Of late, I’ve been constraining my reading and listening/watching to a smaller set of people, but going deeper and longer than I’ve done before. Eavesdropping – how I like to think of podcasts – on these long form conversations has been unlike much of the broad reading I have been doing for years.
What I do find really interesting is that even these deep, long conversations tend to cover a broad ground. It may sound obvious but an expert in a field does not mean she or he has knowledge only in that field. Conversations like this or this for example give nuanced ideas from disciplines I didn’t even think existed, or new ideas from disciplines I thought I had some basic understanding of. I’m learning to let these ideas come to me rather than the other way round.
What’s most fascinating though is how these ideas start composing into newer forms in my mind. I’m not an academic, I’m simply interested in imagining how various combinations – people, ideas, things – might work together. Not all of them will. Maybe most of them won’t. When occasionally it catches on (I experiment with them at work mostly), I’m always amazed at the response I get.
“Everything good takes time” – Travis Oliphant to Lex Fridman