Dialectic

By Jackson DahlSociety & Culture Business Technology

Dialectic episodes

March 24, 202512: Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy (CW&T) - Iterating Together with Time
Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy are the founders of CW&T (Website, Instagram, X, TikTok), a Brooklyn-based studio creating products that exist somewhere between art, design, and engineering.
The husband-and-wife team met at NYU ITP and shares a background across industrial design, architecture, computer science, film, including time at Pratt Institute and MIT. They won the 2022 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. They design and manufacture everyday objects including clocks, pens, tools, and other strange objects that challenge our relationship with time, attention, and materiality. Their most recognizable products include the Pen Type-A, Pen Type-C (my favorite), Time Since Launch (a one-time-use, 100-year timekeeper), and Solid State Watch, a remix of the classic Casio F-91W.
Our conversation explores their fascination with time, their commitment to creating heirloom-quality objects in a disposable world, and how they've built a sustainable creative practice on their own terms. We discuss their prototyping-centered approach, the tension between digital and physical creation, and how they navigate collaboration as partners in life and work.
Throughout, Che-Wei and Taylor reveal a philosophy that treats making as its own reward—they create what fascinates them first, trusting that others will connect with their vision. In a world increasingly dominated by disposable products and digital experiences, CW&T offers a refreshing counterpoint: a workshop where physical objects are thoughtfully conceived, meticulously crafted, and built to accompany us through life's journeys. Their work invites us to reconsider our relationship with the objects we use daily and the passage of time itself, offering a refreshing counterpoint to our increasingly digital, ephemeral world.
Full transcript with all links and references.
Timestamps
(00:00): Time: a pattern across CW&T’s careers
(11:21): Time Since Launch: the idea of counting up instead of down, and creating personal epochs
(14:11): "Good design is long-lasting,” Durability of Electric Objects
(19:31): Balancing art, product, and design: CW&T's approach to creating strange (but useful) things
(23:51): First Word vs. Last Word Art: Michael Naimark's essay on innovation
(28:01): Death by consensus: Why Che-Wei left architecture, and the joy of creative collaboration
(32:52): Inspiration, Theory, and Self-Evidence
(38:40): Tools: iPhone world, what makes a great tool, and design that optimizes for joy
(44:21): The Hi-Tec-C pen cartridge and remixing w...
1 hr 56 min
March 17, 202511: Eugene Wei - Amusing Each Other to Death
Eugene Wei (Website, X) is a writer, product thinker, and cultural observer best known for his essays on technology, media, and social networks, including Status as a Service, Invisible asymptotes, and TikTok and the Sorting Hat.
Eugene spent seven years at Amazon in its early days before following a brief detour to pursue filmmaking at UCLA. He then led product, design, editorial, and marketing teams at Hulu, co-founded Erly, and worked at Flipboard and Oculus. Today, he works on his own ideas at the intersection of media and technology while advising and angel investing.
This conversation explores the evolving landscape of entertainment, social media, community, and humanity in our digital age—topics Eugene has examined deeply. We revisit some of Eugene’s greatest hits on how platforms like Twitter and TikTok shape society and also get into fresh ideas he's yet to share publicly.
We start by discussing how today's social media world compares to the television-centric world that Neil Postman lamented in Amusing Ourselves to Death, and how entertainment-maximizing, adversarial, algorithmic social platforms might lead us to "Amusing Each Other to Death." Eugene unpacks TikTok's profound impact on our "digital nervous system," differentiating between social networks and social media—highlighting the latter's emphasis on frictionless positivity rather than meaningful connection.
Amid rising nihilism among young people, Eugene analyzes how cultural and economic structures contribute to lost hope, exploring social media’s role in exacerbating these trends. We discuss power laws influencing tech, media, sports, and finance, and how that drives pervasive speculation across culture. Then, he traces these themes through American television, from 1960s-1990s sitcoms to shows like The Sopranos, Succession, and Industry, revealing how they reflect the erosion of community and purpose in late-stage capitalism.
Throughout, Eugene offers nuanced observations on how technology's removal of friction has paradoxically weakened our sense of meaning and connection. We wrap up with how AI might shape media and creativity, what elements of humanity may be valued in the future, learnings from Bezos and film school, and a movie recommendation for anyone trying to make sense of it all.
Timestamps
(02:10): Amusing Each Other to Death and "Frictionless Positivity": Neil Postman, TV vs. Social Media
(14:35): Dunking, Quote Tweets, and Proximity to the Other
(19:09): Prisoner's Dilemma of Twitter: Concede or Dunk
(24:52): Is TikTok the Final Form of Social Media?
(31:02): Status Games in the Algorithm Era
(39:02): Technology's Reduction of Friction & Avoiding Confrontation with the Other
(48:45): The Internet's Reversal of Vita Activa and Vita Contempliva
(50:53): Growing Nihilism Toward Online Status Games: If You Don't Capture Attention, You Aren't Relevant Anymore
(55:54): Late State Capitalism's Disappointment, Gen Z Nihilism in US and China, Death of Community
(1:03:01...
2 hr 19 min
February 25, 202510: Josh Wolfe - Illuminating Tomorrow
Josh Wolfe (Website, X) is co-founder and Managing Partner of Lux Capital, a venture firm focused on emerging science and technology at the outermost edges of what is possible.
Josh is a masterful storyteller who moves seamlessly between science, culture, and markets. As an investor, he seeks the counter-narrative—what others aren't talking about—and has backed countless breakthrough companies in AI, space, biotech, robotics, defense, and beyond. Beyond investing, Josh founded Coney Island Prep charter school and is a trustee at the Santa Fe Institute.
Our conversation explores the interplay between science and storytelling, the power of belief in both doubters and advocates, patterns in creative rebels, and what makes someone both "arrogant" enough to assert a new reality while remaining grounded enough to see reality clearly. We discuss America's scientific competitiveness, the value of competition in institutions, Josh's voracious appetite for the new, and his personal journey with control, trust, and family.
Josh is one of my favorite examples of someone who is radically unhedged on himself: he leans into his genius—and thus sometimes, disfunction—in ways that make him authentically effective. Throughout the episode, he demonstrates his rare combination of wisdom and childlike curiosity, competitive drive, and deep care for the things that matter to him. His ideas on storytelling, science, and human nature offer a guide for thinking about bringing new things into the world.
Episode transcript.
Timestamps

(2:12): Science & Stories

(6:30): Are technology outcomes and timelines determined or variable based on cultural movements, societal reaction, and stories?

(11:14): Who is Imagining the Future of Tomorrow?

(16:34): Originality, AI, and Everything is a Remix

(20:52): Improving as a Storyteller

(23:55): Secrets & Magic

(31:35): Josh's Biggest Believers

(34:20): Belief Beyond Capital, Motivation, and Fuel

(37:53): Patterns in Creative Rebels

(40:53): "Arrogance of the Highest Order" in Entrepreneurs, Asserting Reality, Great Men of History, and Elon

(47:02): US Exceptionalism and Celebrating Science & Technology

(55:23): Institutions, Academia, Government, and Competition

(1:00:56): Josh: Accomplished Yet Childlike - Finding the Edges

(1:04:07): Breadth and Depth: a Heat-Seeking Ability to Go Deep

(1:12:03): Managing Dowsides and Lessons that Could Have Been Learned Sooner

(1:15:58): Control, Past, and Future

(1:19:57): Learnings from Mom

(1:20:57): Trust and learning from Optimistic Partners

(1:22:54): Legacy
Links & References

Kevin G's Josh Wolfe Compilation

Kevin's much shorter twitter thread summary of Josh's spikeyness

Lux Q3 2024 LP Letter - Four Parables of Four Greek Titans
1 hr 26 min
February 19, 20259: Jacob Horne - Markets for What Matters
Jacob Horne (Website, Zora, X, Farcaster), is co-founder and CEO of Zora, a platform that allows the tokenization of media.
Jacob started his career at Coinbase where he was a product lead and helped create USDC. Five years ago, he left to wade deeper into the waters of internet and crypto-native coordination and creativity and co-founded Zora.
His central interest is how people coordinate together using the internet—the includes currencies, markets, ownership, art, speculation, and memes. We discuss how memes and symbols enable coordination, "The Meme and the Memo," words, money, and laws, Zora's premise built on Stewart Brand's "information wants to be free but it also wants to be expensive," a case for markets around attention, the new version of Zora and "a coin for every piece of content," speculation vs. gambling, token-powered brands, Ethereum and Solana, Coinbase and USDC, and a wide-ranging personal section that showcases why Jacob is so generative.
The parting prompt I hope this conversation leaves all of us with is this: while information is ~free today (and also abundant, infinite), it is also quite expensive to consume in terms of time. We ought to think carefully about what content we spend our precious time consuming and rewarding. That you would spend some of yours listening to Dialectic is as always a privilege and I hope you find it worthwhile.
Transcript available here.
Timestamps

(3:03): Obsession with Memes: How do you get people to organize?

(8:46): The Meme and the Memo via Balaji Srinivasan

(11:32): Three Fundamental Questions: Words, Money, Laws

(12:39): The Midwit Meme and other Favorites

(15:55): What makes media and information valuable?

(19:26): Zora, Tokenized Media, and Information wants to be Free and Expensive

(22:53): Provenance

(28:30): Why Do We Want Markets for Attention?
Deeper Crypto Section

(37:08): A coin for every piece of content: prediction markets on attention

(42:49): Investing in People or “Creator” / “Social”Tokens

(44:14): Not fighting internet gravity: NFTs, “utillity,” 1 of 1s, and skeumorphic ideas along the way

(47:52): Speaking to potential concerns and incentivizing more durable and useful information

(52:23): Speculation vs. Gambling: positive sum vs. zero-sum

(56:00): AI: Market Data as an input for for Models

(58:56): Speculating on how a future of AI and attention markets will be good for creatives

(1:04:50): Small market cap content can still be meaningful

(1:08:11): Crypto-optimism and regulation

(1:13:52): Saint Fame, Nouns, and Ideas for Future Token-Coordinated Orgs

(1:22:32): Reflecting on “Hyperstructures”

(1:28:55): Jacob's shift toward market-oriented thinking for solving coordination problems

(1:30:40): Ethereum, Solana, and Blockchain Competition
Coinbase

(1:36:23): The Coinbase Internship that Never Ended

(1:40:49): Starting USDC

(1:49:14): Bloomberg Terminal's Design
General Jacob

(1:50:09): Bezos and adoption of technology

(1:52:47): Tokenized Identity

(1:55:41): Matt Dryhurst and Holly Herndon and ...
2 hr 33 min
February 04, 20258: Steph Ango - Tools for Amplifying Our Light
Steph Ango aka Kepano (Website, X) is a designer, writer, entrepreneur,and toolmaker, best known as the CEO of Obsidian, a powerful and flexible writing and thinking tool.
Steph's education is in biology and industrial design, but he is true multi-hyphenate creative, working across mediums including software, hardware, supply chain and packaging, words, wood, furniture, ink, color schemes, open-source systems, video, podcasts, and more. Above all, he makes tools—deeply opinionated ones—designed to reduce friction for himself and others in the act of creating.
Steph joined Obsidian after initially contributing as a fan and enthusiast and impressing its co-founders, Shida Li and Erica Xu. Under his leadership, Obsidian has grown into one of the most beloved and powerful independent software tools in the world, with millions of users. As a daily user myself, I rely on Obsidian for my research and thinking for this podcast. Before Obsidian, Steph founded Lumi and Inkodye, the former of which was acquired by Narvar.
Beyond design, Steph is one of my favorite writers. His concise, sub-500-word essays have shaped my thinking on design, software, learning, agency, constraints, and creativity. While we couldn’t cover all of his ideas in this conversation, we explored many of them in what became my longest conversation to date—one that is packed with wisdom. I believe these ideas will challenge you in unexpected ways and push you to be more creative, agentic, and optimistic.
Transcript for episode 8.
Timestamps:
(1:56): Constraints and style

(11:51): Aggressively planting creative seeds but being patient for them to grow

(17:42): Stadium of past and future selves

(22:34): Asking what can be removed and making incremental progress

(28:47): Building a product and company (Obsidian) with the "constraint" of ideology and principles

(38:52): Using Obsidian makes Steph better at building Obsidian

(44:09): What makes for good design and seeing the world as something designed (by nature or man)

(53:11): What makes a good tool?

(56:20): Thinking tools and Obsidian

(1:04:32): "In good hands" and caring more than anyone else

(1:21:38): Engaging all five senses

(1:24:46): Creating cohesion or your own cinematic universe

(1:30:43): How to time travel

(1:33:08): Designing for digital durability or permanence & "File over app"

(1:56:46): Investment and "selfishness" in extending your light

(2:05:54): Choosing problems to work on

(2:09:10): "Nibble and your appetite will grow"

(2:12:31): Compounding

(2:19:55): "Caloric energy is precious"

(2:26:21): "Earth is becoming sentient"

(2:39:31): Busy being born and sharing along the way

(2:42:11): Love and freedom
Links
Style ...
2 hr 49 min
January 28, 2025 7: Toby Shorin - The Shapes of Culture
Toby Shorin (Website, Blog, X) is a researcher, writer, consultant, and cultural anthropologist for the internet era.
His interests and work include culture, identity, organizational design, psychology, cryptocurrency and blockchains, brands, health and care, spirituality, and social forms and institutions. Today, Toby works on Care Culture, a community and research platform focused on mental health and spirituality. Toby also co-founded Other Internet, a research institute known for its deep cultural analysis and work with crypto organizations. Conversations with Toby and his work—especially ‘Headless Brands’ and ‘Squad Wealth’—were deeply influential to my interest in crypto and related subcultures and ideologies. Over time, I have been even more energized by his broader thinking and ability to interpret cultural change especially with regard to evolving sources of meaning, identity, and connection.
This conversation is primarily about themes I’ve noticed across his work and how those have evolved toward what he is working on now. In many ways, this is the pattern of modern culture “secularizing” more sacred forms—including but not limited to practice, faith, ideology, morality, and religion—and how that happens at individual and collective levels.

Episode Transcript

Timestamps:
(02:26): Post-Authenticity & Romantic-Era Individualism
(10:08): Squad Wealth: a seed of collectivism--the collective as the atomic unit
(14:40): Other Internet
(18:45): Life after lifestyle, headless brands, and new forms of collective beliefs, cults, and religions
(30:55): Toby's pivot away digital to physical social forms; from technology and brands to health
(38:51): The body, the will, and new kinds of individualism and collectivism
(52:47): Prototyping Social Forms of Care
(58:08): The theme of Toby's work: practice-- and new spiritual and religious forms
(1:00:50): Secular and Sacred
(1:04:35): The social body and the social spirit
(1:05:56): Toby's central question
(1:10:13): Observing and Critiquing vs. Prescribing
(1:13:03): Innovating on social forms like we innovate with business and technology
(1:21:52): Reflecting on time spent in Crypto
(1:29:23): Protocols
(1:31:50): Social forms in lieu of institutions
(1:34:43): Learning about yourself through writing
(1:37:44): Spirituality
Links:

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1 hr 41 min
January 21, 20256: Chris Paik - Intentionally in Search of the New
Chris Paik is a General Partner and Co-founder of Pace Capital, a Venture Capital firm in New York City.
He invests in technology and internet businesses at Pace, and previously did the same at Thrive Capital, which he joined in the earliest days. At Thrive, Chris invested in Twitch, Unity, Patreon, among others. Chris is a profoundly deep thinker who relies on behavioral economics to build robust frameworks for understanding technology, businesses, the internet, and human nature. As we discuss, intentionality runs through Chris's life and actions. While Chris has strong views about incentives and markets that may seem in conflict with some kinds of idealism, he is also strongly optimistic and earnest in his love for the world and its people, and for what we might create for each other.
We discuss Chris's frameworks and approach to explanations, markets and incentives, top-down and bottom-up thinking and companies, approaches to new markets and raising capital, his obsession with discovering the new, how his ideas become published thinking, the positive and negative impacts of the internet, Pace and its values, and the inner-workings of Chris's truly unique and fascinating approach to the world.
Timestamps:
(01:08): What does it mean to be intentional?
(05:21): Good Explanations
(07:28): Sharing explanations and thinking publicly
(14:45): Pendulum Theory
(22:14): The efficient market hypothesis
(27:34): Top-down vs. bottom-up thinking and companies
(48:09): First-to-market vs. best-to-market
(55:44): Cost of capital and when venture capital makes sense
(1:03:28): How Chris finds new things and how he curates what he consumes
(1:07:59): Chris's ideation funnel: thinking > sparring > publishing
(1:10:42): Is the internet actually good for us? What about capitalism? What rules above capitalism?
(1:18:56): The internet as a lever on agency and ability to take risk
(1:23:47): Pace Capital: Values, Brand and Reputation, Truth-Seeking, and People
(1:32:20): A pre-mortem on Pace's failure
(1:34:06): The first piece for a theoretical Pace Capital art gallery

Questions for Chris about himself
(1:36:07): Is Chris's unique set of worldviews and thinking more due to nature or nurture?
(1:37:21): What has Chris compounded most continuously
(1:38:23): What Chris's best or favorite “investment” in the universe?
(1:40:01): How do Chris use laziness as a lever? How might other people?
(1:41:50): Meta-analysis and cognitive biases
(1:45:11): How Chris hacks his brain: what's at the top of the usuer manual of being Chris?
(1:47:51): Where is Chris most confident in the conensus view
(1:49:01): How does Chris apply pre-consensus thinking to his personal life?

(1:51:36): Alignment: with Keely in life and Jordan at Pace
(1:55:43): Every second counts
Links:
Frameworks v0.2

PACE DESKTOP

The Shadow of Disutility: Technology’s Hidden Cost

Zen for Film, 1965 by Nam June Paik
Transcript for this episode.
Join the
1 hr 59 min
December 17, 20245: Tina He - Internet Citizen and Philosopher in Action
Tina He (Site, X, Newsletter) is a product designer, entrepreneur, writer, and amateur philosopher. She is a product lead at Coinbase, where she works on developer tools for its network Base. She joined Coinbase through the acquisition of her company, Station Labs.
Tina grew up in China before moving the U.S. at age 14. As an adult, Tina has been a dual-citizen of New York City and the internet. As she has put it, Tina is interested in the culture of technology and the technology of culture. While we share a love of technology and the internet as a "place," Tina is also my favorite person to get reading recommendations from. She studies philosophy, immerses herself in art, film, and fashion, and has been writing online since she was a teenager. I aimed to give listeners a glimpse of the types of wide-ranging conversations that I've enjoyed with Tina over the years.
We cover identity, locality, NYC, the internet, writing and sharing online, finding your people online, her career arc from comparative literature in college to venture capital and crypto, how labor markets and economies lay a foundation for culture in cities and online, what it means to be serious, patriotism and greatness, ambition, philosophy, ideas and action, Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, her favorite philosophers from Kierkegaard to Wittgenstein to Byung-Chul Han, Beauty, taste, aesthetics, film, fashion, and how love and attention underpin her life.
Timestamps:
(1:07): Identity & Place: What Does it Mean to be Local?

(7:46): New York City

(14:24): Urban Design and Evolution in Cities and Online

(19:03): Being a Citizen of the Internet & Sharing Yourself Online

(31:55): Tina's Unique Path: from Comparative Literature & CS to VC to Crypto

(45:58): Station & Coinbase: Why Economic Systems & Labor Markets are Upstream of Cultural Outcomes

(55:22): Being a Serious Person

(58:53): When We Cease to Understand the World

(1:02:47): Greatness, Patriotism, and Ambition

(1:07:00): Reconciling with Obsession and Ambition: Can They Go Too Far?

(1:10:13): What is Philosophy For? Refining Realities vs. Asserting Reality

(1:20:57): The Patterns in Tina's Favorite Philosophers and Writers

(1:26:04): Making Time for Philosophy and Study

(1:32:09): Aesthetics, Taste, Beauty, Film, Fashion

(01:39:58): Love & Attention
Links & Resources
The New Frontier of Belonging by Tina He

Order without Design by Alain Bertaud

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

Tina's "raw thoughts from the journal" post-election
1 hr 43 min
December 09, 20244: Ava - Alive in Writing and in Love
Ava (X) is one of my favorite writers. She writes full-time for her Substack, Bookbear Express, and focuses on love, friendship, emotions, culture, and psychology.
I'm not sure there's anyone I've more consistently recommended to friends and loved ones in recent years, and it seems like the world agrees: Ava now has over 30,000 subscribers. One of my favorite parts of this episode was reading excerpts from Ava's essays over the years back to her. We cover a ton of ground, including writing, consistency, commitment, friendship, authenticity, self-respect, taste, beauty, and much more.
Timestamps:
(1:09): What makes for good writing & what Ava writes about

(5:49): Flow, Writing Practice, Consistency, Commitment, and Maintenance

(14:08): Audience Consideration, Vulnerability, Sincerity, and Ava's Readership

(26:30): Feedback Loops, Getting Better at Writing

(28:51): Distribution and Growth; Writing Online vs. Making a Living with Writing

(34:39): Social Psychology and Seeing People More Clearly

(36:21): Do People Change?

(42:44): Relationships & Helping Others Find Love

(44:32): The Friendship Theory of Everything

(1:00:35): Consistency, Self-Respect, and Self-Trust

(1:03:45): Frames: Consistency in Our Relationships with Others

(1:08:21): Authenticity and Honesty

(1:15:12): Taste & Interiority

(1:24:14): Two Core Interests: Relationships and Technology

(1:26:12): San Francisco

(1:29:48): Writing in the Second Person

(1:31:52): Substack Recommendations and a Novel

(1:33:07): Motivation & Energy

(1:33:50): 10 Years Back, 10 Years Ahead

(1:35:46): Uselessness

(1:39:06): Beauty
Links & Resources:
Ava's Writing:
protecting flow

on maintaining attention

is everything copy?

december
what's up with modern love?

the friendship theory of everything

everything I know about love

frames

the girl the internet made me (Authenticity)

taste

what we talk about when we talk about taste

in praise of uselessness
Others:
1 hr 42 min
December 02, 20243: Dan Romero - Why Information Should Flow on Protocols
Dan Romero (Farcaster, X, Website) is the CEO and co-founder of Farcaster, an open Twitter/X-like social network protocol built on blockchain rails.
Before co-founding Farcaster in 2020, Dan previously worked at Coinbase as a Vice President, among many other roles. He joined the company as the 20th employee in 2014 and left in 2019. He's thought about and used Twitter-like networks for nearly two decades and is passionate about open information flow, market-enabled progress, and individual freedom.
Timestamps:
(01:39): We were promised flying cars and all we got was 140 characters

(8:48): Bring Your Own Algorithm (BYOA), RSS, Elon, and The News Channel-ification of Social Networks

(35:54): The Field of Dreams Fallacy: If You Build It, It Doesn't Mean They'll Come
[Farcaster & Crypto-Focused Section Begins]
(44:25): Status as a Service and Building the Home for Crypto Status

(55:03): What is Farcaster?

(59:34): Why not counter-position against Elon?

(01:03:42): Programmable social and “Open APIs”

(1:14:22): The Future of Farcaster

(1:18:01): Farcaster's Value Capture

(1:25:01): Sufficient Decentralization

(1:28:44): Why Dan has created NFTs but not tokens
[Farcaster & Crypto Focus Ends]
(1:29:53): Product Market Fit, Focus, and The Idea Maze

(1:37:01): Dan's career arc, contrarian paths, distributed systems, and creative destruction

(01:44:09): Coinbase: pre-2017 learnings, hypergrowth, comparisons between building a culture and social network, and anti-lessons

(1:49:20): Brian Armstrong and fostering repeatable innovation

(1:52:24): What do you wish Balaji [Srinivasan] could work on?

(1:53:20): Group Chats and the pendulum between private and public discourse

(01:58:55): Power: Elon, Zuck, Trump?

(2:00:24): Politics, Populism, Going Direct, and the Podcast Era

(2:08:48): What have you changed your mind on this year?

(2:10:22): Final Questions
Full transcript.
Links & Resources
RSS+ by Dan Romero

The Rise and Demise of RSS by Sinclair Target

Status as a Service (StaaS) by Eugene Wei

The idea maze by Chris Dixon

Balaji Srinivasan's paper on the idea maze

The only thing that matters by Marc Andreessen

v2 frames

FC AI/zk trends
2 hr 13 min