Jason C. Buck 🪳🏴‍☠️

If @NotionHQ ever made a podcast about the people we admire and the ideas we obsess over, it’d look a lot like @DialecticPod. I wasn't able to hire @JacksonDahl (yet!), so I did the next best thing: invested in him and Dialectic so he can do it full-time. Unreasonably excited!

Coffee and pastries in Nantucket with @jasoncbuck & @SKNWilkinson that turned into a 4+ hour deep dive....the kind of conversation you genuinely don't want to step away from (@ttmygh I believe you fell perilously behind on your to-do list??) We captured the continuation - now up on substack.

"Risk cannot be destroyed, only transformed." - Corey Hoffstein (@choffstein) @ConvexityDredge @jam_croissant Listen on: 🎧 Apple Podcasts: apple.co/3K7CtgJ 🎧 All Platforms: top-traders-unplugged.captivate.fm/listen?utm_cam…

One year ago today I launched an experiment: a long, open-ended, deep dive conversation show based on a premise: I'm enamored with people who make things and love getting to know them by way of their ideas. More to come soon, but some reflections on @DialecticPod's anniversary: I'd long imagined doing something like this but figured it was too crowded. It wasn't worth doing without a more coherent strategy. It wouldn't stand out in a crowded media and podcast landscape. Fortunately, @ettinger, @BrennerSpear, and a few others pushed me to stop thinking about what the seed would look like in theory and instead plant it in soil. @phokarlsson says "make contact with reality." Just do an interview and release it. It turns out if you'd had a list in your phone for years of people you'd want to interview if you had a podcast someday, maybe you already know what you need to do. So I started and committed to doing 21 episodes, or the amount that some business insider article says puts you in the top 1% of podcasts. Silly but a real, serious goal. I quickly realized that it was easy for me to care a lot about this, and the fact that every episode is a new person to briefly obsess over makes it easy for me to *keep* caring a lot about it. Since then, I've been fortunate to be reminded that as @FoundersPodcast says, there's always room for great. And that if you can find something that's easy for you to care a lot about, maybe you have a shot at approaching great. It's still early, but I feel lucky that my conversations have resonated with a lot of people, and more importantly, people I admire. And I've been reminded how much I truly love, to use my guest @cyantist's words, collecting rare minds. I wrote a personal mission statement on a whim a few years ago: "help people be true to themselves." I think I am doing that in a very small way by talking to special people about what makes their eyes light up. By trying to see if I can make them shine just a little brighter than usual. I feel especially proud that one of the dominant emergent themes of Dialectic is that we only get so many things to care about, and choosing what you will care deeply about is the antidote to many of modernity's challenges and certainly a core part of a meaningful life (h/t @nabeelqu). I'm proud to put a lot of care on display by way of the people I curate. There are many more lessons and much more I could say, and I'm so excited about what year 2 of Dialectic holds. Slow, rapid iteration is a magical thing (as I just got to discuss first hand with @johncoogan @jordihays). I hope to do much more of that. But for now I will leave you with this. Everything is possible. You have more potential than you can possibly know. It is not too late. You don't need more plans. You don't need more time. Tomorrow isn't real. You have what you need. You were built for this. Go make something that is easy for you to care about. Try it, experiment, launch and get feedback, feel the material in your hands and notice when aliveness arises within you. You don't need permission, you just need a little belief. Launch. Pull the thread and see what magical things you find. An infinite horizon awaits. And soon you will find yourself asking: How lucky are we?

What do y'all think of our new trend following documentary?! Take it for a spin it's a lot of fun! youtube.com/watch?v=EPwceH…

Ep. 33: TBPN (John Coogan & Jordi Hays) - Inside Tech's Water Cooler @johncoogan and @jordihays are the hosts of @TBPN, a daily live show covering the technology business. TBPN was launched only about a year ago, but has become a mainstay in tech culture and a center of gravity for terminally online technologists. John was previously an EIR at Founders Fund and tech YouTuber. He co-founded Lucy Nicotine and Soylent. Jordi has co-founded and invested in many business including Party Round/Capital and Branded Native, a podcast and youtube ad network. We cover the origins of TBPN, or the Technology Business Programming Network, from its beginnings as "Technology Brothers" to the interplay between John's love for technology and Jordi's for business. They share how they've built a media business in an era of infinite competition by leaning into high volume and constant iteration, all while treating media as the "main thing." We discuss brand building and innovating on form by borrowing ideas from outside the tech industry—from Formula One and SportsCenter to Hollywood films—to avoid tech's tendency toward circular references. We also talk about their focus on X/Twitter and a niche, highly informed audience, rather than trying to go too wide. We also chat about what makes their partnership work and how they take the work incredibly seriously while not taking themselves seriously at all. Timestamps: 0:00 - Opening Highlights 3:18 - Intro & Background 6:08 - Technology vs. Business and the Strategy behind TBPN 12:08 - Building a Media Business when Distribution is not Scarce 22:26 - Being Entrepreneurs and Talent 30:33 - Avoiding Audience Capture 35:57 - Why Advertising is a Good Model 44:04 - Technology's Circular References and Borrowing Ideas from New Places 53:20 - Narrow vs. Wide Appeal 59:44 - X (Twitter)-First Content and Other Platforms 1:14:35 - Making Content People Want to Share and Taking Yourself Seriously and Unseriously 1:20:28 - Valuing Brand 1:30:10 - Balancing Focus and Iteration 1:35:25 - Endurance & Evolution 1:40:34 - A Day in the Life of TBPN & Learning to be Newscasters 1:49:59 - Jordi & John as a duo, Will Manidis, and the beginnings of TBPN 2:02:57 - Grab Bag: Bias to Action, 15 Minute Interviews, Not Journalism, Talent, and Domination of Spirit Available on all platforms. Full transcript and all links available below.

I talked to Chris Sacca about storytelling, risk, and playing the game of life by your own scorecard. @sacca is one of the great early-stage investors ever, a massive climate and nuclear fusion investor, an incredible writer, a provocateur, a former Shark (Tank), and my old boss. Sadly for the rest of us, Chris is less public than he used to be (and tweets a lot less). I'm thrilled to share a long, winding conversation that exposes some of what I think makes him great. That's a deep-seated love of words, a rational relationship with risk that leans into rigged games, and a lifelong pursuit of authenticity. Available on all platforms, including X, and transcript all below. Please enjoy!

I talked to Chris Sacca about storytelling, risk, and playing the game of life by your own scorecard. @sacca is one of the great early-stage investors ever, a massive climate and nuclear fusion investor, an incredible writer, a provocateur, a former Shark (Tank), and my old boss. Sadly for the rest of us, Chris is less public than he used to be (and tweets a lot less). I'm thrilled to share a long, winding conversation that exposes some of what I think makes him great. That's a deep-seated love of words, a rational relationship with risk that leans into rigged games, and a lifelong pursuit of authenticity. Available on all platforms, including X, and transcript all below. Please enjoy!