2025 in review

anual letter

In the spirit of new year, and inspired by Dan Wang’s and Jason Crawford’s anual letters I’ll write an annual letter.

This year was the first year where I really engage with some of humanity’s deepest ideas, and of course, got the chance to ask questions about them in the podcast. Five days ago I met and recorded an in person interview with Tyler Cowen, which was truly one of the biggest highlights of my life! I believe a lot changed with this interview with Tyler. I spend over three months reading everything I could possibly have read (books, marginal revolution, free press columns, other interviews with Tyler, etc) in order to be the best prepared for the interview. It became obvious after the interview that it truly was about the preparation rather than the interview itself. Just the amount of new stuff and ideas I learned from preparing to the interview completely outweighs the single act of talking with Tyler for one hour. This might even be the most efficient way I have to learn, having the pressure (and the privilege as well) of asking questions to people like Tyler makes me truly study, engage and read their work. I don’t mean to say that the interview itself doesn’t matter, that’s obviously not true, but you need to measure how you choose your guests by whether or not you want to spend 3+ months reading and learning about their work, not if you’re gonna have fun while talking with them. And this was a clear yes for Tyler but for the previous guests I didn’t really thought about this question, especially because my prep time was way less than 3 months. And I think both me and the audience benefit from me following my self interest. I have a strong motivation to talk with someone and ask questions I’m genuinely interested in, which should increase the quality of the interview.

I feel like my goal with the podcast has changed quite a lot with this last interview with Tyler. Now it’s more about an excuse to chat with smart people. I would never had the opportunity to talk with Tyler and ask questions for one hour if I didn’t had the excuse of saying it was for a podcast. It also became clear with the Tyler interview the importance of in person interviews. It’s not necessarily that the interview is higher quality (although I think in the Tyler case it is), but just the opportunity of meeting these public intellectuals and see “how they move in the world” (how they interact with other people, how they interact with you, etc) seems to be very valuable. This to say that from now on I think I’ll only do in person interviews. This comes with trade offs though. Instead of doing 1/2 interviews a month as I was doing prior my prep for Tyler, the number of interviews will radically decrease over time.

One of the best things that happened this year and was a byproduct of writing and interviewing people, was getting DMs on twitter from people writing to support me and thanking me. And I even got one from a young mind (like me) thanking me because what I was doing inspired him to act. It’s very important for me to signal to other young people that being young is a superpower in itself if you know how to use your age. It shouldn’t be a limitation or an excuse to not do something you want to do. You don’t need permission or credentials to engage with big ideas and big thinkers, you need agency. It truly is that you can just do things. If you look around you, all those things were built by people that were no smarter than you. And sometimes we have this static image of the world where it seems like we can’t change the things around us, that we can’t affect the world, but we can change things, we can shape them and we can transform them. The world is there to be changed, but again, it takes agency. I think a great goal every young person should have is: try to meet all your personal heroes by your twenties. This tests your agency and ambition. Most young people just automatically assume it must be impossible to do whatever they want to do or to meet up with a hero of them, but I think they underestimate how most people are willing to help them and chat with them.

#MEET YOUR HEROES!