, this is primarily for professional/technical interview guest-led podcasts, but I also do have opinions on non-guest-led podcasts as well.