Recently, I realised a flaw in the way I work. I spend too much time alone thinking about things and not enough in conversation with other people.

This is a problem because a lot of my good ideas come from interacting with others. They either say something interesting or I surprise myself by what I say.

That’s part of what led to On Experience.

After years of making videos about expertise, authority, meaningful work and experience, I started realising the most important ideas were often emerging between the polished answers rather than inside them.

This is a series of open conversations. It’s not an interview or a performance. It’s more about exploration - two people thinking out loud.

Season One begins with a question that I’m thinking about a lot right now: How does authority actually form?

And I’m not talking about online authority or algorithms, but about people. Why do we listen to some people and not others? And how can I build authority for myself?

This short introduction opens the door into that inquiry, why I created it and what is already showing up in the first two conversations with guests, including anthropologist Michael Henderson and mindfulness teacher Mark Molony.