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The Guy For This

Intro to Intros

A friend of mine once said, when I asked him why he hadn’t made any introductions between the people he knows, that he’s trying to preserve his social capital for the intros that really matter. I think is a very understandable impulse—you don’t want to waste people’s time with bad intros…

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a month ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Sammy Cottrell

00:00 Intro

01:53 Reading

09:58 Interview

37:54 Sponsor

Ben:

Welcome to Ink Haven Presents Readings from the Archive. Uh, I’m Ben, and I invite writers from the internet onto this podcast who will bring an essay to read and discuss it. Uh, my guest today is one of our residents, Sammy Cottrell.

Sammy:

Hey, Ben.

Ben:

Um, Sammy, uh, originally built this podcast studio, uh, a year or two ago, uh, for a festival season, and then, uh, we picked it up and ran with it. Um, he is a freelancer, a fixer for many different clients, uh, and has been writing about, uh, that sort of work and professional advice, as well as, uh, the vid- the game Blood on the Clocktower. Uh, welcome, Sammy.

Sammy:

Hey, Ben. Good to be here.

Ben:

So the essay you’re gonna read to us today is, uh, Intro to Intros.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, why did you select this essay?

Sammy:

Because my Blood on the Clocktower essay was too long, Ben.

Ben:

It was.

Sammy:

It was.

Ben:

Um, but yeah, otherwise, uh, what led you to pick this one?

Sammy:

Yeah, I don’t know. I, I think that there’s a lot of stuff about intros as a social ritual, um, and a lot of, like, nuances that newcomers to tech industry, but also other industries, uh, don’t necessarily understand immediately. And a lot of this I’ve figured out myself through trial and error or through, like, having mentors that I trust be like, “Hey, you’re doing this wrong.” Um, and so writing this kind of stuff down explicitly is helpful for me in not only, like, understanding why these make sense as norms, and also for people like me who got into this industry maybe relatively young, um, and, like, could use more resources on, like, how best to navigate, like, professional networking, uh, negotiation, that kind of stuff. And also, I had one conversation with a friend, and I thought they were so wrong that I thought about it for two more years, and then I wrote an essay about it.

Ben:

That’s a pretty good heuristic for w- needing to write something down.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Just to get it out of yourself.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Great. All right. Well, uh, let’s listen to that. Well, uh, thank you very much.

Sammy:

Thanks, man.

Ben:

What did you notice, uh, reading the essay out loud, uh, differently from when you wrote it, uh, in text?

Sammy:

Uh, the main thing was I’m like, “I could have spent more time editing this.” Uh, which is kind of the thing for, like, all of the Ink Haven pieces.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

Um, like, there’s a spectrum where some of them are, are like, you know... Like the, the Clocktower essay, I’m like, you know, there are some, there’s some low-hanging fruit here when it comes to editing, but it’s not, like, incredibly rough. And then there are essays like this one or some of my more recent ones where I’m just like, “I think that this would’ve benefited from, like, two more hours that I didn’t really have.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Um...

Ben:

Still, I think-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... uh, it’s got the basic idea right there. If someone wants it-

Sammy:

Yeah, yeah

Ben:

... they’ll be able to read it now-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... in a way that they couldn’t before.

Sammy:

Yeah, exactly. I’m just like, it’s, it’s good to be putting this stuff out there, and then it’s going to be a lot easier after Ink Haven to be like, “Here is the networking mega post,” uh, with the, like, you know, three or four posts that I have on the subject combined into one post that I actually edit.

Ben:

Yeah. And i-it’s a good way, like, if, uh, if it gets widely read or something like that, then you can know that later on you should, like, do a new edit of it or something like that.

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Although actually, I, I would feel actually kind of weird about rewriting it if it is widely read because then, like... I mean, I don’t wanna, like, break the old URLs or something. I guess I could... I don’t know.

Ben:

I mean, you might do a follow-up or something like that.

Sammy:

Yeah, yeah. Or, like, the, the director’s cut.

Ben:

Um, so yeah. Um, this is about doing intros. Um, and this is primarily intros where you’re like, “I think these two people should be talking,” or where-

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, where, where it’s like, you know, Person A talks to me about, like, the thing that they’re working on or the startup that they have, and then I’m like, “Huh, I actually know a guy who, like, uh, would be super down to talk to you about this or who might be a good investor for this.” Um, like recently at Ink Haven, um, a buddy of mine came from out of town, and while he was around was like, “Hey, by the way, I’m, like, looking to host a dinner. Do you know anyone who’s, like, knowledgeable on the intersection of AI and law?” And I’m like, “I unfortunately don’t. Sorry.” Um, ‘cause that’s a thing that he was working on. And then when I was talking to, um, uh, Laila Hughes, who was like, “Yeah, I think I’m gonna start a startup on the intersection of AI and law,” I’m like, “You should meet a friend of mine.”

Ben:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Sammy:

Um, and then she, like, came back from that conversation and was, like, very excited about how that had gone.

Ben:

I’ve also connected Laila to someone while she’s been here.

Sammy:

Hell yeah.

Ben:

Good for her.

Sammy:

Good for her.

Ben:

Um, yeah, she was like, “I would like to, uh, meet lots of, uh, more rationalist scenes and find a place to live with more rationalists around me.” And we-- she was like, “Where should I try? Where should I look?” And I was like, “Oh, uh, I have a friend called Skyler whose full-time job is traveling around rationalist scenes and making, uh, events work.” And she was like-

Sammy:

Good

Ben:

... “Could I be his assistant?” And I was like, “I’ll connect you two.”

Sammy:

Huh. Yeah. Hope that works out for them.

Ben:

Yeah, same. Um, yeah, I think this fits into my, uh, own thinking a lot about the virtue of informing.

Sammy:

Yes. Yes.

Ben:

Where I, I tend to think that, uh, an individual rationalist... There’s the concept of the str- how strong are you as a rationalist, and your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than reality.

Sammy:

Yes.

Ben:

But in a group context, I tend to think it’s about information flows and whether-

Sammy:

Yep

Ben:

... adding someone to a group improves the ability for accurate information-

Sammy:

Completely agree

Ben:

... to get where it wants to go, and inaccurate information gets stemmed a bit more.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, so yeah, I often am just like, “I should open a group chat between two people.” I hate being a go-between, or I hate being like, “I have the information, and I’ll give you bits of it.”

Sammy:

Oh, I love it.

Ben:

I just like texting two people and being like, “Cool, you two should... Here’s the two information that I think you should both be talking about, and you guys can, can just talk directly, and even if you don’t know each other, I vouch for both of you.”

Sammy:

Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a broader thing of just, like, uh, so much of the world is mediated through, like, networks of trust. Some o- through, like, what Twitter accounts are, like, routinely right that you pay attention to, and some are like, which of my friends broadly, like, have good takes on this kind of thing that I can then spread to other people who don’t know this friend. Um, and, like, being a good node for trusted information to flow through is, like, actively doing a service to those around you.

Ben:

Yeah. Has that ever gone badly when you’ve tried to connect two people?And to be clear, normally I think badly just means, “Oops, I did a socially awkward thing and nothing good happened.” But-

Sammy:

I mean, I, I think maybe the, like, worst case of this that I can think of is somebody who I was, like, very sparing with, with who I introduced them to because I was like, “I don’t, I don’t know how this is gonna go.” Or, or like, “I think this person, like, might make a fool of themselves in various ways.” And then I... This is actually the one I was talking about in the piece where I was like, I made an intro to a person and should have said to that third person, like, “Hey, can you take this call as a favor to me? Not because I think it will be necessarily insightful for you, um, or like fulfilling for you.” Um, and then she called me afterwards and was like, “That was kinda weird.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

I was like, “Sorry.”

Ben:

Did you do it because you thought that the conversation would be good or ‘cause the person had asked?

Sammy:

Uh, because the person had asked to talk to someone about, like, a specific subject, and I, like, put him in touch with her specifically as a favor to him.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

And I, like, should have flagged to her, “Can you take this as a favor to me?”

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

As opposed to, “Hey, person for you to talk to. They’re totally normal.”

Ben:

Right, right, right, right, right.

Sammy:

This was, this is someone who I talked about in, uh, trades with Faye as well, where I’m like, uh, I maybe should have played some of those cards differently.

Ben:

Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever... I can’t think of a time I’ve regretted it. I can only think of times where I’ve not done it. Like, I think there was a weird-

Sammy:

Sure

Ben:

... one where, uh, uh, I invited two speakers to an event.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Neither of which who I knew very well, and both of them... Although I respected them greatly, and I h- they both email me back saying, “I’m afraid I can’t, I’m in England at the time.” And I was like, “I might tell them that the other one is in England,” ‘cause they kind of, they’ve-- I know that they have had some public relationship, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know either of them that well, and I didn’t want it to be weird-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... so I didn’t.

Sammy:

I, uh, I mean, like, there’s a spectrum there.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

And I, and part of, part of the post was, like, I think that because people don’t have super strong models of, like, the benefits of making an intro versus the cost of, like, not making intros, I think they’re, like, too far on the passive side and, like, don’t make enough. I... In many ways, I am, like, too biased towards action. Um, and, you know, uh, if you’ve never made a bad intro, you’ve made too few intros, right?

Ben:

That seems about right. Uh, uh, what’s the time it’s gone especially well, where you’re unusually surprised by the quality of the output?

Sammy:

So Complex Systems, uh, uh, Patrick McKenzie’s podcast, which I produced for about two years. Um, I w- I came up with about, like, 50% of the guests for that podcast, which was a surprise for both of us. Um, and I think a lot of those... ‘Cause, ‘cause those are kind of intros where, where it’s like, “Patrick, you should meet this person and, like, look at their thing, and maybe you will want to have them on as a guest.”

Ben:

You should have an hour-long conversation with someone publicly, and it will be good.

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, it’s... And, you know, sometimes if I’m like, “Oh, I think this person will be good,” but it- they’re not, like, legible to Patrick in a way, like, it didn’t go through. But, um, when Patrick was coming in town for, for festival season, I actually think I was in an office right below us right now, um, I was like, “Patrick, there’s this, this lady, Ricky Hyklen, uh, who you should have on for the podcast. She used to work at Jane Street.” And I was like... And he was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “She wrote this really good review of, uh, Going Infinite and thinks a lot about adverse selection. You should totally have her on.” And he was like, “Okay.” Um, and then they, like, recorded, and Patrick texted me afterwards being like, “Ricky is the, like, ideal Complex Systems guest. 10 out of 10. Thank you, Sammy.”

Ben:

Did they do a second podcast at some point?

Sammy:

Oh, they’ve done several.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

They’ve done, they’ve done several. They should do-

Ben:

That’s good.

Sammy:

Like, Ricky could be a host of Complex.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

Like, it could be the Ricky and Patrick podcast- ... that sometimes has a third person on, and it would be a very good podcast.

Ben:

That’s good.

Sammy:

Um, yeah. Or like, I don’t know, the, like, like, Yatarth episode, where it was this guy who, like, would @ Patrick on Twitter, um, with really, like, interesting, insightful questions. And I was like, “Yatarth, you should come on and interview Patrick.” And he was like, “Okay.” And then that went really well.

Ben:

That’s nice.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, uh, what’s a good trigger for, uh, introing people, other than two people have talked about the exact same thing?

Sammy:

Uh, I mean, that’s one of the main triggers for me. Or, or like... Like, when I was helping a friend raise, like, pre-seed money for his startup, there was a thing of just like, who do I know who would be down for this?

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Um, even if they, like, haven’t talked explicitly about it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

And so I just, like, went around asking a couple people like, “Hey, do you, do you make angel checks? Do you, do you do that kind of thing?” Um, and that, like, broadly went well. Um, so I, I don’t know. There’s the trigger of like... There’s either the trigger of like this problem could be solved by a specific person who I know, or this problem could be solved by somebody. I don’t know who the somebody is, but I probably already know some of the somebodies. Let me start asking.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

Um-

Ben:

I think, uh, I can’t remember. At some point, uh, just within the Lightcone team, we realized that, like, one of the core frameworks that you can s- view our lives as is going through lists of people and making lists of people that are useful to other lists of people or for events.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Like, yeah, I think often someone’s like, “I need to solve a problem.” And I go, “I, I can’t solve a problem. Probably someone can. All right, I will look through my, like-

Sammy:

Exactly

Ben:

... 1,000 Facebook friends-

Sammy:

Exactly

Ben:

... 100 top Lesswrong users-

Sammy:

Oh, God

Ben:

... everyone in s- 500 people in the Lightcone Slack.”

Sammy:

This is why you need a CRM. I don’t have a CRM. This is why I need a CRM.

Ben:

I think within a year, I’ll probably just be able to ask a language model to go through all of my people and be like, “Give me the top 10 people for X.”

Sammy:

That is approximately the thing I am going to use my CRM. Or I’m, I’m gonna be like, “Claude, go through my entire Google Calendar history, add everyone to a thing, let me populate it with information. You should populate it from the internet.” And then in the future, when I have queries, I will be like, “Claude, look at my CRM.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

“Be mighty. Tell me who I should talk to.”

Ben:

Sounds good. Um, I think I wanna chat a little about, a, a little bit about Inkhaven.

Sammy:

Sure.

Ben:

Uh, did this piece... How did this piece, uh, work? Which day was it? Did you get any-

Sammy:

This was like day 10 maybe.

Ben:

Gotcha.

Sammy:

Uh, so right when I was feeling better from the flu.

Ben:

Oh, yeah, you had a rough start.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, did you get any feedback on this one beforehand?

Sammy:

Yeah, no, I, I, I... So this was v-Relative to a lot of the other stuff I was putting out, like relatively effort posty. Um, as opposed to like, “I have to meet the deadline in two hours, let me crank something out.” Um, and so like I got like six or so people to give feedback on it before it went out.

Ben:

Why did you come to Inkhaven?

Sammy:

‘Cause I don’t write a lot, and I, I came into Inkhaven with like three or four big drafts where I was like, “I have a lot I wanna say about like...” I, like I had this big Google Doc called, uh, Networks, Legibility, and Fixers or something like that, um, where I was like, “I have this thesis. I have all of these like related things that I wanna say.” And I keep adding stuff to this doc when I like see things where I’m like, “I figured it out. This is an important thing that this like sofa ritual serves,” or when I like see a tweet and I’m like, “That tweet’s going in there.” And it wasn’t getting closer to getting put out. Um, like I mean, uh, six months or so ago, I put out, uh, uh, this big post on like freelancing 101. Um, and that was great, but it like is one of like three good blog posts I have ever written.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Um, and it’s like, okay, I have all the stuff I wanna put out. I would like a forcing function for doing that. I would like to like actually put more effort into doing that. Uh, and Inkhaven so far has been like a very good way to facilitate that. Um, like, I don’t know, the Blood on the Clocktower one was like a big outline I wrote after Metagame, um, where I was just like, “I have so much I wanna say about this game,” and then the outline just kinda sat in my Google Docs, um, for a while until I came back, played some Blood on the Clocktower, and was like, “Today’s the day.”

Ben:

Um, did, uh, anything about your experience at Inkhaven surprise you? Like what did you expect it would be like, and was it different in any way?

Sammy:

Oh, okay. I thought my writing relative to the writing of other people here would be better. Uh, I went into this like, “I’m gonna be one of the better writers here. I’m gonna write about such insightful topics, uh, and people are gonna like it a bunch.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Uh, and you know, I’m glad-- I’m happy about the stuff I’m putting out, and, um, the other residents should be happier about the stuff that they are putting out. Uh, yeah. No, I was, I was just like kinda hubristic about how I thought it would go, and like-

Ben:

No. Is there any writers in particular you read that you, uh, respected or admired?

Sammy:

Natalie Cargill.

Ben:

She has-- She-- Her pieces are always fun.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

I don’t always agree with them, but I really feel what she feels when she writes them.

Sammy:

Yeah, when she, when she calls all other writers pussies, I, I really- ... we should take that out.

Ben:

That seems fine. Uh, what has, what has daily writing done to your mind?

Sammy:

Stressed it out. Uh, no, I mean like, this actually started happening like when I was accepted to Inkhaven and figuring out what I wanted to write. It made the process of like, “I have a thought. Let me like write that down in like my, my signal notes to self or my essays to write list so that I can expand upon it later.” And there’s like this actual like trust in myself that when I put something in my essays to write list, there is a very good chance that at some point it gets posted to the internet in a like m- fleshed-out version. Uh, and that’s great actually, um, ‘cause previously like... I don’t know. Maybe this is-- I, I, I hear this is kind of an ADHD thing of like not trusting yourself to follow up on things, um, or like to finish projects. Um, and having the like, “Yeah, I’m like actively putting stuff out. I’m actively like writing on the blog,” um, has been pretty great, if that makes sense.

Ben:

Yeah, that does make sense. Um, did you have a lot of notes coming in?

Sammy:

Yeah, I came in with like 40 essays I wanted to write. Um-

Ben:

Did you, uh, end up using all of those notes?

Sammy:

No, because it’s been less than 40 days.

Ben:

Right.

Sammy:

And I’ve been writing close to one essay per day, and that works.

Ben:

That makes sense.

Sammy:

Yeah, like, um, I don’t know. I, I like added some stuff to the list during Inkhaven. Um, like some of, some of the recent stuff, uh, uh, we’re recording this on like day 27 or something. Um, some of the stuff on like piercing the delusion, optimizing over people is downstream of like experiences I had at Inkhaven where I’m like, “I now-- The, these things that I’ve been since thinking about for like three years, I now have a better handle on and can write up, um, in ways that were like extremely valuable to me.”

Ben:

What was the easiest piece to write during Inkhaven?

Sammy:

In some way, the Blood on the Clocktower piece.

Ben:

And for people who do not know, Blood on the Clocktower is a like 90-minute game of, uh, social deception and, uh, trying to get teams to win.

Sammy:

It’s like what if Werewolf was good? Um, like that piece, a lot of the other pieces I have been writing at Inkhaven, I’ve been sitting down and I’m like kind of like trying to crank it out. I am like thinking hard about how to say the thing, and it comes out a little bit stilted. And the Blood on the Clocktower piece, A, I already had an outline of like broadly what are the things I wanna say. B, I really knew what I wanted to say. I had-- Like I’ve played the game for like hundreds of hours. I ran it for like, uh, uh, a year. I ran weekly games for like a year. And I’ve had so many one-off conversations about some of those things, or I’ve like gone on walks just thinking about Blood on the Clocktower. I’m, I’m just thinking about like mixed equilibria in Blood on the Clocktower. Um, and so because I had, I don’t know, like the, like passion for the topic and like actual deep knowledge of the topic made it so much easier, uh, than like almost everything else I’ve written here.

Ben:

And it was an F post. It was quite long?

Sammy:

Oh, yeah, yeah. It was like 3,000 words.

Ben:

Nice.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, what was the hardest piece to publish?

Sammy:

Uh, some of the like more introspective stuff I’m just like, uh, worried about. Um, also the piece where I talked about, uh, being in high school during COVID was kind of a like, “This will, uh, narrow down the confidence intervals on my age-” “... in, in, I don’t know, in, in interesting ways.”

Ben:

I thought he was 40, but he must be-

Sammy:

I, I

Ben:

No older than-

Sammy:

For my, for my-

Ben:

... 31

Sammy:

For my recent birthday party, I, as a bit, ended up changing the title to Sammy’s 40th Birthday. Sammy is no longer 30-something, come celebrate with him. Yeah.

Ben:

I remember crashing one of your birthdays.

Sammy:

Yeah, that was great ‘cause we have the same birthday.

Ben:

Turns out.

Sammy:

March 9th, 1990.

Ben:

And then you can just, uh, show up at other people’s birthdays and they celebrate you as well.

Sammy:

Yeah, it was great.

Ben:

Even though you didn’t organize it or buy the cake.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

That was fun.

Sammy:

I mean, I did buy the cake. Uh.

Ben:

Um.

Sammy:

Yeah. No, that was fun. You should do that again next year.

Ben:

Um.

Sammy:

Or, you know, host your own birthday party.

Ben:

That you can crash.

Sammy:

That I can crash. We, we just have to make sure not to host two birthday parties ‘cause that’s wasted energy.

Ben:

Yeah. Uh, what are you proudest of in the writing that you’ve done here?

Sammy:

I mean, honestly, I think the main thing is just, like, the actual fucking total output, where I’m just like, “Wow.” I mean, by the end of, like, day 10, I had put more words on the internet than I had previously put on the internet, um, total.

Ben:

What day was your Blood on the Clocktower piece?

Sammy:

Uh, later than that.

Ben:

Cool.

Sammy:

Uh, it was, it was during Bodega Bay.

Ben:

Nice.

Sammy:

Which it was really funny to me. A lot of people hated Bodega Bay. A lot of people were crashing out about, like, “I hate it here. It’s so cramped. The foghorns so loud.” And I’m just like, “I’m having a great time playing Blood on the Clocktower with my friends.”

Ben:

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Sammy:

Sucks to be you guys, I guess.

Ben:

Well, we’ll find out, we’ll find out whether they liked it in the feedback form ‘cause, uh-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... last time a lot of people were like, “I finally made some good friends,” because we were all in a house-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... together.

Sammy:

Yeah, maybe people were just-- The, the people who were unhappy were just very ha- loud about that. Or maybe it’s that there were a bunch more people.

Ben:

There were a lot more people this time. I think it was both that we have a third extra total people at Inkhaven and I think more people went, so I may cap it last- next time.

Sammy:

Plus alums and such.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

So I may cap the number next time for Bodega. Um, what was the best piece of feedback you got in your writing during Inkhaven?

Sammy:

Alexander Wales was like, “Sammy, consider not doing ‘In this essay, I will’ in every essay,” or, like, some form of that. Um, where, where it’s like, you know, in th- like, I, I do it in this one where I’m like, “I think that social capital and networking and intros are important, and I’m going to explain it to you.” And he was like, “Don’t do that.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

And I was like, “Okay.”

Ben:

Great.

Sammy:

Uh, and then I continued doing... ‘Cause I don’t know how to not do that. I honestly, like, I think I’ve done a bad job of, like, actually getting serious feedback. Um, like, I haven’t gone to any of the o- I haven’t gotten feedback from anyone at any of the office hours. Um, and, like, I think, like, the people here who are, like, very strong editors, like, like, uh, Aria.

Ben:

Aria, Clara.

Sammy:

Yeah. Aria and Clara, and some of the other people I, like, could have gotten more detailed edits. I did get good piece of feedback, um, uh, from, from Anna Salomon where she was like, on the Blood on the Clocktower piece, where she was like, “Can you explain a little bit more about, like, what makes... Why you care so much about this game and what makes it special to you?” And I was like, “Okay.” And then I added the bit that was like, you know, “I ran this game every week for a year, and I had a year-long relationship end 20 minutes after a very heated game of Blood on the Clocktower-” “... which I won.”

Ben:

Oh, no. Was that in the opening to your-

Sammy:

Oh, yeah. No, that, that, that, that made it to the final version.

Ben:

Good. Um, what was your most Inkhaven experience at Inkhaven?

Sammy:

I don’t know. I think just, like, walking around and hearing people loudly argue about the things that they were blogging about. It... And having that be, like, constantly in the background is just really f- amusing and nice.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Does it change what you, how you wanna spend your time or what you’re-

Sammy:

Not really. I mean, I’m not... Most of these conversations are conversations where I’m like, “I have no dog in this fight. Enjoy writing contra Yudkowsky. Um, I, I will, I will write contra one of my friends two years ago like a normal person.” Um.

Ben:

I feel like, uh, going after what you care about or what you want is, like, a theme-

Sammy:

Yes

Ben:

... throughout your writing.

Sammy:

Oh, yeah, 100%. I think, like, I think I as a person, uh, for... There’s this really good essay by Duncan Sabien on the Magic: The Gathering color wheel as a, like, way to understand humanity. Um, and I think on-- A- and as, like, a personality typing. And I think on that I’m, like, very strong, like, black-red, where I’m, like, very motivated by, like, not exactly, like, self-interest or selfishness, but more, like, strategically, how do I get the things that I want in the world, where the things that I want in the world include, like, my friends being happy, um, and, like, the people around me succeeding. Um.

Ben:

Yeah, red’s very passionate, and black is, uh, relatively power-seeking.

Sammy:

Yeah, exactly. And, and I’m like, like, like, the thing of, like, write about the thing that everyone around you is doing wrong, and I’m just like, “Why is no one around here fucking strategic?”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Right? Like, why-

Ben:

That’s not what the original name of the Anna Salomon essay was.

Sammy:

I love that essay so much. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

Why aren’t humans automatically strategic?

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

But she could have written it with that tone.

Sammy:

Yeah, I, it would-

Ben:

Actually been a bit more red-black.

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah, like, I’ve had conversations with some of the people here who have... I don’t know. Like, I think that there are a lot of reasons why people have the, like, agency and strategy, like, tr- taken out of them in various ways. Um, I think some of it is, like, class socialization. I think some of it is, like, uh, institute. A lot of the times people’s parents, uh, especially, like, some specific cultures, um, and also school, like, train people pretty hard to optimize for, like, pleasing authority over actually, like, what is the thing that you want? What are the resources that you have? How can you use those to get those?

Ben:

Also, I think just bureaucracies often teach people you can’t change things. I just watched, uh, “Ikiru” by Kurosawa, which might be my new spirit film.

Sammy:

Nice.

Ben:

Uh, which is about a guy in a bureaucracy who’s just been... He’s not missed a day for 30 years, and just sits there every day and just stamps stuff.And then he gets a, a cancer diagnosis, and he’s got like six months left, and this changes things. And, uh-

Sammy:

Great

Ben:

... it’s, uh, him going to war against Moloch, and it’s, uh, it’s a great film. But, uh, yeah, I think, uh, uh, just the op- just there’s a great scene of that, just like people trying to fix the like sewage in the local, like near their houses or something, it being constantly redirected to the correct department to deal with it. And if-- I think a- after like enough minutes, it’s a full circle.

Sammy:

Yeah. I mean, have you seen “The Wire”?

Ben:

I haven’t seen “The Wire.”

Sammy:

You would really enjoy “The Wire.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Uh, I, I think “The Wire” does a good job of this kind of thing, where it’s like this is a system set up to perpetuate a system and like crush individual agency. Um, I don’t know.

Ben:

But yeah, so you, uh, so lots of these things you think are pulling it out.

Sammy:

Yeah. Yeah. Or yeah, like I, I think... I, I think some amount of this is, is maybe hubris on my part, but I think the-- like I see in the people around me, I’m like, “I want you to be locally more strategic and selfish,” where I’m like, “I think you are like doing a bad job of like... Like you’re not on the Pareto frontier of like people-pleasing and getting the things that you want. You can in fact like make the people around you happy and do a better job of getting the things that you want if you went around both of those like more strategically, um, in various ways.” Um-

Ben:

Yeah. That’s my constant refrain about, uh, people talking about trade-offs. They’re like, “Ah, I don’t wanna like, you know, uh, get pushed too much for things I would like, because I would also like everyone to be happy or something.”

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And I’m like, “Actually, you should be doing both more, both of those things.” You should-- Everyone around you-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... should be happier.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And you should be able to-

Sammy:

Yeah

Ben:

... use your resources more wisely to get what you want.

Sammy:

Yeah. And I think there’s just like a lot of broad low-hanging fruit of like, like negotiation or like, um, networking, where like a lot of people suck at those things. It is not good that they suck at those things. They would be happier if they had like a m- mild amount of skill in those.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Sammy:

Um, and I like think that I’m decent at like systematizing and understanding norms like this, and then like writing them up in various ways, and I hope that it can be useful to people.

Ben:

Yeah. I think a friend of mine told me that, uh, I’d never asked them for anything. Uh, and I think I took this as a, a concern, that maybe I should, uh, ask for things occasionally.

Sammy:

We are very different people.

Ben:

Uh, yeah.

Sammy:

If a friend said that about me, it would be because I was in a coma.

Ben:

Is there anything you’ve read that’s been especially influential on you being more, uh, strategic and goal-oriented?

Sammy:

Oh. Oh, like ever? Yeah. I mean, Patrick McKenzie’s stuff is like the main thing. Um, I-- Oh man, this is embarrassing. I like was a big fan of him before I actually started working with him. Um, you know how Skyler jokes that he is the paid, uh, president of the Scott Alexander fan club?

Ben:

Yeah.

Sammy:

I was the paid president of the, uh, Patrick McKenzie fan club.

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Sammy:

And now I am the unpaid president of the Patrick McKenzie fan club. Um, yeah, like, like just the thing of like here are like dynamics here that may not be obvious to you. Here are ways to go about like advocating for your own interests in various ways, um, in like salary negotiation, in like job searching, in like, uh, yeah, just a variety of contexts. Um, are there any others that like immediate-

Ben:

Is there any other media or stuff that influenced you on this way?

Sammy:

Uh, I don’t, I don’t think these have actually like heavily influenced me these much, th- that much, but I think that there’s... they’re like pretty good examples of these things. Um, Miles Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan Saga, um, is a character that is like, uh, MTG white-black, uh, I would, I would make that claim as, and-

Ben:

Where, uh, as I said, black is a kind of like strategic power-seeking and white is a likes order.

Sammy:

It’s, it’s more that like he like cares about protecting his empire. Like, like it’s, it’s a strong sense of noblesse oblige, and a strong sense of like honor and duty, um, and a strong sense of like, uh, despite kind of rebelling against the like things that his culture mandates, uh, he like still tries very, very hard to live up to his culture’s virtues in various ways.

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Sammy:

Um, and like I think, I think he’s a pretty good example of like strategically getting things that you want in various ways, um, asterisk. I don’t know. I think, I think for like a like lower level thing of just like, uh, something like mannerisms, something like vibes, uh, I think like Mike Ehrmantraut from like specifically “Better Call Saul” is like really good for thinking about like project management. Um, uh, try-- However, he should go to therapy.

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

My mum has watched all of “Better Call Saul,” but I’m afraid I have not-

Sammy:

Uh

Ben:

... started to watch it.

Sammy:

Well, you can, you can either watch it or you can read my, uh, essay coming to an internet near you sometime this month or, uh, next year, uh, on “Better Call Saul” and of the sort.

Ben:

Wonderful.

Sammy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, anyway, uh, I’m, uh... Thanks for coming and doing this podcast.

Sammy:

Hey, thanks for having me.

Ben:

Uh, thanks for coming and doing Ink Haven. Uh, good luck-

Sammy:

Thank you again for having me and my mic

Ben:

... good luck with your writing, uh, going forwards.

Sammy:

Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. It’s been good to be here.

Ben:

Neat. All right. Farewell.

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Tree Number Three

Candy & Kites

An adorable little shop on the beach. Buckets of saltwater taffy, fudge, colorful kites of all kinds. The PROPRIETOR reads a magazine behind the counter…

Read more

a month ago · 1 like · E Baker

00:00 Intro

01:18 Reading

05:55 Interview

34:02 Sponsor

Ben:

Welcome to Inkhaven Presents: Readings from the Archive. This is a podcast where I, Ben, invite writers on the internet to bring something they’ve written, to read it with us, and discuss it. My guest today is Emma Baker. Emma’s a resident here at Inkhaven, uh, who is a, a poet and a playwright, and, uh, has a BA in theater from UC, uh, California, San Diego. Welcome, Emma.

Emmy:

Hi.

Ben:

Uh, what have you brought to read for us today?

Emmy:

I have brought “Candy and Kites,” which is a 10-minute play that I wrote in a day.

Ben:

Excellent. Um, yeah, I’ve, uh, very much enjoyed your plays. Is there anything about it we, uh, we should know in the, uh, setup for it?

Emmy:

Well, as the bus was coming, uh, back from Bodega Bay, where we were spending some time, uh, I saw a shop called Candy and Kites. Like, l- a literal shop called Candy and Kites, and I was looking at the window and thinking about what the people inside might be thinking about and, um, what would happen if they really only just sold candy and kites.

Ben:

Excellent.

Emmy:

So...

Ben:

Uh, I think the characters are... Can you remind me the names of the characters?

Emmy:

The characters are the proprietor of the store, the, uh, sunburnt man, and a parched woman.

Ben:

Wonderful.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And the, uh, the stage directions will be done by Enia Speranski.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

And the, uh, character of the sunburnt man will be by Zoe Cozy. All right. Well, uh, I’m looking forward to, to everyone hearing that. Let’s listen to that.

Uh, welcome back. Uh, I very much enjoyed, uh, hearing you and, uh, Zoe do that. Had you, uh-

Emmy:

Thank you

Ben:

... heard it out loud before?

Emmy:

I had not. Um, I had given it to a couple people just to read, but that was the first reading of that, so yeah.

Ben:

Uh, what did you notice differently about it when you got to hear it out loud?

Emmy:

The timing’s working, which is great. You know, it’s such a, a short little thing, and timing’s everything.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

So.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Uh, how many other, uh, theatrical pieces have you written while you’ve been here at Inkhaven?

Emmy:

Oh, gosh. Um, three or so.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

Um, there was, there was a play a day that Zoe and I did for, um, a talent night. There was another one I wrote at Bodega Bay. There was this and, yeah, I’m looking forward to writing more.

Ben:

Um, why did you, uh, why did you come to Inkhaven? Why did you apply?

Emmy:

Why did I apply to Inkhaven? I applied to Inkhaven because I really, really wanted a container, uh, where I could, uh, basically be forced to do the thing it is that I love every single day. And, uh, to do it, to do it publicly so that I feel less scared about messing up in front of people-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... which is a very important skill.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, did you, uh, expect to write, uh, primarily theater and poetry while you were here?

Emmy:

Um-

Ben:

Were you surprised by what you ended up writing?

Emmy:

I expected

to write everything really, because I already write everything.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

Uh, I feel like there is, there is a place for every medium, you know. Uh, each thought deserves its own proper medium.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Did, uh, did daily w- has daily writing done anything to your mind differently?

Emmy:

Oh, yes. Yes, it’s been so good. Um, I have noticed that my thoughts form more easily into words, and the words flow better, and they ring together more truly in an interesting way.

Ben:

Has it been, uh... Have you written this much before?

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

I see.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

That makes sense. So it was not a entirely novel challenge.

Emmy:

No, but it has been really wonderful to interact with so many people from so many fields that are very, very different, uh, from the arts and the humanities, and I find that enriching and interesting.

Ben:

Yeah. Is there anyone, uh, whose writing you’ve, uh, particularly enjoyed while you’ve been here?

Emmy:

I have... Oh, gosh, that’s so-- Everybody’s so good. Um, hmm.

Ben:

It doesn’t have to be the best, just, uh-

Emmy:

It’s so hard

Ben:

... one that comes to mind.

Emmy:

I like... Oh, my God.

Comic stuff is good.

Uh, I also really enjoy Austin Chen’s history.

Ben:

Oh, yeah.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

That stuff’s great.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah, I’m really, I’m really pleased about it. He, uh... That’s funny, he only applied with a single essay-

Emmy:

Mm

Ben:

... which was, uh, good progress studies, uh, why did the, uh, hot air balloon not get invented earlier? And I was excited from what by him. You only applied with, uh, uh, a play and, uh, some poetry.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, uh, did-- What did, what did you expect, uh, Inkhaven would be like as a place?

Emmy:

I expected it would be a lot of science-y, techy people writing about science-y, techy stuff-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... and I get to observe their science tech brains. And

I am fascinated by the people who make the world, uh, you know, go and stay up-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... in interesting ways.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Uh, because I think it takes a very specific kind of temperament to

work on problems and to solve them in unique ways, and I’m intrigued by that temperament.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Uh, have you been surprised by the, uh, people that you’ve found here?

Emmy:

Yes. I have been marvelously surprised by the diversity of perspectives and by the diversity of expertise. I, I have found

so much just... The thing that makes me happiest about this place is that there is so much cool knowledge just lying around. It is like you are in a

goldmine of just interesting facts and interesting people, and people who have strange ideas about beautiful things, and that to me is just heavenly. So yeah.

Ben:

Well, that’s good. Um,

what, uh,

uh, in your writing here, um, have you... So, uh, have you written in styles that you’ve not written in before?

Emmy:

Oh, absolutely. Um, I have-- I was not so heavy on the flash fiction before I came here. Now I’ve, I’ve written flash fiction. I’ve written a tiny bit of memoir. I have, um, I’ve written more poetry. I have, um,

uh, I’ve done Speedhaven, which was incredible.

Ben:

Oh, yeah.

Emmy:

Speedhaven was so fun.

Ben:

You beat me around Inkhaven-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... with Speedhaven.

Emmy:

Um,

I have, uh, you know, and I have-- I’m not quite ready for the science and technical stuff yet-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... but observing people who do it really well and who know what they’re doing, and who are citizen scientists and, uh, very dedicated to sharing that with people has been wonderful.

Ben:

Uh, which, uh, kind of writing has come most easily for you while at Inkhaven?

Emmy:

Oh, fiction.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And is that the plays or is that, uh, stories?

Emmy:

Uh, plays probably.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Um, even though they take longer because, you know, your fir- your first draft is your discovery draft basically, or your zero draft, where you, you lay out everything. Then you, you try to hear it out loud to see how it sounds with people. Event- You, you put it aside for a second, come back to it. That takes more time, but it’s, it’s typically quicker and easier to get that out.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. How much time, uh, does it, has it taken you typically to, you know, write this one or to write Crocodila?

Emmy:

Um,

that one,

it’s really dependent on how, how well I can get into flow-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... and how quickly, and how quick the flow moves itself. Because sometimes... There, there are other plays I’ve written here where I w- I’ve just, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m banging at the page, what is happening? But for some of these, I just, I hear people talking in my head, and I just write it down.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

That makes sense. Um, what has been the hardest thing to write while you’ve been here at Inkhaven?

Emmy:

Um,

I had some, I had some short stories that were in the drawer that I was fortunate enough to get feedback on from some really talented writers, and those were hard because short stories are dense in the prose andI don’t hear them. I don’t hear them in my head. I have to see them and then translate what I see in my head to words, which is harder.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Did they- were they harder in terms of time or just that each moment of time was more-

Emmy:

Each moment of time, and, and making sure they, they fit together more cleanly,

you know. Um, if, if-- in a play, if something’s wrong, I can normally hear it. In a short story, you read it out loud, but even then you might not catch something-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... or, or you might have-- you might think the, the reader already knows something that they do not.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, have you, have you had any especially good feedback from someone who- after reading, uh, something that you’ve read?

Emmy:

Yeah. Um, there was, there was a bit, uh, in the memoir circle where somebody was like, “Oh, yes, I did not, I did not know this term. Please clarify it.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

And that was, that was really helpful because it, it helped me sharpen the entire piece.

Ben:

What was the term?

Emmy:

Long story.

Ben:

Um,

what, uh... So you’ve written many plays before.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, and you’ve tried, uh, you’ve written fast here and also a wide variety of things.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, what are you proudest of in the writing that you’ve done here? Which could be, uh, an area of growth or-

Emmy:

Oh gosh

Ben:

... something that you think you did very well.

Emmy:

Yesterday, um, yesterday I wrote a noir thriller, which is not something I’d ever written.

Um, and it, it was...

There was a moment where my brain was working with me, and so much, so much of writing sometimes, even though I love it and I adore it, is just feeling like you’re, you’re a rock climber. You know, you’re bouldering, you’re going from... Y- you just, you get from here to here. You get from here to here. You get from here to here. And I felt like I had finally, finally reached the point where I could just,

you know.

Ben:

Hmm. Hmm.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And was that, uh, specifically for that story or for fiction more broadly?

Emmy:

Fiction more broadly.

Ben:

That’s great.

Emmy:

Um, there, there have been moments where I, I feel like I’ve definitely hit a stride. Uh, the, the, the works that I’m proudest of are typically the products of that stride, where, um, you get to a quality of focus, and you get to a quality of saying what, what it is that you want to say, whether or not you... Because I think, I think that fiction leaks things that you believe that you didn’t necessarily know that you believe or things you’re grappling with. Like, if, if there is something, if there’s a problem, and I don’t, I don’t know how to explain it to myself or to another person, I’m going to put it, um, into fiction so I can look at it more clearly. Which sounds counterintuitive, because it is, but for me, it’s what works. And, um, in that moment, when I’m, when I’m writing and I’m like, “This is a world that could exist. This is a world that does exist for me right now in this moment,” um, I am connecting those dots, and I’m going up, and I’m finding, I’m finding a way to make the world more real and to make the people in it more honest and fighting truly for what they want.

Ben:

Um, that was interesting you said, uh, you turn problems into

pieces of fiction.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Is that, is that straightforward? Have you written about problems that you’ve had in your life and turned them into-

Emmy:

I’ve written about problems I’ve had in my life. I’ve written about, uh, problems that I see other people having. I’ve I’ve written about-

Ben:

Such as a store that only sells candy and coats.

Emmy:

Yes. Um,

I’ve written about, uh...

If I, if I want to give advice to somebody and I have two voices in my head that are giving me conflicting advice to give to the person, I typically turn it into a play.

Ben:

Oh, very nice.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Very nice. Um, how, uh, how much have you had, uh, wr- plays of yours performed?

Emmy:

Uh, I have had one one-act of mine performed and one full-length of mine performed.

Ben:

Nice.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And then little smaller things like our open mic night.

Emmy:

I love, I love plays in a day. I love it. The- I- they’re my very, very favorite thing, where you can just, you know, throw a bunch of people together. They say the, they say the stuff. It exists. There are laughs. People enjoy themselves, and that, to me, is a beautiful way to bring a community together.

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Emmy:

And, uh, I, I hope to do more of it.

Ben:

Yeah, I was really pleased, uh-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... with the diversity of, uh, more, uh, artsy people here this time around.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

The, uh... I think last time had some very, like, se- last-- the first Inkhaven cohort had some poetry, and it was this kind of serious poetry about ideas or something-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... and that’s great, and I also just loved the, the theatrical and the, the comedy and things-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... that happened this time. Um, you, uh, had the, uh, experience of turning, uh, blog posts and comment sections-

Emmy:

Oh, yes

Ben:

... into a theatrical-

Emmy:

Yes, yes, yes

Ben:

... uh, which I suspect is a novel one. In fact, I don’t know-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... if anyone has ever done such a thing before.

Emmy:

Oh, people, people turn, you know, uh... There’s a whole genre of documentary device theater that, uh, works with stuff f- but that, that’s living people. You know, uh, they... I think that blog posts into a play is something that I wish I could’ve spent a tiny bit more time on because, uh, internet comic timing is not the same as real life comic timing.

Ben:

I didn’t, I didn’t know, uh, that some of it could work so well.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And, uh, uh, yeah, that’s a new, uh, that’s a new skill.

Emmy:

Yeah. There it is.

Ben:

Um, I hope, uh, I hope we get to do it again sometime.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Um, but yeah, that was really fun. Uh, I mean, I also felt that I got to expand the range of motion of, uh, things that I can run here at Lighthaven.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

I, I sent my assistant Alina off to, uh, pick up some Shakespearean costumes-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... half an hour north of here.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Uh, we, uh, bought a sword at a local store for the, uh, trial.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah, so that was, uh... I found out that one or two people who’ve, uh, conducted LARPs before are quite, uh, skilled actors-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... when called upon.

Emmy:

Yes. LARPing is just acting, really.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, so yeah, I’m really pleased with how that’s gone. Uh, I think, uh, Clara was hoping to write something new for Less Online-

Emmy:

Mm, mm-hmm

Ben:

... so I hope to have something happening then. And the stage finally got a little use.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah, we did it.

Emmy:

It’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful stage, and it was really enjoyable to play with the levels on it.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, thanks so much for that. Um,

um, was there, uh... What’s the best, uh, piece of writing advice or feedback you’ve had while you’ve been here at, uh, Inkhaven?

Emmy:

Write fast, write sloppy,

and then go back and give what you have written the full quality of your attention and, um-If you are s- if you’re stuck,

you’ve probably been a little dishonest.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

And finding out where you have been dishonest will help your prose flow better, it’ll help your ideas stick better, it will help you communicate what it is you actually wanna say.

Ben:

I think I would say a pretty similar thing about nonfiction. Um, yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, with the first note I often think of, uh, Paul Thomas Anderson films-

Emmy:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... which I often feel are like, uh, insane dreams that he had one night.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And everything about it emotionally flows, and then sometimes I try to explain the plot to someone, and I realize it kinda sounds insane.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, but after he writes down this dream, he, like, meticulously and carefully, like, figures out how to film it in a, like, a sincere and real way.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, which I think is similar to the, like, uh, get the ideas out as, as they come.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And then artfully put them together and edit them and so forth. Um, yeah. Uh, is there any particular writing advisor or someone that gave you anything, uh-

Emmy:

Uh, Alexander Wales was incredibly helpful. Justice was incredibly helpful. Even when I’m just writing, like, silly stuff like, “Oh, what if we turned Shakespeare plays into, you know, prestige TV or whatever?”

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Uh, making sure that my, my thoughts were clear, that my ideas flowed, that everything was nice and grammatically correct. But, uh, also that I was saying what it was I was trying to say.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, I think, uh, you took a piece of fiction of yours to Scott Alexander’s office hours.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, I hadn’t had a chance to ask you yet. I’m curious what, uh, sort of feedback he, he gave on that.

Emmy:

Um,

he gave some, some feedback about the, the fairy tale world, how might it function-

Ben:

Mm

Emmy:

... uh, how might it be sharper, how might it be more interesting. Um,

then he said something that was very kind, which was, “Yeah, your characters are kinda holding the idiot ball here, but we didn’t notice.”

We didn’t notice. You know, like, like, the, the, the protagonist in my story, uh, has a problem, right?

Ben:

Yes.

Emmy:

And she had the solution to the problem within her all along in typical fairy tale fashion, and he said, “I did not notice that.”

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

“I did not predict the solution.”

Ben:

Hmm.

Emmy:

And that was wonderful to hear.

Ben:

Yeah, that’s nice.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, yeah, I sh- I suspect... Did everyone in the room take the time to read your story? It was kind of longer.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Yeah, they did.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

How was that experience having everyone quietly reading your, uh, story?

Emmy:

I’m... At this point, I’m used to having people quietly read my stuff, sometimes in front of me. It has... It, it takes a minute to... Well, it has taken a long time for me to just be like, “Okay, they’re reading it now.”

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Emmy:

As opposed to, you know, like, “Oh, they’re reading my stuff. Oh, my God.” Uh, but feedback isn’t about you, it’s about the art. So yeah.

Ben:

That’s great. Um, I think, uh, my sense is you’d not interact face much with kind of rationalist culture before, or rationalists in person rather.

Emmy:

Rationalists in person, no. Um, I had read a lot of rationalist fiction, though.

Ben:

Oh, that’s good.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Had you read any of Wales’ stuff beforehand?

Emmy:

No, not any of Wales’ stuff.

Ben:

Uh, it’s, I recommend it. It’s real great. I like it a lot.

Emmy:

I’m looking forward to it.

Ben:

Um, but yeah. Was anything, uh, surprising about the in-person aspects here?

Emmy:

Um, just the-

Ben:

Which is not all, which is not all rationalist culture.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

There’s a lot of diversity.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

But yeah.

Emmy:

I was, I was gonna be like, “Oh, yes, the diversity and breadth.”

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Um, but also that, um,

you can revise your assessments of things in person in real time, and, um, that you can make outlandish claims, and people will slowly, patiently explain to you why you’re wrong, or sometimes, uh, less slowly and less patiently, uh, with, you know, in louder voices. But, um,

I find it very, very helpful when someone is outlining the way that they think in a particular way.

I feel like subtext is really, really great for, for fiction and plays, and in real life it causes a little bit of conflict and trouble.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

So it’s nice to be in a place that, you know, tries to avoid that in some way.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Uh-

Emmy:

Ambiguity and that kind of thing

Ben:

... had you read any of the non-fictional kind of rationalist scene beforehand? Any Less Wrong comments? Any, uh...

Emmy:

I was not glued to Less Wrong. I was aware of it. It, it floated gently, you know, in my, in the back of my mind. Um, but I had understood that, um, AI was an important thing, and that I should, I should, you know, pay attention to it, care about it, uh, think a little bit about it, because I’m... I don’t know what the world is going to look like, and there are people who are, who are working on it and who are thinking about it, and who are, you know, even dreaming about it. What could... What, what kind of world could we leave our descendants? And that is something that interests me.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben pauses to think about what he wants to ask next.

Um,

the... So you’ve been writing a lot online.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Had you written much online in the past?

Emmy:

No. I had... I, I’m scared of the internet.

I am legitimately scared of the internet.

Ben:

Yeah. Uh, how, uh, how are you feeling about that now? Do you think you’ll do more writing online later?

Emmy:

Yes, absolutely. Um, especially now that I have a...

I have done well to discover things online. Um, I have...

I’ve found people with

thoughts that I think are correct. You know? I’ve been able to maybe help people out with their, with their projects, with ideas. Um, I, I work for someone who is part of this scene, and that’s good, meaningful, helpful work. And

I don’t know, I’ve just benefited so much from stuff that people have said and done online, that it feels right at this point to give a tiny bit back within, within bounds, as I’m comfortable.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

You know, if I have any, if I have any wisdom at all, then it feels right to share it in the same place I got it from.

Ben:

Do you think you will post more on your, uh, Substack blog?

Emmy:

Oh, certainly. Certainly. I- what I... You know, this is, this is very, very typical of every Inkhaven-er, but oh my God, when I got here, I had this, this long and beautiful list of all of the, you know, intense posts I was going to accomplish, and then in reality, I just wrote and edited, and wrote and edited whatever I had bandwidth for on the given day.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Um, but now that I’m, hopefully soon, I don’t know, maybe I’m trapped here forever, uh, free of the constraint, I will have space and license to write a bunch of stuff with a lot of effort in it, and a lot of care and a lot of time. And, uh, yeah, I think the quality of my posts will go up.

Ben:

Okay.

Emmy:

Because, yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. I think, uh, we’ll set up some sort of Forever Haven on the homepage where new posts get posted to.

Emmy:

Oh my gosh, man, I’m so looking forward to the reading groups. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to the reading groups. But yeah.

Ben:

Uh, that’s great. Um,

do you have any, uh, especially Inkhaven-esque experiences that you’ll, uh, have as memories afterwards?

Emmy:

Yes. So many. So many. Jasmine is really, really good at taking photos.

Ben:

Oh, yeah.

Emmy:

Really, really good at taking photos, and, uh, we were on the bus to Bode- Bodega Bay, and, uh, she took a photo of me, a Polaroid, and it came out completely black. And she’s like, “Emma,

are you an SCP?”

Like, “Maybe I am an SCP.”

Um, the, the Shakespearean common stuff, even though, of course, I was like, “Is this gonna be any good?” Uh, you know, people, people enjoyed it.

Ben:

It went well.

Emmy:

Yeah, people, people had a good time. And-

Ben:

Yeah, I even know one or two people there who are like, I really dislike most performance and most theater and most c- es- especially comedy-

Emmy:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... uh, said to me afterwards that they thought it was, they had a really great experience.

Emmy:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

That’s great.

Emmy:

And, uh, just, I don’t know, being around people who are, like, really into metered poetry, which is the strangest... Like, you, you do not encounter that in many other places. Uh, metrical poetry. Yes, please, more of this.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Emmy:

Give me some iambs. But, um,

yeah, it’s...

I have had, I have the, had the pleasure and privilege of, like, knowing so many people who think so differently and so similarly to me, and, uh, chatting with them and understanding what it is they care about in the world, and how they’re trying to make the world a better place, and, um, what is it brought them here. The, uh... All sorts of people from different walks of life, um, and, you know, united in this project. Like, I wanna grow, I wanna know, I wanna understand, and that has been beautiful and refreshing and yeah.

Ben:

Uh, you went to Bodega Bay.

Emmy:

I did.

Ben:

Uh, ‘cause you’ve not been living on campus during this period.

Emmy:

I have not, no.

Ben:

Uh, that is, uh, typically considered a somewhat intense weekend.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Also, the sleeping conditions were slightly worse and noisier.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Uh-

Emmy:

That is correct.

Ben:

Curious, uh, curious how that was for you, whether you, uh... Was it good for you? Are you glad that you went to Bodega Bay?

Emmy:

Oh, absolutely.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

Um,

I am, I’m very glad that I went. I played a social deception game, which was very fun. I found out that I’m good at it- ... which was great.

Ben:

Oh, yeah, apparently I heard that you were very quick at telling who was lying and who was not.

Emmy:

Yes. Yes. Um, I, I noticed- ... I noticed Smitty had this face like, like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “Oh my gosh.” Uh, like, and he was, he was visibly trying to suppress that he was about to do a thing.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. When certain somewhat introverted autistic people have to suddenly deceive, I find that that one can be a little, uh-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... you go, “Th- something is different about this person right now.”

Emmy:

Uh-huh. Um, there was, there was one game where, uh, I was looking, I was looking around people. I was the slayer, which meant that if I, if I shot someone, if I shot the demon, the game was over. I looked to my left, looking guilty as hell. Bam, you’re the demon, game over. That was, that was a really cool moment. It was like, you know, headshot in a video game. It was incredible. Yeah.

Ben:

Great. So yeah, so is it... Have the, the standard story is that Bodega Bay is a good time to make friends.

Emmy:

Absolutely.

Ben:

Is that true of your experience?

Emmy:

Um, it is, it is true in my experience, and it is also true in my experience that any time is a good time to make friends. Uh, the writing to socializing ratio,

I th- uh,

I just... I wanna know everybody, and unfortunately, there... I’m here to write, so-

Ben:

Yeah, sorry, I should cut that bit of the program.

Um, yeah, gotcha.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

You think, yeah, you’ve made friends that you’ll, uh, keep in touch.

Emmy:

I’ve made friends. I’ve made, I’ve made friends. I have, you know, examined bits of people’s heads that I didn’t think I would get to, and chatted with them about beautiful philosophical things.

Ben:

Uh-

Emmy:

And I have learned how to do stuff, which is great.

Ben:

Um, is there any advice that you would give to yourself on entering the program about how to do it differently than you did?

Emmy:

Just stick to the m- MVP, just, just minimal, minimum viable product everything. Because if you, if you hit that, then you’ll have more time to

grow it in interesting ways.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

If you are fretting, I’m always fretting, over whatever it is, like, you know, trying to arrange the words just perfectly so they fit right, you are, you’re gonna miss out, and, uh, the stuff you make is going to be worse and smaller.

Ben:

Interesting.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. How early in the day would you typically get a first draft?

Emmy:

My days had no rhythm whatsoever. You are asking the wrong person. But yeah.

Ben:

Um,

yeah. Ben pauses once more.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Um, was there, uh, was there someone here that you, uh, became friends with who’s very different to the normal sort of person you make friends with?

Emmy:

Yeah. I, I kinda became friends with Emmett Hirsch, who is- ... uh, very strange, uh, in a, in a good way.

Ben:

That’s good.

Emmy:

Um, writes about AI, writes about a lot of other things. Um-

Ben:

Yeah. He, uh, he’s someone that, um-And Resident from Inkhaven One texted me to say, “I, I really think this guy’s great, and I’m-”

Emmy:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

“... belonging him, and I think he should come.”

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, which most, is most of what convinced me.

Emmy:

We chatted about the state of Zoomerdom, which is a state that we have both experienced. Being, uh, you know, being, being a member of Gen Z who grew up pretty broadly online, and reckoning with what that did to us-

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Emmy:

... and, uh,

how to live with, because in spite of it. Yeah.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is there any question you wanna ask me?

Emmy:

Yes, so many.

Ben:

I felt like there was some desire-

Emmy:

Yes! So, so, so many. Okay. What was it like to organize an, an event like this?

Ben:

Uh, w- uh, do you mean before or during?

Emmy:

Uh, during.

Ben:

Uh, quite stressful. I think even the first time I, like, was attempting to... I, I normally, the first time I always, uh, run events that are very short and very intense.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And so the first time I just did that until I burned out.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And then this time I tried to do it less. And, uh, I did a little better than last time, but I still was pretty stressed.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

And kind of burned out, uh, like, last week.

Emmy:

Yes. Um, why the, why the push for more humanities-minded people?

Ben:

I didn’t. I just-

Emmy:

You didn’t?

Ben:

These are the people who came.

Emmy:

You just-

Ben:

These are the people who applied.

Emmy:

Who applied?

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

That’s so cool.

Ben:

The writing was good. I just accepted everyone who wrote good, and that was who showed up.

Emmy:

Fabulous. Um, what is your favorite part about the Light Ha- favorite spot on the Lighthaven Campus?

Ben:

Uh, I have recently taken to the armchair in the Bays Grand, uh, in the corner, the leather one that I purchased, which was the cheapest piece of furniture I bought in that room. It was $35. Uh, and you can recline in it, and, uh, that corner just feels very, uh... I really like going there in the evenings and reading people’s writing.

Emmy:

Yeah.

I’m trying to, I’m trying to word my thoughts right.

Ben:

It’s fine. Yeah, I shall cut the, uh-

Emmy:

Great

Ben:

... pauses.

Emmy:

Fabulous. Um,

did you,

did you enjoy participating in the theatrical events? Did you, did you feel a new side of yourself come out? Do you feel an old side that hadn’t been there?

Ben:

Uh, I think in the Shakespeare, that was a bit of an old side, ‘cause I was performing musically-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... which I hadn’t really done for a decade.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, which I think basically probably went pretty good, better than I expected. And also I was like, “Oh, yeah, I could get into this and figure out how to...” ‘Cause I’ve always performed music where the music is the focus.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

But here it was, like, accompaniment and tone setting-

Emmy:

Mm

Ben:

... uh, which was kinda fun. I could do more of that. Um, and then with the, uh, judge in the trial,

I don’t think I’m a very good actor. I think I’m very funny. But, uh, I think I just knew how to be funny, and I did that. Uh, and, uh, apparently it worked. I watched the recording back and, uh, it went... People laughed.

Emmy:

I mean, there, there are actors who can, quote, unquote, “shape-shift” in, into everything, and then there are actors who just do what they do really, really well. You might be that kind of actor.

Ben:

I might, uh, only be able to do one thing. Um-

Emmy:

That’s not true, that’s not true

Ben:

... but, uh, the, uh, uh... But the performance went great.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And it was fun, and,

and I had to live edit some of the things. Like, um,

we had a whole physical comedy bit set up-

Emmy:

Mm

Ben:

... with, uh, our executioner-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... who was, uh, had the sword at Kyle’s neck.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

And I was talking about the terror and the horror-

Emmy:

Mm

Ben:

... of execution and how-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... the method of execution would, of course, be... And I was about to set up that it’s a totally d- it’s a-

Emmy:

Yes

Ben:

... the ink blotting.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

We would blot him out like a mistake.

Emmy:

Precisely.

Ben:

The pen is mightier than the sword, and the ink will be more deadly.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Um, and just as I was about to hit the, the comedy announcement that it’s an... and pull the rug and have the executioner be, “Uh, I have a sword”-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... uh, Natalie interrupted and said, “I object, Your Honor.” I was like, “Oh, dear, that was unfortunate timing. I’m gonna have to figure out where to fit that back in.”

Emmy:

Well, I mean, it, it went all, it went off flawlessly. Nobody noticed.

Ben:

Yeah, I fit, I fitted in, uh... I was, uh, I was like, “All right. Well, we’ll hear from the prosecution.” And then we heard the prosecution. And then, “Before the defense, I would like to talk again about the method of execution.” And then I managed to fit it back in.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

But, uh, that was fun to do on the fly.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

It was nervous, but it went fine. So it was kind of a fun adrenaline-

Emmy:

I mean, that’s, that’s the greatest thing about performance, is that stuff goes wrong.

Ben:

Yeah.

Emmy:

And you, you f- s- eyes are on you. You gotta figure out how to fix it while people are watching you. It’s a good skill for life.

Ben:

Yeah. It was, uh, it was intense, and it worked well, which is a good combination.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

So yeah, I, I, I hope we do more of that.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

I don’t particularly care to act myself, but I probably end up will. The way Light Haven projects work is whoever is running them ends up having to do all the bits that-

Emmy:

Yeah

Ben:

... uh, they don’t manage to find someone else to do.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

So again, I’ll find something else for me I’m sure by accident.

Emmy:

Yeah. Yeah. Um...

Ben:

I will permit you two more questions.

Emmy:

Okay. Okay.

Oh, gosh. Um-

Ben:

I don’t know why. I’ve never asked anyone else to ask me questions, but I had a strong sense you wanted to ask me questions.

Emmy:

I, I do. I do. You’re so interesting. Um,

why the flap cap?

Ben:

Uh, my father came. He comes once a year. I see him about then. And he was like, uh,

uh... I’m like, “Well, I guess I should do something with him. Some part of my life should get fixing.” And I wanted a hat. I didn’t have a hat.

Emmy:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

We went to four different stores, and none of them had hats except this one, and it had this hat. And I put it on, and I realized it suited me.

Emmy:

Yeah.

Ben:

And there’s very few clothes I feel, like, suit me. So I’ve not taken it off since.

Emmy:

I think that it, it reads as you in a really unique and legible way. Yeah.

Ben:

Good.

Emmy:

Yeah. Um, final question. Good question. Good question.

What have you learned from Inkhaven Two?

Ben:

Uh, I’ll mostly figure that out on Friday during the retrospective when I’ve gotten all of your feedback forms.

Emmy:

Noted.

Ben:

Uh...

I don’t know. Mostly that I should probably exercise more.

Emmy:

Mm.

Ben:

Uh, I think, uh, I get tired of things, and I think I would get less tired of things if, uh, my muscles could take more stress and strain.

Emmy:

Yes.

Yes.

Ben:

Uh, other than that... I mean, sorry, the main thing I’ve learned is, uh, how to put on a podcast.

Emmy:

That too. That too.

Ben:

Uh, that’s mostly that one and how to do a little theatrical stuff is the main new skills that I have gained.

Emmy:

I am glad that you have gained these skills.

Ben:

All right. Well, um, I think, uh, I think we’ll wrap it up there.

Emmy:

Fabulous.

Ben:

Thanks so much for-

Emmy:

Yay

Ben:

... joining. And, uh, I, I loved hearing the play, so this was great.

Emmy:

Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Ben:

Yeah. Have a good rest of your Inkhaven.

Emmy:

Yes.

Ben:

Farewell.

“Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty” with Aria Schrecker

Published Apr 28•E11

Generating preview

Aria Schrecker of Works In Progress discusses one of her favorite essays. Modern culture tells women beauty is subjective, then quietly rewards the ones who figure out it isn’t. Ben Pace speaks with her at Inkhaven, a residency for writers and bloggers.
Sponsored by WordPress.com.

https://www.inkhaven.blog/about
https://worksinprogress.co/

00:00 Intro

03:37 Reading

12:58 Interview

65:01 Sponsor

Ben:

Welcome to Ink Haven Presents Readings from the Archive. Uh, I’m Ben Pace, and I invite writers from the internet to bring essays that they love to read them and discuss them with us. Uh, my guest today is Aria Strecker. Uh, she’s an editor at Works in Progress, uh, an excellent magazine, part of the progress studies movement. Um, and she also has a great Substack where, uh, she gives lots of practical advice on how to find a husband. Uh, and she’s kindly flown out to join us this Ink Haven. Uh, welcome, Aria. Thanks for coming.

Aria:

Thanks for having me.

Ben:

Um, I understand you’ve brought the essay Dispelling Beauty Lies by Jay Sandlak.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Why have you selected that?

Aria:

It’s, I guess, the least famous of the essays that I talk about a lot.

Ben:

Wonderful. So you’re gonna give it some light today.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s nice. Um, when, uh... How long ago did you read it?

Aria:

Oh, maybe something like six months ago.

Ben:

Oh, okay. Interesting.

Aria:

It’s a pretty recent discovery. I... Well, it was pretty close to Christmas, uh, ‘cause I remember I went to a big Christmas dinner with a bunch of friends, and I was, like, showing them pictures to be like, “But which one-- which ones do you think are more beautiful?” And they were just, like, hyper confirming, um, the claims of the blog post. I was originally a little bit skeptical, and I was like, “Wow, this is, this has totally changed how I think about men.”

Ben:

Oh, great. Um, and then, uh, is there anything, uh, you need to set up about this essay? I think... I guess we’re not reading the full essay.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

It’s massive.

Aria:

It’s, it’s very long. It’s very controversial. I guess I should caveat, I don’t agree with all of it. It’s, um... The guy clearly has some degree of conspiratorial thinking, and so the bit we’ve covered is actually his preamble where some of that conspiratorial thinking really rises up. But when you get into the meat of it, it talks a lot about, like, men’s preferences and, like, a whole bunch of different axes and, um, like mostly trust his empirics on that.

Ben:

Yeah. It’s also, uh, unfortunately for the listener, uh, for some of the best use of images I know in an essay.

Aria:

Or the worst.

Ben:

I, I mean, I think just in the flow of the essay-

Aria:

Yeah, yeah

Ben:

... like, uh, every point where it brings them in, I’m... It’s like it’s a high quality, often choice or, like, very relevant. It’s not just there for no reason, and they’re... they, uh, they work quite effectively. We’ll put one or two in the video.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

But, uh, if they want the full experience, they can go to the site.

Aria:

I think one of the big problems with it is you can’t really read the essay in public because of some of the images, or you have to, like, you have to, like, tilt your screen. Like, if you... Like, I was reading it on the tube quite a lot, uh- ... when I first found it, and I was, like, tilting my screen like, “I’m not a pervert. I’m not a pervert.”

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

“I’m not looking at anime girls, I swear.”

Ben:

You can get one of those, uh, things that means your laptop can’t be seen from an angle.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

You can do this a lot.

Aria:

Well, now if someone has that, I’ll just assume I’ll just assume they’re looking at anime girls.

Ben:

Sure.

Aria:

Not that they’re doing, like, secret work.

Ben:

Yeah. You did give me... I was like, “Okay. Well, I’ll read this for the, uh, podcast,” and you were like, “Uh, you might want to cover up your laptop.” But I was like, “Oh, I’m at Light Haven. People will assume-”

Aria:

Yeah. It’s much more forgivable here. I’ve been writing, um, while here, uh, my sort of like... I did a summary of his thing on my Substack, um, with, like, just the practical advice and, like, some sense of the places where I disagree with him ‘cause I don’t think he actually understands what beauty products are available to women. Um,

and then I’ve got quite a bit of blowback and also quite a lot of attention, so I’m writing a part two and... Which, which has, like, much more of the detail and the empirics and stuff like that. And I did spend some time on some of the big AI girl image generators, like, ch- choose- ... like, finding, like, the, the most popular images to show, use as examples. And there were, like, people walking through the room I was, um, I was doing it on. I was like, “No, no, no. I’m doing something legitimate. I’m not looking at pornography on the screen in public, I swear.”

Ben:

This is for research purposes.

Aria:

This is for research purposes.

Ben:

Uh, and educational. Great. All right. I think, uh, well, with that then we’ll, uh, we’ll, uh, have a listen to it.

Aria:

Okay.

Ben:

All right. Well, uh, let’s listen to that.

All right. Well, uh, thanks very much for reading it. I enjoyed listening to it. Uh, did, uh, did anything about it strike you differently reading it out loud relative to when you just had read it physically?

Aria:

There’s a lot more caveating and throat clearing at the beginning. I don’t, I don’t remember there being so much preamble.

Um, so I, I... ‘Cause that’s just, that’s just the bit that we’ve got covered so far. Um, his language is actually slightly more formal than I remember. I remember thinking it was hilarious, and it’s not actually as... It’s not actually, like, as full of jokes or as funny-

Ben:

Mm

Aria:

... as I remember it either.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Aria:

Maybe, like, once he gets into the meat and potatoes it gets funnier.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um-

Ben:

But yeah, it’s still, it’s still fairly, uh, seriously written for something that, uh, is re- anonymous and, uh, about a subject that, uh, many people do not take very seriously.

Aria:

Yeah. Also, his fiction’s really funny.

Ben:

Oh, yeah?

Aria:

His fiction is almost entirely comedy, and so I, I guess I’ve sort of, like, fused the hila- inherent hilarity of, um, of Memoirs of an Evil Vizier with the... with his more formal essays.

Ben:

Gotcha. Did you read this before or after you started writing your How to Find a Husband series?

Aria:

After.

Ben:

I see.

Aria:

Oh, no, potentially after I’d started writing it personally, but not after I’d started publishing it.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Did it have any effect on how you, uh, thought about that or wanted to write it?

Aria:

Yeah. So I, I stumbled across it because I was reading Memoirs of an Evil Vizier. So I’ve, I stumbled across the fiction first and was enjoying that, and then I saw that he had this piece, and I was like, “Well, this is highly relevant.” I hadn’t started thinking about the bit on getting sexier yet. I knew I was gonna write that. It was on my, like, list, but I hadn’t started the research for it. And I read it, and I was like, “Wow, this is actually the best summary that I’ve come across.” I tried to find other summaries, couldn’t find anything nearly as comprehensive or as persuasive. Um, and then I read, like, all of his essays, which are of, like, varying, um...

No, they’re all actually really good. Um-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... I disagree with some of them, but they’re all really good.

Ben:

They’re very opinionated-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... and well-stated.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And often about very minute, uh, things sometimes.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, he has the, the one about, uh, connected garages to houses.

Aria:

Yeah. I mean, that’s great.

Ben:

Which is, like, 5,000 words. It’s just-

Aria:

He’s right.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

He’s right. Detached garages are... Attached garages, they are ugly. I’ve never seen a good one.

Ben:

You named the, you named the essay and I assumed it was some, like, erudite metaphor, but he was like, “No, no. Attached garages are disgusting.”

Aria:

No, it’s just about that. Yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah.

Aria:

Or if it is an erudite metaphor, I don’t... I c- I don’t know what it is.

Ben:

Um, I did also love how, uh, he... I’m gonna bet he’s an academic because he seems so annoyed with academia at every point of his writing.

Aria:

Oh, yeah. Maybe ex-academic.

Ben:

That might be plausible.

Aria:

He identifies as a starving artist. I, like... I donated some money to him. I felt bad.

Ben:

Aw.I, I, oh, yeah. I was gonna say, I would, uh, I would love to fly them out to Light Haven for an event sometime. They’re exactly the sort of, like, opinionated-

Aria:

I-

Ben:

... thoughtful blogger I’d like-

Aria:

So I emailed him.

Ben:

Oh, really?

Aria:

Um, and he’s, like, very, very protective of his, of his anonymity.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

So I suspect it’d be impossible to-

Ben:

And we’ve had a few people like that come out-

Aria:

... get him to come out. Yeah

Ben:

... uh, where I just didn’t tell them that anyone knew they were there.

Aria:

Oh, yeah. I guess that probably does work then.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um-

Aria:

I might do that

Ben:

... I just wanted to... One of the quotes that I enjoyed. Um, so at some point they, uh, they go through a bunch of, uh, different ways to elucidate men’s preferences about women, whether it’s from fictional, uh, things or from, uh, I guess sex dolls is one of the sections.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Anyway, they have this, uh, in a box, they say, “Both of these studies repeated my sex doll research with similar results. However, their claims to be the first to propose a novel method for studying beauty are false. My sex doll research was widely publicized years earlier, with a summary accruing over three million views on social media. At least one, and potentially all of these academic authors, got the idea to study dolls from Dispelling Beauty Lies. I do welcome efforts to replicate my work, but in future, remember to cite, quote, ‘That article with the funny font written by an uncredentialed musician, novelist, and philosopher who sometimes identifies as an evil vizier.’” Which is, uh, their identification.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Which is great. And then they continue somewhere else. Another section, they write, uh, “End unearned trust in academics for good.

This article is the first to provide a thorough, accurate, and well-evidenced accounts of men’s real beauty preferences. Eventually, its ideas and methods will spread, and professors who’ve complacently wasted time and money for so long will be dragged kicking and screaming towards its conclusions. You should nevertheless remember the kind of people they’ve proven themselves to be. Morally weak conformists, content to mime the outer forms of genuine scientific inquiry so that they can enjoy status and salary despite doing society more harm than good. Going along with the tide after it turns won’t change anything about their character. Don’t forget.” So that’s why I thought they had a-

Aria:

So-

Ben:

... particular hatred for academics.

Aria:

On the one hand, yes, that reads like someone who has a particular hatred for academics. I think on the other hand, I think he has a lot of hate in his heart.

And-

Ben:

He doesn’t just limit it to-

Aria:

And I think he can dole it out basically in any direction. Like, he hates people who work in fashion. I don’t for a second assume that he works in fashion.

Ben:

That’s fair.

Aria:

But he very much is like, I don’t know, like gay pedophiles are trying to ruin beauty. Uh, that, that’s like definitely the tone he takes when he talks about fashion industry.

Ben:

It’s funny, I think, uh, most people with as much hatred on the internet are not, uh, a tenth as productive. Most of the hatred is, uh, pretty, uh, unproductive. But yeah, I, I was also con- I was con- worrying, wondering what their, uh, gender was. I, I had some sense that some of it was intimating female, but, uh, you seem confident that they’re male.

Aria:

Yeah. People, people often say that it’s a woman.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

And I think they’re just confused because his Twitter icon is a woman. Because, like, for a long time, um, I think the name he had went by on Twitter was Undead Odalisque, ‘cause in the fiction that he was writing, uh, there was a, there was, um,

a zombie... They, they were simulating a zombie apocalypse by using the bodies of dead sex slaves.

Ben:

Sorry, could you say that sentence one more time?

Aria:

Yeah. In the fiction he was writing-

Ben:

Yes

Aria:

... the main characters were simulating a zombie apocalypse by using the bodies of dead sex slaves.

Ben:

Right. No, that makes sense now-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... that you said it twice.

Aria:

In the, um, in the sort of

s- I don’t, I don’t know when it’s set, like um, like 5th century Arabia or something.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Aria:

Uh, so he, the main character is a purveyor of odalisques to the sultan.

Ben:

Uh-huh.

Aria:

And, uh, there’s a plague, which means his supply of redheads gets cut short-

Ben:

Oh no

Aria:

... and is quarantined at the border.

Ben:

Oh, no.

Aria:

And um, as a result, he wants to pretend that sex slaves are, uh, dangerous by simulating a zombie apocalypse instead of a-

Ben:

Ah.

Aria:

Yeah. But, so he, his Twitter icon was a zombie odalisque for a while because he was promoting this fiction primarily.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

Aria:

And but that was while he was arguing a lot on Twitter about dispelling beauty lies. So lots of people then attacked him for being, you know, “How could you know anything about this stuff? You’re a woman.” And so then in his FAQ at the bottom, he’s like, “Lots of people say that I can’t write this because I’m a woman, because I’m brown, because I’m a man, because of all these things.” But people read that and they’re like, “Oh, this is confirmation that this is a woman.”

Ben:

Yeah. I think I listened to a bit of the podcast that they, uh, Jay has done with, uh, the lady. Uh, just going through this, trying to make it, uh, popularize it, and I think they explicitly... Jay’s like, “I’m not gonna confirm or deny,” ‘cause I, there’s some passages where people say, “You can’t write this ‘cause you’re a man.” And the same passage, someone else quotes and says, “You can’t write this ‘cause you’re a woman.” And so I enjoy the ambiguity of everyone kind of being annoyed at me for-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... whatever their inferred gender is.

Aria:

But, like, it’s pretty clear if you listen that it’s a man. Well, from what it sounds like a man, but obviously there could be a voice filter. But also the, his co-host makes it clear that he’s a man as well.

Ben:

I, yeah, I was getting that impression. Um, which-

Aria:

He kind of hates effective altruists. There’s like a little... You can tell he’s, like, quite familiar with, like, various internet tribes. Um, but you can tell in, I think in some of his pieces, that he really takes against middle class people who are increasing animal welfare. Uh, he like makes lots of- ... makes lots of jibes about, like, people trying to stop poor men from being able to afford red meat.

Ben:

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I think also, um, the reason I assumed that it was, uh, initially a guy, it was both because the, like, base rate for, uh, long screeds on the internet is male.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, and secondly, I kind of thought it had a similar ring to, you know, Aella has a, a series that she’s written where she was like, “Here is how you can, uh, uh, be better at sex for women,” or something.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, which is kind of a selfish desire of hers.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

She would like people, guys to be better at that. And I kind of imagined this was a similar thing where he was like, “I would like it if all the women around me were more attractive.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

“I will write the perfect guide so they have no excuse,” in a kind of similar way.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

That was my assumption.

Aria:

I think he’s got, like, some noble motivation in that I think he is concerned that there’s going to be a tide of AI waifu girls that are gonna hit the internet. I mean, they’re starting to hit the internet now. And a whole bunch of people are gonna get one-shotted by this, and the only competitive thing that humans can do to preserve love and relationships is for women to be, like-I guess more competitive against the AI girls. Um, that’s-

Ben:

It’s a pro-humanity stance.

Aria:

Yeah, that... I th- I genuinely think that’s his like, at the very least some degree of his like self-justification-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... about why he’s doing it.

Ben:

I, I, I mean, I think the, the advice is meant in earnest. I really do.

Aria:

Yeah, I think it is, yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. Um,

did, uh, did you change anything about your life as a result of reading it?

Aria:

No. I have like vague desires to implement some things, but actually like lo- lots of this is actually not super tractable. He says it’s tractable, but there isn’t, there isn’t actually much you can do if you have like a fortunate or an unfortunate fat distribution or about like the youthfulness of your face. The one thing that I’ve decided to do is I like, um... I’ve b- I’ve been in the habit of weight control, uh, throughout my life. And, um-

Ben:

I’ve been out of the habit of weight control.

Aria:

You’ve been out of the habit, yeah. Um, and diff- different psychological dispositions here. And I’m not like actually sure where on the scale of like the various weights that I could be, um, is like the most technically attractive. Um, so I’ve started measuring my waist to hip ratio at different weights to see like what the, what the, what the curviest is.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. No, I, I mean-

Aria:

I’m gonna publish the data at some point.

Ben:

Beautiful.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s what the internet’s for.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, no, you dress very attractively, and I was like, “Oh, will Aria tell a great story where she like blossomed as a result of reading this?” But no, you were already-

Aria:

No, I haven’t... I, I don’t have the kind of spare money and brain capacity to just like totally reinvent my wardrobe.

Um, I think I was already dressing a little bit like he would recommend, um, maybe due to like some intuition, uh, that like lots of people have. Um, but like I think mostly by accident. I just like kind of like quite preppy girlish clothing. Um,

and yeah.

Ben:

Have you recommended it to anyone else? Have you sent them, uh, “By the way, I think this, this might help you”?

Aria:

I... Well, so I’ve sent, I’ve sent it to basically everyone that I know.

Um, uh, I was like, it really captured my imagination. It was like, it was... I felt kind of similar to how I did when I first discovered Scott Alexander’s stuff actually. I was like, “This is so exciting. I discovered this thing.” And actually, unlike with Scott Alexander, I didn’t realize that all of my friends were already reading Scott Alexander, and they just hadn’t told me about it.

Ben:

Oh.

Aria:

Um, I was like, “I found this great blogger.” And they’re like, “Yeah, no shit. Whatever. Like, old news.” Um-

Ben:

What year did you find Scott Alexander?

Aria:

Uh, like 2018.

Ben:

Yeah, it’s a little late.

Aria:

Yeah. But I wasn’t that embedded into this world at that point in time-

Ben:

I see

Aria:

... either. But it turns out all of my friends were reading it anyway. Um-

Ben:

And I was already reading it by... When he first posted on Slate Star Codex announcing it, I was already, I was already there.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

But yeah, anyway.

Aria:

That’s good. That’s deep. Like you, you were deep in the weeds. I don’t know. I was like campaigning for the Liberal Democrats. I was too busy to be into internet rationalism.

Um, but yeah, but this one, maybe about like a surprising number of people have read it, um, but they’ve kept like schtum. But yeah, most people I know hadn’t read it, especially not really any women I, I knew.

Ben:

Yeah. The, it has the other good property of the blog of like many things which try to fight against the, uh, false narratives of having an extremely long screed just about basic epistemology.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Which he’s also clearly thought about a massive amount.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

His, uh, stuff on trust networks.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, which is often a good sign for any other strange thing that they write about.

Aria:

I think that, I think that is true, yeah.

Ben:

Um,

yeah. Uh, how did you discover it initially?

Aria:

A friend of... Well, um, a friend of mine tweeted the evil vizier fiction. I was just enjoying that.

Ben:

Oh, wow.

Aria:

I was literally just reading the fiction.

Ben:

That’s good.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

I bet he’ll be happy to hear that, that it went that way around.

Aria:

Yeah, the fiction’s, fiction’s really good. It turns out dated in a while-

Ben:

Oh

Aria:

... which is annoying. Um, and he started, um, a Japanese futuristic incel, um, I can’t remember what it’s called. Um, but there’s only one chapter of that as well, which was also quite good.

Ben:

That’s the name of a story?

Aria:

It’s, it’s... Yeah, it’s called like the in... It’s got... It’s, it basically called the incel, and then it’s a Japanese word I can’t remember. Um-

Ben:

Sure

Aria:

... and the idea is it’s like in the far future where like incel is basically like a social class, um, because they’re all like, they’re constantly gaming, and then they also have AI waifus, but they’re not attached to like actual women.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Aria:

And actual women run the state, and they’re all taking testosterone. And at some point they decide that they need to train men to fight again, and so they’re all put into a, into this like school where in- instead of just playing video games, they have to learn things and do exercise. And that’s the first chapter.

Ben:

And are the guys annoyed that they have to exercise?

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

I would be.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um,

uh, which, uh... W- was there any particular point in the essay that like stood out to you the most strongly as like ch- changing your mind on some particular aspect of beauty?

Aria:

I, um, I like think this is like very naive. I didn’t really realize that men liked breasts.

Ben:

That is a little naive.

Aria:

That was... Yeah. I just like... I don’t know. It did... It didn’t really enter into my head that much. I, I think I probably like updated too much on slimness, basically.

Ben:

Right.

Aria:

And then like which celebrities are very attractive and like celebrities, um, Sydney Sweeney is like, is like a big innovation in, um, in celebrity attractiveness, I think. Um, like Scarlett Johansson even got a breast reduction so she’d be taken more seriously.

Ben:

Hmm.

Aria:

So there clearly like has been...

I understand why he’s so conspiratorial in his thinking, in that like so clearly, like something has shifted in norms that means like there was like a solid like 10 years where there wasn’t like a big deal celebrity who had large breasts. And that is kind of confusing considering men watch television and seem to like them. Not all men obviously, but like a lot of them.

Ben:

Right. Gotcha. Huh. That reminds me of a friend of mine, uh, called Iniash Brodsky, who, uh, only recently learned... He was of the opinion for a long time that if you just put the like male and female like soccer teams against each other, that they would just be on an even playing field and that’d be fine.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And he’s like, “Why don’t they? Why don’t they do that in all the sports, just have the men and the women compete?” And then he found out that actually it turns out that, um, most sports, uh, the guys would really quite dominate the ladies.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, I’m surprised you managed to get that far with, uh, without quite realizing that aspect-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... of male sexuality.

Aria:

I guess like technically if you’d asked me, I would’ve been like, “Yeah, sure, I guess.” I just hadn’t realized that it was like, it was significant, basically.

Ben:

Interesting.

Aria:

And obviously it’s like not significant for everyone. This is actually, I think, one of the reasons people get kind of angry at the piece. Um, I’ve noticed like when you talk to large groups of men about stuff like this, um,

they c- they, they seem likeIf their preference isn’t exactly the median, which for most people there is some axis on which their preference isn’t exactly the median, they seem to think other people are lying.

That, that seems like one of the like core emotional reactions people reach to, rather than being like, like, uh, rather than kind of assuming that, um, it’s like one, just one of the axes in which they like vary from typical-

Ben:

Yeah, I think Ozzy has a good blog post. Uh, so there’s a classic Scott Alexander one, the like typical mind fallacy-

Aria:

Mm

Ben:

... or generalizing from one example. Uh, and then Ozzy had one like a decade later called the, the typical sex life fallacy or something, where they were like, “On the areas of our lives that we’re very hidden and private about them-”

Aria:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

...”people seem to do it way more.” They’re like, “Yep, this is how everyone has sex.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Or, “This is how everyone, you know, does all these various things in the bathroom,” or, “These are everyone’s preferences,” and so forth.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, and uh, yeah, people seem to... I agree, people seem to be like, “No, you’re clearly lying. That is insane.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

“You’re making this up for some reason. This is a joke.”

Aria:

Yeah. There was like basically a massive fight in one of my group chats between people who thought that like the t- like the ideal beauty standard was like, I don’t know, like a, a slim, a slim blonde woman who looks 16, and between people who were like, like thought like a co- curvaceous Latina, uh, was like the ideal. And these people like... Obviously, like it was all, it was all like in jest or whatever, but you could tell that there was like some like genuine like animosity to be like, “I’m right, and you’re, you’re lying because you’re like effete and emasculated.” And there was like that like... It was like the, the implication underneath.

Ben:

Right. But in that case, I, I update that, uh, J. Sandman Lack is, uh, doing good work.

Aria:

I think he is doing good work, yeah.

Ben:

Um, was there any other part of their blog that you read that especially, uh, changed your mind on any- anything?

Aria:

Um-

Ben:

Other than about, uh, attached garages.

Aria:

No. I think a lot of it is like, it’s like very much situated in the world that I already know and like. Like he has like his piece that’s anti, anti-YIMBY. Um, and I’m... Like I am a YIMBY. But like his, his like analysis is not actually that ridiculous in that like actually people do mostly want like a house and a garden and, um, uh, like a lot of YIMBYism tries to deny people that by trying to like force everyone to want to live in density. Whereas I think, um, like I don’t agree that we should like tax density and like redistribute everyone throughout the country or anything, but like I do think there is like... There are like... There’s like some mistake people are making, which I think he intuits, even if he goes too far.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Aria:

Um,

yeah. I guess like a lot of it is like quite simple. Like the trust network stuff shouldn’t be like that surprising to people who are familiar with less wrong.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Like all of that is like, I think mostly quite familiar. It’s packaged in a particularly angry manner, but it’s, you know.

Ben:

And with a very, very strong serif font and occasionally very large use of images.

Aria:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Uh, the use of images really does somehow it, uh, fits more aesthetically into the website than most images into most essays. Most essays, you suddenly have a big block and it’s a square.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

But they’re like nicely in ovals. They like fade into the background.

Aria:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

I kind of wanna steal something about that when I do web design.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Do a bit of a steal.

Aria:

I mean, I do think this is like generally good writing advice in that, um, people actually don’t like looking at big walls of text. Um, and-

Ben:

Yes

Aria:

... so it is like if, if you’re like just publishing something on a website where everything’s gonna go in like one row, then you probably should like throw some images or graphs in.

Ben:

Yeah. It’s probably a good writing practice one time to just be an essay where like every other paragraph, you will have an image.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Just make it work. And he must have spent an insane amount of time selecting images, ‘cause they’re often very well... Like some of them are really great pieces of art or, uh... And there’s just so many... There’s so many of them, and they’re often really well chosen.

Aria:

I think a lot of them were sent in, ‘cause I think he did lots of Twitter polls when he was writing-

Ben:

Ah

Aria:

... asking people for their like, like most attractive images, and then he was polling lots on Twitter.

Ben:

I think in the podcast they mentioned one section where it was all user submitted.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

But I, I got the sense that that was like,

while that happened, it was more the exception than the rule.

Aria:

Oh, maybe.

Ben:

That some of the sections were like very densely like that.

Aria:

Maybe. He has an aside, which is, um, his actual personal favorite images, ‘cause people are attacking him being like- ...”This is just your taste.” And he’s like, “I think, you know, if you look at my personal favorite images, you’ll be able to see that there’s a difference. There’s an aesthetic taste, there’s an opinion here that is different.” And he even, he showed some examples of models that he uses a lot because lots of people were submitting-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... the models, even if he particularly doesn’t find them attractive.

Ben:

Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, the section that they were submitting lots was for the section where they were... He was like, uh, being like hot and being beautiful are two different things, but they are not a trade-off, and you can have just more of both.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Which is my general philosophy on life when people pose me trade-offs. Like often people are like, “So what do you... Do you think, uh, you should go in the direction of epistemic rationality or instrumental rationality?” And I’m like, “You need more of both.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

“You need to be doing way better on both of these axes.” Um, did reading any of Ayla’s writing have any similar, uh, uh, updates for you?

Aria:

I think-

Ben:

‘Cause somehow I just ask it’s a similar methods-wise.

Aria:

Yeah. I think I was already s- kind of swimming in the same soup as Ayla’s stuff as it was coming out, so none of it was that surprising. I also haven’t paid for the, the unpaywalled, um, stuff behind the paywall, so perhaps there’s like really, really juicy stuff that will change my life. But, um-

Ben:

You already had everyone in your life using spreadsheets to track all the parts of their existence.

Aria:

I definitely did have people using spreadsheets to track surprising parts of their existence.

Ben:

Sure.

Aria:

So this is not actually like a surprising, a big surprising thing. I think, um, something I’ve changed my mind on, which I think Ayla’s work is like part of the like general like discourse on this, but I think everyone’s kind of updating in this direction now, is I did used to think that a whole bunch of like aggressive sexual dominance was coming because like men were asking for it and women were being tricked. Um, kind of like the “50 Shades of Gray” narrative, where like, um, BDSM is like primarily because like there are like fucked up men, and they can like persuade innocent women into, into, into doing it. Whereas now I’m like totally persuaded that this is like a, this is like largely a female-driven phenomenon, and it’s just like a large minority, maybe even a majority of women are just like very, very kinky.

Ben:

Yeah. I think, uh... Yeah, I was really surprised when she was not only was, was the evidence that, uh, women were interested in it, but they were more interested in it than men were interested in it.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, and she was, she’s like, “How does that even happen?”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

“Why is this, why is this an equilibrium evolutionarily?” Which, uh, I don’t think she has a satisfying answer to yet, but, uh, I do believe the, uh, the results.

Aria:

Oh, I think the satisfying answer is obvious. Um, it’s thatActu-actually, like humans are not like fully m-monogamous, so like a one-to-one like ratio of like men’s preferences, women’s preference don’t make sense. It kind of makes sense you have like a small number of dominant men with more, more women per man.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Yeah, I can see that. I think I’d have to think about it. I think I still feel a bit confused, but-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... I’ll think about it more, uh, as many people I’m sure will.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, I think I’m also interested in chatting about your, uh, experiences as editor at Works in Progress.

Aria:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Um, uh, how do you relate to editing versus, uh, writing? Which one had-- Which one feels more creatively fulfilling to you?

Aria:

Uh, I think editing actually. I think I actually prefer it very slightly.

Ben:

Interesting.

Aria:

Um, I think part of it is that I like, I like the word structuring and the like bringing out ideas part of writing much more than I like doing the research. And writing, like you actually need to come with like all of the ideas. You need to do that. Whereas, um, with editing you can often like, especially the kind of editing we do, we kind of co-create the ideas with a person who actually like is the very knowledgeable person.

Ben:

Mm.

Aria:

And like, and a lot of times our like lightest work is all of the research that needs to be done, and then you can just like bring that out and structure it in a way that people find appealing. And I think that’s, like that’s kind of like more artistically satisfying than-

Ben:

Interesting

Aria:

... having to do that from scratch.

Ben:

And there’s a, there’s like a difficult part of like getting started with like knowing everything that you get a jumpstart, so you just have the expert there sitting on the side.

Aria:

Yeah, exactly.

Ben:

That’s neat. That’s neat. How, how long have you been doing that now?

Aria:

Uh, a year and a half.

Ben:

Gotcha. And-

Aria:

But before that I was working at think tanks.

Ben:

Yes.

Aria:

And, um, when you like commission research to the think tank, that is also basically the same thing.

Ben:

Yep. Gotcha. That makes sense. Um, which, uh... What’s a piece of editing that you’re, uh, especially proud of the, from the Works in Progress?

Aria:

Um, I really like what we did with the piece on why birth rates in South Korea are so low.

Ben:

Hmm.

Aria:

‘Cause it, like for when, when I got the piece, it was, um... There were like, there were so many different explanations that you can, um, that you can put together, and there wasn’t a clear story. And I think it’d be quite unsatisfying to read like a 10,000-word listicle on like all of the different like demographic changes and things you can measure in South Korea.

Ben:

20 different explanations for-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... why the birth rate is falling.

Aria:

And so it was like kind of nice, um, like c- getting together and carving out what the most important ones were, and then realizing that there is actually like a totally coherent narrative here, which is that, um, the reason South Korean birth rates are so low is basically for reasons that birth rates are falling everywhere. But a whole bunch of these trends are just more extreme in South Korea. And like n- like being able to like put that, put that story over, over what was like actually quite a lot of like slightly disparate data, um-

Ben:

What’s one or two examples of trends that are more extreme in South Korea?

Aria:

Uh, so, um, as women’s wages increase, uh, the loss of a, of a mother’s income, uh, is like actually quite substantial, and so the opportunity cost of having children increases. And South Korea, women earn quite a lot of money. They’re very well educated. But it’s combined with the, uh, strong expectation that when you have a child that you don’t work. And so-

Ben:

Oh, no

Aria:

... so a lot of countries have both of these pre- both of these things going on, where women are earning more. In fact, like in a lot of countries, like young women out earn men now because they’re like more likely to be educated and they’re more likely to have professional careers. Um, but also a lot of countries have not... In fact, nowhere has totally ere- eroded the,

um, uh, the motherhood penalty for earnings. And so places with more substantial motherhood penalties, um, and also like reasonably high female earnings are the places where birth rates have fallen the fastest.

Ben:

They’re really disincentivizing-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... people having kids. Wow.

Aria:

So like Sweden and the US basically don’t really have much of a motherhood penalty, and they’ve also got like pretty robust birth rates for, for rich countries. And basically everywhere else, there’s like, you know, like women will like earn like, lose like 10%, 30% in expected earnings if she has a child.

Ben:

Uh, the US and Sweden, surely it’s still the case that a lot of women are becoming stay-at-home mothers after having kids in the US.

Aria:

Yes. I suspect what it is, is that, um,

it doesn’t... That’s actually a good challenge because like it’s still like, it’s like very close still. So what do I think is going on? Um,

I think plausibly it’s, um...

Yeah, I actually don’t know what’s going on though, ‘cause yes, a lot of people-- And also in Sweden, a lot of women reduce their hours. So I suspect the way that the motherhood penalty is measured is about earnings per hour worked or something.

Ben:

Gotcha. Oh, yeah.

Aria:

Um, but I don’t think that’s right either because I’m, like I’m buffering over this ‘cause there’s also the hours lost one, which is not-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... that big. Um, in some cases, it’s just that, um,

uh, parents, both, both mothers and fathers in a lot of Western countries are just more likely to be attached to the labor market than non-parents, um, I think because there’s like some functional-ness that comes through.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Aria:

So I think in like, in the UK, mothers work more hours than the average person.

Ben:

Oh, interesting.

Aria:

Um-

Ben:

Didn’t know that. Interesting. But yeah, that was, uh... Was that like a team effort to figure, uh, figure all these things out?

Aria:

I was, I was basically like working with the author on it.

Ben:

Nice.

Aria:

Um, and she, she’s a good friend as well. Like she’s, um, like we’re like, we’re like both quite interested in birth rates and like trying to figure out if there’s like a policy area that we can fix. So she’d basically got all of this work that she’d like put together on South Korea, and we were like, “Okay, we, we need a story,” basically.

Ben:

And typically is the person you’re working with, is it their career as a writer or is their career as a researcher?

Aria:

Very rarely that their career is a writer.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um, sometimes... And we’re like, we’re looking to commission like actual writers. But, um, it’s like we just like, our universe is people who are deep in particular issues and are largely like researchers, policy people, or like they work, they’re like, they work in that area. And so like it’s like an edtech person with a take on education or something like that.

Ben:

How do you, uh... That seems, you know, that’s a wonderful way of like taking people who have a lot of knowledge and being able to share it. How do you... Do you reach out to those people or do they p- pitch you on it? How do you select the people?

Aria:

Bit of both. I think probably about half of our pieces are outbo- outbound commissions, where we come up with the idea that we want and then we wonder who has the knowledge to, or like who can deliver this very well. That is disproportionate. We choose better writers for that because they’re like often people we’ve worked with before who were easy to work with-

Ben:

Mm

Aria:

... and were like, it wasn’t that much, like it wasn’t that much effort to take the piece to finished.

Ben:

Well, it can be hard to reach out to someone and be like, “I would like you to do a whole writing project with us.”

Aria:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

And you’ve never met them before, and they go, “Uh, it’s not a thing I normally do.”

Aria:

Yeah, exactly. Um, and then the other half are just inbound-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... where people will pitch something. Um, often we will, someone will pitch something or we’ll like Google them and we’ll say, “Okay, um-”That’s a good idea, but we can do better. Like um, I’ve read some of your stuff, and I think this would be a more interesting piece.

Ben:

Oh, with that author?

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Oh, that’s nice. What’s the, what’s the best or most surprising inbound pitch you’ve had where it was, like, a good idea?

Aria:

We hadn’t-- So we had an AI safety inbound pi- pitch, which, um, I wasn’t actually involved with this conversation. I’ve just heard, heard tell of this, which ended up being actually a piece on how,

uh... The Pinker thesis is that we’ve been getting, uh, more and more, m- less and less violent over time.

Ben:

Yes.

Aria:

Uh, but actually hunter-gatherers were much less violent than early agriculturists.

Ben:

Mm.

Aria:

I don’t know how an AI safety piece turned into that- ... but it did.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, Haldane Kanovsky has a good post about it being more about the variance in violence changing over time.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

Uh, going quite up in the 20th century with the variance, where most of the time it’s pretty low violence except for the World Wars-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... which is in crazy amounts of, uh-

Aria:

Oh, yeah, yeah. ‘Cause I was gonna say Pink- Pinker would say that that didn’t, um, that we didn’t get more d- um, violent over the 20th century.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um, I guess, like,

that, that obviously depends a lot on the measure. I guess if you have fewer conflicts, but the conflicts are much more devastating ‘cause of technology, are you more or less violent?

Ben:

Yep.

Yeah. So okay, that was a pitch that transformed substantially.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, was there any other especially surprising, like, person who reached out with a story where, uh, you would never have, like, reached out to them to propose it, but, uh, that it went quite well?

Aria:

Yes, actually. Um, so this is gonna come out soon. Sonja Trauss is big in YIMBY world. Um, but she pitched us a piece on why, uh, Orthodox Jews have such high birth rates, which I think is chic. I think it’s chic to have, like, one of the biggest name YIMBYs write about some... Like, in a magazine that writes so much stuff about urbanism-

... um, write a piece that’s not about that at all. I think that’s like, I think that’s cool and chic.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

I like that she came to us with the idea as well.

Ben:

Should we hold the spoiler, or can I ask for a, a, a gesture for the, the case for why, what, what the reason is?

Aria:

Oh, yeah. You can ask case for why. This is... It’s, like, quite a narrative piece. It’s basically the, um... It, like, ticks off a bunch of stuff. Um, I think the more interesting stuff is about how, like, so they get married young. That’s obviously very important. Um, and lots of the rules that govern marital life are, like, encourage you to have sex when you’re fertile, basically. So, like, there’s like a week-long period. I think it’s, like, basically, like, when you are menstruating and then for a few days afterwards, you are like, your husband and wife are not allowed to touch, basically. And so that like-- And like men and women don’t interact really at all, like, outside of, like, husband and wife relationships. So, like, uh, both, both people are kind of starved of physical touch, and then, like, she goes away. She has a ritual bath. She comes back just by coincidence at her most fertile period-

Ben:

Mm

Aria:

... and it like, like, like kind of like impli- like implies very strongly that you are meant to have sex then. Also on, like you’re meant to have sex on the Sabbath. Um-

Ben:

You are?

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Oh. That’s good.

Aria:

Well you-

Ben:

I didn’t know there were positive things you were, like, encouraged to do on the Sabbath.

Aria:

Yeah, well you’re, you’re not allowed to do anything else, basically.

So like, basically like hanging out with your family and having sex are like the things that is like... And like go, going to-

Ben:

Shabbat

Aria:

... synagogue, yeah.

Ben:

Oh, yeah.

Aria:

Um, like those are also like implied as things you should do. But like days are long, you know.

Ben:

Sure. Sure. No, I can get really bored on the Sabbath.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

Um, excellent. Uh, yeah. Um, when do you fit time in for the Substack around your, uh, editing job?

Aria:

Oh, just I often will stay an extra hour at work.

Ben:

Nice.

Aria:

Like after things have tied up and do like a little bit then. Um, I’m like quite bad at actually dedicating like a weekend day to it, ‘cause I almost always wanna like, I don’t know, go for a little walk, have a little coffee, do a little hangout. Um, so yeah. I, it’s much easier to just do like an hour every day rather than to do like significant chunks of time. Although it’s been quite good to do significant chunks of time at the weekend here, ‘cause while everyone is like heads down, like working on their like 500 words, I can be like, “Okay, I can bash out my 500 words as well.”

Ben:

Yeah, I’m pleased. Often, uh, often I want to pitch writing advisors coming here as like doing a bit of like giving feedback and editing and so on, and then also hopefully getting some of their own writing done.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And one or two of them have been like, “I have just been talking with interesting people the whole time and got no writing done.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And I’m pleased to hear your case of, in fact, you got some writing done.

Aria:

Yeah. Well, the interesting people were also doing writing, so, you know.

Ben:

Exactly. Exa-

Aria:

You’ve gotta, you’ve gotta wait till they’re ready.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, how’s, how are you feeling about the, uh, husband advice Substack?

Aria:

I’m feeling pretty good about it. It’s actually going way, way bigger than I th- Like I, I did not expect it to go that big. Like my biggest posts before that have had something like

5,000 or so reads, and I think that my latest is on like 50,000 or something. It’s like probably-

Ben:

Ooh

Aria:

... actually like the most widely read thing I’ve ever written.

Ben:

Congratulations.

Aria:

Which is kind of, it’s k- kind of weird. Um, I put a lot more research into my piece about longevity than I did.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

But like I guess this is just, this, just if you like start writing about like sex and relationships, there’s just like so much more audience of people who are interested. It’s also really interesting to chart it, like starting off in my circles and then like leaving my circles and seeing how the comments vary-

Ben:

Mm

Aria:

... when something like that happens. Like I’ve had this before when I’ve written about immigration, where like my immediate circle is like, “I disagree with this,” or, “I agree with this for like these reasons.” And then suddenly you’re like, “Oh, racists are reading this.” And it like totally transforms the way that like people are replying. It’s a very similar thing where it’s like my immediate circle of people who are kind of nerdy, who are used to thinking about this stuff analytically, um, like they’re all like engaging with the content or whatever, and then suddenly it’s like, it hits like normal people internet, and they’re like, “What the, what the hell is this?”

Like... And that’s it. Like you can like, you can like see it happen. Um, and that’s like kind of interesting.

Ben:

When did your, uh... You said the recent one was very popular.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

When did you publish that?

Aria:

Oh, like maybe like three weeks ago.

Ben:

Cool.

Aria:

Something like that. Not that long ago.

Ben:

Nice.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s good.

Aria:

So maybe the next one will be even bigger. I suspect, I suspect the trajectory is not like that, and it’s instead like, it like goes up and down.

Ben:

I can only, I can only hope that Inkaven causes you to write your most popular one yet.

Aria:

I think my next one could potentially be more popular ‘cause it’s on the exact same topic, but it’s, um... I’ve tried to like bring like some more anger and also more data. So like if people like-

Ben:

Oh, no. Both.

Aria:

Both, yeah.

Ben:

Wow.

Aria:

Yeah. I’m like, you know, I, I was-

Ben:

Again, most people are like, “Ah, a trade-off. You can either write an angry post or a true post.” And you’re like, “No, I will do both.”

Aria:

No, no, no, I’m gonna do both. And I think it’s like, um, I don’t-- I’m channeling the source text here, you know. Um, and I think people will also be interested in the ways in which like... I think there are frameworks for reason- reasoning about this stuff. Like I’ve just been like, “Here is what people find attractive. Here’s what you should do.” Whereas there is like actually like a, there’s like a, a, there’s deeper philosophy on it in that, um, likeThere’s-- You could, for example, just hit like the median man’s preferences. You could like try and work out what the median man’s preferences and hit that. But I think there is like something to trying to figure out what’s undersupplied. But then some things are undersupplied because they’re like very off-putting to the majority of men, even if they’re undersupplied to the minority. And so working out which things... Like, I think tattoos are like this.

Ben:

Mm.

Aria:

I think probably tattoos and like colorful hair are slightly undersupplied, but they’re so off-putting to the median person that doing them like diminishes your overall pool of suitors. Whereas there are some things like, um,

I mean, like, like, I mean, like a very beautiful face, for example, is obviously undersupplied, and if you can get closer to it, then... Actually, no, that’s not quite a good example because that’s the, that’s still the median man’s preferences. I think there’s something like, yeah, extreme curvaceousness actually would probably be something like that, where, um, it’s like undersupplied. It’s probably not quite the median man’s preferences, but-

Ben:

But it’s not off-putting to the median-

Aria:

But it’s not off-putting to the median man, so you probably maximize suitors by like slightly overshooting preferences and stuff like that. Uh, neoteny would be an example of this. I think slightly overshooting neoteny as an adult woman probably increases your number of suitors.

Ben:

Yeah. It doesn’t, it’s, it doesn’t have b- ma-major costs-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... if you go for it too far. That makes sense. Um, uh, has anyone, uh, gotten married yet as a result of your, uh, series?

Aria:

One of my friends got engaged literally the day before my first post, and that’s so... I g- I, I had-

Ben:

That’s rude

Aria:

... the post ready. I had the post, post ready, and I like, uh... I mean, to be fair, I think it would’ve been a r- I, I think potentially, like, um,

if, if he’d been planning on proposing on the day I posted, I think actually he might have delayed

because I would’ve been too smug.

Ben:

Uh, did you, uh, give, uh, your friend any advice, uh, in the lead-up to that before you published your sequence?

Aria:

I actually don’t think people want to hear advice from their friends. Um, so a lot of this is like pent-up advice. This is, this is like- This is like, this is like the product of, um, of like having it in me and being like, “No one wants to hear this. Nobody wants to hear this.” “This is like not something I should say.” And then being like, okay, I’ve many years of like suppressed... Like, like Freud says like a lot of like, um, artistic output is like, um, like repressed libido. This is like repressed advice-giving. It’s like all like, it’s all in, and I like just have to say it at some point.

Ben:

Oh, that’s fun. It’s fun to think of lots of blogs as being the like inverse world of the things that like I couldn’t say to all the people around me.

Aria:

Yeah. And also like a lot of advice is like a target, it’s an attack if, if you say it to an individual in a way that it’s not an attack if it’s like very clear that actually there are like a billion people that you wanna say this to. Like, I, I have a thing where I tell a lot of anecdotes ‘cause I like a strong believer in like, uh - this is one of the posts as well, but like, um, people like learn far too much from fiction as being like the examples that they have for what relationships look like, for what love looks like. Because like, like, like we were saying about like people, like typical mind fallacy about sex lives, people do not, um, they don’t not know very much about how other people got, get together, and they don’t know the intimate details of it. Whereas I have been gossiping very intensely for almost 30 years now, and, um, I like, I’ve like weaved through a lot of like anecdotes of what people have said.

Ben:

You can put that in your byline.

Aria:

I just, I j- I, I’ve just always loved, I’ve always loved to gossip. I’ve always like harvested people’s stories. And, um, so I put a lot of like very anonymized versions of, of stories in the thing, and like every time I do it, people are like, “Is that me?” And it’s like-

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

“It’s actually not you.”

Ben:

I, I think, uh-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... uh, it vaguely reminds me, Holden Karnofsky has a piece about, uh, nonprofit boards and how fucked up they are.

Aria:

Hmm.

Ben:

Uh, and he’s like, “I’ve been on many nonprofit boards. If you’re reading this and thinking I’m talking about you, I assure you, I’m not just talking about you.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

“I’m talking about so many cases.”

Aria:

Yeah. There are small cases where people have been able to identify themselves, but like it’s actually like more common for people to think a story is about them when it’s not.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

Aria:

Like, especially actually one of them, um, I mentioned that like, um, men love to spend money on the Drake’s sample sale, and like five of my friends were-

Ben:

On what?

Aria:

Drake’s. It’s like a fancy... It’s a preppy clothing brand.

Ben:

Oh.

Aria:

And it’s very expensive, and it looks like the same as all the other clothes.

Ben:

Sure.

Aria:

Um, and like several people were like, “Why are you being mean about me?” And I was like-

“It’s not just you.” “I wasn’t even thinking of you.”

Ben:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have so many friends.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, uh, the other thing I wanna ask you about is just how your experience has been here at Inkhaven. Uh, I think, uh, you reached out to me, which, uh-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... is always lovely when someone’s like, “Oh yeah, I’d love to be a part of that in some way and help out.”

Aria:

Yeah. It was, um...

So Inkhaven was posted in our Slack at Works in Progress, uh, as an example of a cool website basically. I looked at that and I was like, “Obviously we should be getting... We should be engaging with this, with this thing. This is obviously like v- highly relevant to what we’re interested in.” So I just like filled out the form. It was the most obvious thing to check off. Um, so yeah. No, I’m glad.

Ben:

It was just like an interesting, like a well-designed website? Or-

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that’s genuinely why I saw it.

Ben:

That’s nice.

Aria:

Ben was just like... I don’t know where Ben saw the website, but Ben was like, “This is a cool website.”

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh-

Aria:

I don’t know if he read any of the words.

Ben:

Yeah. Well, you have to communicate a lot with, uh, with images and things.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

Um, yeah.

Aria:

I was actually, I will say this, I’m very impressed with the portal. Would’ve expected it not to have worked even the tiniest amount. Um, like who built it? Like, ‘cause like basically I assume that if you’re, if you’re vibe coding something, um, it’s gonna break at some point, and it’s not gonna have the functionality that it seems to, to like profess to have. And so basically like I, I... If I don’t see something that looks clearly like it’s off-the-shelf software that’s I, I... From like a big company, I just assume it’s not gonna work. And then like the portal just works.

Ben:

Yeah. I, I mean, I’m not quite sure which level of, uh, bit you’re mismodeling ‘cause like we’ve built lots of our own software internally. That’s like, you know, we built Lesswrong.

Aria:

Oh.

Ben:

We built Lesswrong.

Aria:

Oh.

Ben:

Oh, welcome. Hello.

Aria:

I mean, I guess I knew there was obviously a relationship with Lesswrong. I didn’t-

Ben:

We run Lesswrong. We built it.

Aria:

Okay, cool.

All right. Fine.

Ben:

Um-

Aria:

So there’s actually, there’s actually like much more, um, capability for website building than I thought.

Ben:

But it’s... Yeah. It’s also the case then that, um, uh, so I, I did the first like mock-up of the website, or rather I like hooked the like... I added the like database and did some basic design or something, uh, which is the like first 5% of it, and then the other 95% has been built by our, uh, Lucy Philippon, who works with us.

Aria:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

She’s great.Um-

Aria:

Oh, that’s why when sometimes there are a problem, you’re like, “That’s a Lu- that, that’s a Lucy thing.” And then-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... yeah. Okay, cool.

Ben:

She, uh, she could have built the website, uh, without LLM existence.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

She’s a good coder. I think that’s another reason why things work well.

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

That this is not Vibe code by a person who did not code before Vibe coding.

Aria:

Yes. Okay.

Ben:

This is a person who got into it-

Aria:

That probably makes a world of dist- difference, yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, but yeah. Uh, I mean, it’s pretty... Again, it’s pretty easy when the website has to work for, like, less than 100 people-

Aria:

Mm

Ben:

... as opposed to the last one, which has to work for, you know, like a million people or whatever.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, but, uh, yeah, it’s pretty fun. Um,

if I could go into technical details, we use Convex, which is pretty easy for, uh, prototyping. Uh, when you make changes to the database, you can just do it on your local one immediately. And anyway, but, uh, yeah, it’s pretty fun.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

Uh, it’s good that the pro- that we have that portal. Uh, and she adds all the fun features, like at 10:00 PM all the, uh, profiles go red of the people-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... who’ve not done it. And then 11:45, they start bleeding.

Aria:

Oh, I didn’t catch that. That’s nice.

Ben:

Uh, and they shine and sparkle if they posted twice in a day or three times, which is utterly unnecessary. You don’t understand. People-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... Claire posted seven times in one day.

Aria:

Why?

Ben:

She could have posted for seven days.

Aria:

Why did she... Yeah, why did she not save them? And then she could’ve done, like, a really-- She could’ve, like, used those ex- that extra time to do a really good post.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. And she still writes other good stuff.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

And last time, Michael Dickens did 10 in a day-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... just to shame us all.

Aria:

Just to show off.

Ben:

Yeah. And then research pieces. He writes research pieces.

Aria:

Interesting.

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah.

Aria:

I was thinking, ‘cause obviously, like, when you do something like this, you, like, think about the strategy you would deploy. I was thinking what I would probably do is I would, um, each day I would do, like, a piece that was like a, like a smaller research piece that was like, you know, “Here are what all the papers in this area say. This is what I think of them,” blah, blah, blah. And then, like, um, after, like, I don’t know, depending on the piece, like a few of those, then put them together and be like, “And here is the thesis piece.” Um-

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aria:

So that way, like, you can both, like, do your research days and also your writing days, um-

Ben:

Exactly

Aria:

... without, without not posting.

Ben:

Yeah. I, I’m surprised more people don’t take that approach. Uh, I think, uh, Nancy takes a similar approach with her writing about her life. She’s like... Uh, so basically, a friend of hers within the month before Incavem passed away.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

And she wanted to write about... He, he was, he was a big part of her, like, early career in her early 20s at a quant firm, and she wanted to write a story about him, and it turned into, I think, a 12-part series.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

And each one of them has its own, like, you know, uh, plot that’s engaging within the story, and it also sets up the next one.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, and that worked really well for her, and she was always at least a day ahead.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, but yeah, I think sometimes people, like, uh, get a few short pieces out that they’re like, you know, uh, they’re either personal stories or they’re just making a small point while they do, like, a longer research piece.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, but yeah, people, people complain a lot about that. Like, “Oh, I couldn’t write a research piece in a day.”

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

And I’m like, “You don’t have to write a research piece in a day.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, you know, hopefully you’ll ha- you’ll have to publish those at some point, and that’s those days.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And then the other days you can, you know, sit down, do a couple of, like... We had a lovely, uh, speed haven at the, uh, fair-

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ben:

... where, uh-

Aria:

I, I, I, um, I tested it with Henry when he was building it.

Ben:

Oh, nice.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah, and that was also, uh, Vibe coded, and that worked quite-

Aria:

Yeah, yeah

Ben:

... all right. Um, and Gwern was just calling out prompts.

Aria:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, the craziest prompt. He was like, uh, what’s that Dolly Parton? The, the best little whorehouse in Texas song. And he was like, “All right. The prompt is the best little word house in Texas. Go.”

Aria:

And I was thinking, best little whorehouse in Texas, really? Is that, um, people gonna start writing literotica as part of speed haven?

Ben:

Yeah, no, no. But anyway-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... he would, uh, he had a bunch of different, like, takes. Um, some, some were fiction, some nonfiction.

Aria:

Mm.

Ben:

And so, you know, some neat, neat ideas came out of those when you’re-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... f- competing against three other people in, like, a five or a 10-minute timer to-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... to write the thing.

Aria:

Well, when I was testing it with Henry, he gave us a two-minute timer.

Ben:

That’s too short.

Aria:

And that was just about the right amount of time to tell one joke-

Ben:

That’s right

Aria:

... basically. Which is, like, it’s fine. It was like, I think we w- all of our, all of our little pieces were, like, between 50 and 100 words.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, and it’s hard with the relay race ones where there’s, like, four of you each doing a minute of writing-

Aria:

Mm

Ben:

... to, like, make a coherent argument. Uh, those were more kind of fun and creative, uh-

Aria:

The way my, my little friendship gang has started doing postcards when we go on day trips is we’ll do three words, and then we’ll pass the postcard on- ... and do three words and three words. So that’s like, that’s a new tradition.

Ben:

I feel like we should have Incavem postcards for people to send home to their families where they’re like-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

... “I’m away, I’m away, stuck here blogging.”

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

But it’s, like, them in a cage here at, like, Incavem.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh, has anything else about it surprised you, uh, relative to how you expected this place to be?

Aria:

I don’t think so. I’ve been here before, but I was here for the Progress Conference.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

And so that was, that was full of people.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um, I’m surprised at how good the... I mean, this place is actually really well set up for working and lots of... It’s kind of like what you would imagine a, um, liberal arts campus to be like, where lots of people are working away in, like, lots of different spaces and then different sort of, like, social cliques end up, uh, kind of taking different spots-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... by default. And I think that’s kind of, um... It’s like, it’s like almost pur- I, I assume it’s, like, basically purposely constructed to have all of that different-

Ben:

Nook haven, we called it when we were trying to build the place.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

As many nooks as possible.

Aria:

Yeah. I think it’s, like, very thoughtfully constructed in that way.

Ben:

Yes. We... People, I remember conferences are normally like, “Cool, we would like one big room for all the people.” And we were like, “We made sure not to build that-”

Aria:

Yeah, yeah

Ben:

“... so you couldn’t do it.”

Aria:

Yeah. I remember no-- It was, like, great for the Progress Conference ‘cause, like, basically what I did is I would walk up and down the path. Like, ‘cause obviously the point of the conference is just, like, to talk to all the people. It’s not to whatever. And so I’d walk up the path, and I’d find, like, a person I’d like. I would, like, basically try and hit all the people I knew who were at the conference, and you could just, like, repeatedly walk up and down and get into, like, the right sized groups. Like, conversations with, like, eight people, like, once it gets to that number, you, you actually do... You wanna, like, subdivide, and the space is, like, well-constructed to make sure that people subdivide-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

... for those conversations.

Ben:

Trying to make the circles, like, you know, fit five or six people-

Aria:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... and not much more.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Around the fire pits or where have you. Uh, that’s good. Um, uh, anything about the writers that, uh... Do you expect them to be, I don’t know, different in any particular way? Um-

Aria:

There was a, there was a very wide range of quality, I would say.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

But I guess that’s to be expected.

Ben:

Sure.

Aria:

Um, no, the people were basically like what I thought it, thought they’d be like.

Ben:

Nice.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

That makes sense. Uh, is there any of the writing that, uh, was especially to your taste that you read?

Aria:

Um-

Ben:

Or especially interesting in some way?

Aria:

I was really particularly impressed with Austin’s-

Ben:

I thought you’d say Austin

Aria:

... stuff.

Ben:

I was thinking Austin.

Aria:

Austin’s stuff is, Austin’s stuff is so good.Um-

Ben:

And the fun thing about him is he, he submitted-- he had published one thing before in Caven.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

He wrote one essay, and I was like, “This is great.” ‘Cause it was a classic progress studies, uh, why wasn’t the hot air balloon invented earlier?

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

And it was great. And you know, when they were doing that, um, the guys who first did it didn’t understand that it was the heat that made it go up.

Aria:

Oh, did they not?

Ben:

They thought it was the smoke.

Aria:

Yeah, yeah. I remember hearing that.

Ben:

They were burning things that would make darker black fumes, like old boots-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...and random stuff that just wasn’t that hot.

Aria:

‘Cause, ‘cause like it takes-

Ben:

And was making them cough.

Aria:

Yeah. Stuff is much more, like, easily conceptual than-

Ben:

Oh, it’s pushing it up physically-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...with the, with the stuff.

Aria:

Whereas like the fact that heat rises is...

I mean, you could’ve, like, th- speaking of trust networks, you could’ve just made that up. Um, like I’ve got no-

Ben:

Yeah. Oh.

Aria:

I’ve got like... I haven’t really got... Like, I haven’t verified that with my senses.

Ben:

Yeah. Bit of a sense that like, yeah, the top of houses can get quite hot or something like that-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...if they’re well insulated. But, uh, yeah. No, I’ve, I’ve been really impressed with the Punch Pit stuff. And then the editing, uh, what’s the editing like here? ‘Cause I don’t know if you can get... It’s just so hard when, like, more than half the pieces are same-day pieces.

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Ben:

So-

Aria:

Um, I guess, like, when I’ve looked at people’s pieces, um, and I think it’s like a large part of this is, like, the convention of what’s going on. It’s sometimes, like, it’s not clear what the person wants to say, and when you do figure out what they want to say, it’s, um, it’s a tweet. It’s a, it’s not like a-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

...not a 500-word piece. But they’re not here to write a tweet. They’re here to write a 500-word piece. So sometimes you, like, figure out what the problem with the piece is, and then you’re like, “Oh, well, it is also 10:00 PM now, so let’s just, let’s just, like, chop and change it like a little bit.”

Ben:

Yes.

Aria:

Um, so that’s a big thing. I think people also under-think their first paragraph quite a bit.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Aria:

That’s like, that’s like a big one that like... Um, it’s actually kind of... If you’re, like, coming to a piece over and over again, like, ‘cause like you’ve only got, like, a bit of time to work on it each day or something. I think people, like, think it’s kind of wrong to, like, just start from the beginning and read it again. But actually, your beginning is so much more important than your middle. Obviously, like, your end also really matters. Um, so I think it’s fine to just, like, hit your intro, like, every time you open up the page and get it, like, to nail it each time you read it and you feel like there’s something wrong with it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um-

Ben:

I feel like I would happily enjoy just a whole, like, talk on the first paragraph.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

With like tons of examples of them, tons of examples of how you change them over the course of pieces. Do you change them a lot over the course of editing?

Aria:

I change them a lot over the course of pieces. I will sometimes, like, not hit my intro at all for ages and ages and ages and, um, wait until I find the most int- My, like, rough rule, which is not what everyone else does on the team, but this is, um, this is what I do, uh, is I will find whatever I think the most interesting thing in the whole piece is and put that at the front.

Ben:

Right.

Aria:

And then I will find, um, what I think the most impactful, important part of it is and t-tell that off at the end, basically. Um, and then-

Ben:

Huh. Nice

Aria:

...and then w- And then the other thing is you then try and reference whatever you did at... It’s almost, like, formulaic. Whatever you, like, mentioned at the beginning, you want to then somehow, like, reference it in the, in the bit where you’re, like, also, like, scaling up the register to the most important stuff.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Um, a lot of people will just, like, make their intro ‘cause, like, they wanna, they wanna get... I think potentially they want a more honest signal of what, of, of people who wanna read it, where they will, like, just tell you what they’re gonna say.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

And that’s also good ‘cause you’re like, “Okay, I know what I’m here for. If I wanna hear that, I will keep reading.”

Ben:

Yes.

Aria:

But I think it’s, like, kind of better to, like, get, like, the most emotional or interesting or, like, thing out there-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

...that can really get people.

Ben:

Yeah. It’s, it’s this trade-off between writing, making something that is in fact enjoyable and a good at reading experience, uh, as well as being, like, just plainly informative and direct and so forth.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, is there anything else I should ask you about Works in Progress?

Aria:

Um, no. Unless you can, like, somehow persuade people to buy

a copy.

Ben:

We can tell people where to buy the copies.

Aria:

Oh, tell them where they can buy a copy, yeah.

Ben:

Where do we buy the copies of Works in Progress?

Aria:

You can buy a copy of Works in Progress at worksinprogress.co/print.

Ben:

/print. Neat. We, uh, will make sure we’ve got some here.

Aria:

Mm. Although we’ve got, like, a normal website that is trying to get you to buy something, so, like, you can go to any page of the website and you’ll-- it’ll be pretty obvious how you can, how you can buy a copy.

Ben:

Does it, uh... Do you have the byline in there in the essays that you edit on? Does it say-

Aria:

No, we don’t, we don’t include the editor. My mom was very disappointed about this actually-

Ben:

Yeah

Aria:

...’cause my mom was like, “Wait, but it doesn’t say that you...” And I was like, “It’s... You know, I’m in the, I’m on the website somewhere.”

Ben:

Um, that makes sense.

Aria:

I also think it’s, like, would be, like, a little bit embarrassing. Like, other, other, other things don’t tell you who the, uh, editor is on the piece. They just tell you who the writer is. Um-

Ben:

It could be somewhere in the, like, endnotes or in the, like-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...bottom of the table of contents page, just be like, “Thanks to these people for their work and things.”

Aria:

Yeah. Maybe. We have, um... I think we’ll try to do The Economist thing a little bit where we, like, speak with one voice as an editing team. Like-

Ben:

Ah.

Aria:

Um, like, I guess I mentioned that I worked on the South Korean one. Um, but, like, I think we, we do generally pass the pieces around a bit, but, like, even though, like, one of us will almost always be, like, directing it and, like, having, having the, like, core relationship.

Ben:

Well, in that case, you can come up with some, like, prestige-y name like, uh, uh, “And is of course edited by the senior editing team.”

Aria:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

And it’s cool that you got onto the senior editing team. Um, neat. And, uh, anything else I should ask you about Jay Sanilac?

Aria:

Um, I think that, I guess it’s clear that I like, I’m, like, somewhat charmed by what is clearly, like, a curmudgeonly, um, irritable character. Uh-

Ben:

And yet still great. It’s not, it’s not... The content is not lacking-

Aria:

Yeah, yeah

Ben:

...as a result of that.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

It does not get in the way of the content.

Aria:

No.

Ben:

And it is very much motivating why the content gets to be there in the first place.

Aria:

Yeah. He’s got a journal on his website that, like, um, sh- like, he, like, writes a little bit about his process. It’s not very, like... It’s not, like, very detailed or anything. But, uh, the Iran war has clearly been, like, a big deal to him. Um, he, like, seems to have been, like, quite emotionally devastated by it, and I think that’s, like, an interesting chara- Like, I can’t actually fit that into my broader sense of his character.

Ben:

Mm.

Aria:

Like, on Twitter, all he said is, like, you know, “With the cost of the Iran war, we could have bought every 25-year-old American woman, like, a boob job,” which is obviously funny. Um,

but

in his journal, it’s, like, clear that this is actually, like, a big deal to him.

Ben:

It’s always, uh, interesting, this, uh, podcast ‘cause I’m, like, I’m a well-versed man of the internet. I have probably read a lot of the things.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

And then people keep bringing me great things that I have not read.

Aria:

There are so many corners of the internet.

Ben:

Yeah.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

I think I’d seen this blog once or twice ‘cause I remember the, like, shape of the images and-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...the layout and the art style.

Aria:

You’ll, you’ll, you’ll remember the font.

Ben:

Yes. Yes.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, but, uh, thanks so much for, uh, sharing it with me. I am glad to have got to read it again.

Aria:

Oh, did you read it in Occidental or Oriental?

Ben:

Uh, the initial one with the serif.

Aria:

Yeah, the serif. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

The crazy serifs.

Aria:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. Uh, no, he’s clearly spent a ti- a while on the web design, which is neat, but people never click the, like, change the, change these settings on this webpage.

Aria:

No, of course not. Yeah.

Ben:

Um, so yeah, I read it in the intended, difficult, slightly harder to read-

Aria:

Yeah

Ben:

...slightly fancier way. Um, all right. Well, uh, thanks so much. I really appreciate reading it, and, uh, it was great to chat with you.

Aria:

Nice. Good chat with you as well.

Ben:

Farewell. I didn’t need to do the guns at the farewell.

00:00 Intro
02:48 Reading
19:10 Interview
52:09 Sponsor

Ben:

Welcome to Inkhaven Presents Readings from the Archive. I’m Ben Pace, and each episode, I invite a writer from the internet whose writings I read and admire to select an essay to read and discuss with us. This episode, we’re going to hear the essay, “Locating the Netherlands’ Most Wanted Criminal by Scrutinizing Instagram,” written by Henk Van Nes. It was published on bellingcat.com in March of 2019. The essay was chosen by Georgia Ray, a microbiology and biosecurity expert who writes at Eukaryote Writes blog and has done so for over a decade. She writes very funny research pieces, uh, about topics ranging from the naked mole rat to whether trees exist and missing hikers, uh, and also her experience getting dysentery for science. Welcome, Georgia.

Georgia:

Hi, Ben.

Ben:

Uh, what led you to want to read this piece today?

Georgia:

I’ve been following Bellingcat for a very long time. Uh, I find their pieces...

I really should have thought of some, some of this stuff in advance. Sorry.

Ben:

That’s all right. I just wanna know what the answer is.

Anyway, but yeah, I probably won’t cut again after this. Doesn’t matter.

Georgia:

Okay, fair enough. Um...

Ben:

But yeah, why did you, uh... What led you to want to read this piece today?

Georgia:

Yeah. I’ve been following Bellingcat’s stuff for a very long time, and this is indicative of the kind of work I ran into... of, uh, work of theirs I ran into early on. Um, first of all, they’re extremely cool.

And this, uh, investigation, as you’ll hear, is a cool thing to do, so that’s inspiring. Um, but also I think they’re very good at a, uh, very snappy explainer/story, um, that is also very informative of just how you can do it. Uh, th- their thing is OSINT, which means open source intelligence, which me- which means, uh, you know, things from, like, internet tools and whatever, so, like, anyone else just can verify this. Uh, and I think that’s really cool.

Ben:

Yeah. I think, uh, I, I really appreciate write-ups like this. This post could’ve been three paragraphs being like, “We did a thing,” but instead it told you how they did a thing in detail, and it was very fun to read, and I also was kind of like, “Gosh, I kind of see how this works. I kind of can imagine helping out with such things in the future.”

Georgia:

It makes you think, like, immediately off the bat, like, “Oh, I could do this.”

Ben:

Um, did that have that effect on you? Did you-

Georgia:

Yes. Yeah. I was like, “Oh, I could... Okay. There’s a lot of stuff out on there on Instagram or in Google Maps and everywhere else on the internet,” so...

Ben:

Yeah. Did it-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... influence much... I recall you had a piece, uh, about various strange things happening in, uh, IraqaWatch on Twitter. Uh-

Georgia:

Oh, yeah.

Ben:

Did it, uh... Was it at all in the back of your mind as like, uh, “Wow, you can kind of do that kind of thing”?

Georgia:

Yes, very much. Like, uh, approaching, approaching the process of a quote unquote investigation or even framing here’s a weird mystery as an investigation. Okay, what tools do I have at my disposal? How do, how do I start on this? Where is this leading me, et cetera.

Ben:

Detective Georgia Ray.

Georgia:

Oh, I can only dream.

Ben:

Great. Um, well, uh, I think if there’s nothing else we need to set up, I think this, uh, this essay’s pretty v- uh, visual heavy, so we’ll have a lot of photos during it.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um-

Georgia:

I’ll take a little bit of interpretation in, um, presenting it in a audio, uh, format, but it’ll be basically the same.

Ben:

Great. All right. Well, uh, let’s listen to that now.

Great.

Nailed it.

Georgia:

Wow.

Ben:

Halfway through the podcast. That’s not true. Two-thirds of the sections, but, uh, the next bit is slightly longer, but it doesn’t matter. Um,

yeah. Um,

all right. Then we’ll come back.

Uh, well, uh, thank you very much for reading that. Um, what did you notice differently about it, uh, reading it seven years later than when you initially read it?

Georgia:

Yeah, that’s a good question. When I was initially reading it, and this kind of stuff, since they do a lot of work, I, I just thought this was, you know, a good one that stood alone and also wasn’t about, um, you know, mass graves or whatever, which I thought would kind of be more of a downer. Um,

I was not explicitly paying attention to the style. It was mostly like, ooh, content. Um, or,

uh, ooh, the content that they are trying to communicate to me. Uh, this, this thing they did, that’s a cool thing to do. Um, because it is one of those pieces where the style is, kind of fades into the background. Um, you know, it, it’s not trying to be, uh, florid or, like, communicate a lot, uh-

Ben:

It’s not very-

Georgia:

... directly by the writing style. But now that I’ve n- you know, now that I’ve, like, thought about it and, like, uh, paid more attention to this thing, um,

uh, yeah, it’s just a good write-up. Um, it, it’s good. It’s clear. It does not, like, linger, but it tells you everything you need to know to get where they got.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, I enjoy all the, the links where it says, “Of course, we figured out this,” and they just link to a Twitter guy figuring that out, who was freely... you know, did it for free. And he helped out, and he was like, “Oh, yes, I in fact know about botany in Iran. I will tell you what flower that is”-

Georgia:

Oh, well-

Ben:

... which is wonderful. Um, yeah.

Georgia:

The fact that it was, um, uh, that this was so explicitly crowdsourced, and I, I believe they said it took place over the course of a day, so you can really imagine just being in there.

Ben:

A day?

Georgia:

I could be wrong. I think a lot of this investigation happened maybe on March 19th.

Ben:

Imagine.

Georgia:

And you can imagine just a bunch of people spending, like, hours at their computer kind of sucked into this, um, going around, and I think that’s very beautiful.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. Um,

yeah, they do write about mass graves. I, I’m still curious why you, uh, why you thought about this one rather than, uh, some of their stuff about wars, uh, which they have... You know, they’ve looked into the Ukraine war and some others a substantial amount.

Georgia:

Um, I mean, I was going for something older. Um-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... you know, uh, this was... Uh, they certainly still write pieces and investigations kind of like this. Um, but I was trying to think, okay, what was, like, one of the ones I kind of remember reading back in the day that, uh, hit me then?

Ben:

Nice.

Georgia:

Um, yeah.

Ben:

And what, what stood out? What was, like, the most thrilling moment of reading it? Was it just the, like, result, or was there any particular, like, step of what they did that, uh, excited you?

Georgia:

The result’s good. I mean, the garbage can is hard to beat. Um, like, just the stuff that is in the background, or I don’t know, like, th- this one tree turned out to be, like, you know, not the hinge necessarily. I’m sure they would’ve found other stuff. Um-But like the, it’s so specific. It’s a kind of innocuous garden detail, and be like, “Okay, no, we know what plant this is and it ha- has to grow in this time of year in this part of the country. There’s no other time at which this plant could’ve been blooming in this garden, uh, in, you know, the vague part of the earth we think it’s in.” Uh, like, that’s, that’s cool, man.

Ben:

Yeah, you’re right. I also... I, I, I ca- I don’t know why, but every time anyone’s like, “But if you look into the reflection”

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

And then I go, “I can’t tell what the hell is in the reflection.” But they’re like, “It’s-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... probably another building.” I’m like, “Is it?” And they, “It totally is another building.”

Georgia:

Oh, wow.

Ben:

And they’re like, “Ah, there’s a set of houses together.” And-

Georgia:

Yeah, that it’s n- it’s not clear. Like, it, it looks kind of architectural to your, like, uh, you know, a house would be the most likely thing for it to be. But like, it’s not trees, it’s not a lake.

Ben:

Nope.

Georgia:

Um, e- even just knowing that, that gives you enough to, like, put the house in more context.

Ben:

Yep. Yeah.

Georgia:

Um, yeah. They pull off a other... They’re, they don’t only do geo-identifications or geolocations of photos, but they, they do have some of those in their back, uh, record that are, um, wild.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, I also... It was just... It was such a funny story about the guy, because he was up for, like...

Most fugitives are very quiet. Uh- ... but this was almost a Joker-esque level of, you know, I’m coming out of my big mansion, I’m doing a little dance.

Georgia:

Uh-huh.

Ben:

I’m saying, “The Dutch authorities, they’re not telling you the truth. The very story, the true story is very different. Uh, I will not talk to them. I just wish to get my story out.”

Georgia:

Uh-huh.

Ben:

“And look how good my life is. I’m posting s-

Georgia:

Proceeds not to tell his story. Maybe he did. I didn’t, I didn’t look at his Instagram archives, but-

Ben:

Posts shirtless photos from inside his house hanging out with the family. Um, it was crazy. Uh, it was, it was... I found it a little sad at the end that he did not, uh, get arrested after they found his location. But the, uh, the Dutch, uh, the people, the police were very grateful to be told where he was.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm. I, I looked around a bit and, um, yeah, y- the, you know, news presumably via the police who had been asking for information on this guy-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... and like, y- you know, a- from his Instagram photos after he had fled the law for quite a while.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Georgia:

Um, and they did it. They found it, so yeah,

sh- shame they couldn’t... And as far as I can tell, maybe never caught him.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

I think he might still be on the lam today, possibly still in Iran.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, I think the style of, uh, I’m gonna tell you a story via, um, telling you what we figured out bit by bit, showing you an image of what we did each point, uh, is, is a strong one. I think it’s also reflected in a lot of your writing. I think often, uh, the, just cuts to an image that, like, answers, like, the key question you’ve just set up. Um, I don’t know whether that was something that you, uh, were doing independently, or whether that, uh, pushed you in that direction a little.

Georgia:

It’s hard to tell since I think I was reading things like this, um, before I started my blog.

Um, I suspect it had an, a, a strong influence in there.

Because yeah, while I don’t do a lot of, um,

OSINT type things, um, you know, I tend to write more the things that require reading a bunch of research papers, or once getting dysentery. Which is a different research process.

Uh,

m- aside from the dysentery one, that was special. Um-

Yeah, I, uh,

from early on I was kind of treating these like investigations, and the thing that you can do, uh... The thing that Bellingcat does, often does, and certainly this piece does, um, that is similar is, um,

it’s a story about... That it’s like explaining to you what the author knows about the, knows about this, you know, this, uh, subject. But especially in this case, it’s also a story about the investigation or maybe a list of stuff hap- that happened that was the investigation that also turns out to be a story.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Georgia:

Um,

and while you can definitely, you know, explain a phenomenon or tell a story or something, um, you can explain a phenomena, uh, in a different order than, like, the way in which you, uh, the,

the order-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... in which you learned the information about it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Um, it’s a good start, because it’s in- inherently sort of linear and is going to build up on each other. And if you understand it at the end, if you tell the story of how you learned something, by the end the reader’s probably going to understand it. Again, there were better, or there, there can be better ways to do this, but, um, that’s a good start and that is what I end up doing in, uh, many of my pieces, is the order in which I present, present the information is kind of the order in which I learned it.

Ben:

Yeah. It does help to have an ending. Does help to, like-

Georgia:

Yes

Ben:

... have figured it out at the end.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

I think, uh, like with your, uh, Bill, uh, Ewisco?

Georgia:

Mm, mm.

Ben:

Is that how you say his name?

Georgia:

Uh, Ewasko I think. Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, it helps at the end that they finally found him. Uh-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... and that you, you’ve set up, like, all these attempts to, uh, locate him, all these methodologies for locating him.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And it would’ve been sad to go, “And none of them worked.” And I’d go, “Oh, no, should I really learn all of those?” But in fact, we found out, you know, which ones were working how well.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, uh, yeah. Do you... Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah. That was a fun one because, um, of the... I was, in this piece I was kind of summarizing, uh, two main other sources from people who had, like, gone looking for this guy, uh, who had disappeared while hiking in Joshua Tree National Park. Uh, and both of these people looked for him extensively, and one guy wrote a elaborate, like, blog post categoring, uh, categorizing,

detailing every aspect of the search of his, the searches that he made, um, over the course of years and years. And he stopped publishing that blog before the guy’s body was ever found,

and the other guy got some more context and whatever. But it’s interesting because, you know, even me reviewing that, like, I had a different view on it than,

um...

It would’ve been different to go back and, like, look over those blog posts and try to summarize them before the guy happened, and they still would’ve been a very interesting story. But y- yeah, the fact that I was coming onto the scene, you know, a few years after they found the guy’s body, uh, yeah, now that it has a capstone, like, the whole tr- story kind of changes shape, and I was able to go back and be like, “Oh, this is where he w- got closest.” Like, he, he recorded his GPS maps.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

We can just tell where the guy- We know that now. He had no idea. Well, I know this now, and that makes the story, like, way crazier.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

I think... Did that guy comment on the post on Last Roundup?

Georgia:

Uh, one of the guys, the guy who made the videos, uh, afterwards, not, uh, not the blogger

Ben:

Not the blogger, but the guy who found him?

Georgia:

Uh, no, a different guy.

Ben:

Oh, okay.

Georgia:

Yeah, he was found by just, uh, some hikers.

Ben:

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s right.

Georgia:

Which was another heartbreaking part of it because, like, so much of the search... Like, the search effort was incredible. It did not work.

Ben:

It’s been, like, a year to try... I mean, so much time hiking around trying to find this guy.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Ah, it was crazy. Um, but yeah.

Georgia:

That was a wild story, yeah.

Ben:

Um, but yeah. My, uh... Was this piece... So does this piece, like, the, uh, Bellingcat piece, like, stay in your mind? Do you think... Have you, like, thought about it since the, since 2019? Has it been in the back of your head?

Georgia:

Not explicitly.

There’s a gestalt, uh...

Yeah, Bellingcat’s, like, methods as a gestalt have i- and there are some of them, like, I, you know, wrote in a different post about one of their, um, uh, like, execution sites geolocation. Again, real downer, do not necessarily wanna read every step of that, and also, uh-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... you know, show you, the viewer, a lot of blurry images.

Ben:

Yeah, have more fun. Read the one about, uh, Georgia getting dysentery.

Um, ‘cause she gets over it. She does not still have dysentery.

Georgia:

That’s true.

I got better.

Ben:

Um, yeah. That makes

sense.

Georgia:

Yeah. Uh, the thing. Um-

Ben:

I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna look at my questions again.

Georgia:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Um, does, uh, reading stories like this make you more, like, hopeful about things we can figure out, or does it make you more paranoid about the, how the world will, uh, use the information available to it?

Georgia:

Oh, um, both a lot. Both very much.

Ben:

Yep.

Georgia:

Yeah. Um,

listen, if you’re in... Kids, kids at home, if you’re inspired to go out here and do OSINT, do it for good.

Okay. This stuff is very much a double-edged sword, and, uh, yes, it is scary. You know, I think through, you know, like, oh, I posted a lot on Facebook back in the day. Is that... I don’t know. There’s a lot of information that’s out there now, um-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... much of it can be used for bad, but it’s also cool that we can collate it into some stuff like this.

Ben:

Yeah, I think the feller, uh, who made, uh, Bellingcat, who is not the fella who wrote this one, this is Hank Van Ness, which is his only piece for them, but he, his whole life is an OSINT thing. He-

Georgia:

I think he worked for them as a trainer for a while, maybe during which he wrote this piece. I don’t know. But yeah, he has his own, uh, uh, blog. I, I think it’s a blog.

Ben:

Yeah, he has a Substack with over, uh-

Georgia:

Yeah, a Substack

Ben:

... 10,000 subscribers.

Georgia:

Yeah, where he talks about OSINT, so-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... check that guy’s stuff out. Uh-

Ben:

Um, but, uh-

Georgia:

... I have not yet. That’s a personal failing.

Ben:

But yeah, the f- the, uh, I’m, I’m forgetting the name of the, uh, guy who found this.

Georgia:

Uh, Eliot Higgins.

Ben:

Eliot Higgins. I... Not only does he do it for good, but, uh, he seems to have been broadly accepted by the establishment and, like, celebrated for this. I think, uh, uh, the EU occasionally calls him in to, like, do reports.

Georgia:

Oh, that’s cool.

Ben:

Um, and, uh, yeah, I think, uh, it’s, it’s a nice case from my perspective of citizen journalism kind of, you know, being accepted and doing, doing a great job, a good enough job that he has to be accepted. They also did the fantastic, um... He was closely involved in the, uh, is it Navalny? Uh-

Georgia:

Oh, yeah.

Ben:

Navalny, um, uh-

Georgia:

Poisoning case

Ben:

... where he called the guy who poisoned him.

Georgia:

I forgot he did that, yes. Yeah.

Ben:

They were like... I, I don’t know the exact details, but I think they got him the numbers, and they were close... the phone number of the guy, and they were closely involved in uncovering that.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, which is just undeniable at that point that he’s doing a good job. That was such an incredible-

Georgia:

It’s absolutely wild, and I love that this, um, genre of journalism or research or

hobbying, um, kind of tr- like,

goes that whole line between, um, uh... Is it as accessible to that whole line of people from, like, you know, randos on Twitter. I mean, the, I guess the guy who was named here is a rando on Twitter. There was, like, a journalist and a guy who went to a Bellingcat workshop. But you do also... There are also, like, cases out there of, um, uh, you know, like r- Reddit commenters turning up the, like, identity of a person who had left, like, a body that had been found-

Ben:

Mm

Georgia:

... um, years, like, decades later.

Ben:

Yep.

Georgia:

Uh...

Ben:

Yeah, I think it’s gives me a lot of, like, uh, hope about, uh, people on the internet, just people being able to figure things out. Difficult questions that a lot of people would like the answer to, you can figure it out if you put in the work and you, like, find a good angle on it.

Georgia:

I think it’s really beautiful, yeah, that, um,

yeah, that this happens, uh, and that, like, a, a lot of people... You know, Bellingcat is an organization. I, they, I don’t know if, like, they paid this guy to wrote that or paid him in some capacity, whatever. Th- this guy has a career, but, like, also a lot of people are just kind of interested in this thing on the grounds of, like, hey, it’s, like, cool to solve mysteries, and, like, now that you mention it, I’m also kind of curious about, uh, you know,

the, the answer to this specific question.

Ben:

Yep. Yeah, it reminds me-

Georgia:

And people just do it in their own, which is crazy to me and also very nice.

Ben:

Yeah. To me, it reminds me a little bit of, like, the old, like, discussions around LessWrong and people being like, “What? You think a blog is one of the best places on the internet for a discussion of, like, AI and philosophy?” And you go, “Yes, actually, a blog.” Uh-

Georgia:

Yeah, it kind of is, yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh, I’m just gonna look at my other notes. Da,

da, dum.

Have you been involved in any OSINT projects over the years?

Georgia:

I’ve done a little bit. Um, uh, not to my memory ones that have turned into, you know, like,

giant postable, uh, things. Um-

Ben:

Has this affected any of your thinking about, uh, cybersecurity and defense, or biosecurity, I guess, is your area of expertise?

Georgia:

Biosecurity. Ooh. Um, yeah, it’s hard to do OSINT about biosecurity because it usually doesn’t leave a lot of obvious traces.

Ben:

Right.

Georgia:

Um, so on a very direct level, there’s that. Um,

but it is still pretty promising, and I suspect there’s, like, a lot of area of, uh, uh, room for this, and I’m sure there is, you know, like the FBI and et cetera. Yeah, major intelligence agencies do a lot of, like, OSINT type stuff.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

But, um-It, it suggests to me that, like, a lot of, uh, uh,

questions about nefarious activity are potentially answerable because people leave a lot of online footprint these days.

Ben:

Yeah, especially with, uh, the invention of, uh, large language models that are very powerful. I wor- wonder whether they will find a lot more, uh, information out about the world.

Georgia:

I think it’s really plausible. Um,

yeah, especially if they’re indexed on any social media site or something.

Ben:

I mean, even the, the standard fear that often comes up is that, uh, peop- pseudonymous writers will be able to be identified from just patterns in their writing being compared to other people’s writing. And go, “Oh, it seems like these two people have similar patterns in their writing.”

Georgia:

I don’t know what the current state of that is, but that strikes me as one of the things where, like, if it’s not doable now, like, in, you know, two years, that will be insanely doable.

Ben:

Yeah. Somewhere between six months and th- four years at every-

Georgia:

Yeah, I was hitting my head. What’s the, uh, like, range I’m about to say that’s not gonna embarrass me in, uh-

Two years. It’s probably sooner, though. You know, whatever.

Ben:

Yeah. I’ll say, I’ll say, uh... And then it’ll be three months, and we’ll go, “Damn, why did I not include three months in my, in my range?”

Georgia:

Yeah. Quick, let’s just say a bunch of, like, month numbers, and then we can cut in the video afterwards.

Ben:

One, two, three, four, five, six-

Georgia:

Four months

Ben:

... seven, eight, nine. Months, years, days, minutes, hours. There we go. We’ve got everything.

Georgia:

Nailed it. That’s efficient podcasting.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Did it affect your views on privacy at all, reading this kind of r- OSINT stuff?

Georgia:

Um,

yeah, but I still don’t know in which w- in which direction.

Ben:

Um-

Georgia:

It’s... Yeah.

Uh,

yeah, it clearly could go either way. Like, obviously it’s cool that this work, you know, that this, uh, existed and happened and, uh, on some level, level, I kind of bet that, um, you know, mostly if a lot of, uh, smart people are working for, like, not very much money to try and solve a problem, like, probably that’s, like... Or, like, work with this source of information, like, probably they’re mostly gonna do good things with it. Um, but also, I mean, I’m not reading, like, cool news articles about the, uh,

uh,

you know, people who, like, get their life ruined for stupid reasons or whatever. Um,

so it’s hard to say.

Ben:

Um,

I thought it was really... I really, uh... The f- I think the funniest part to me was the video of the Dutch newscast-

Georgia:

Mm

Ben:

... where they’re, um, you know, they’re reporting on this heavy, serious criminal, and then they are just showing his Instagram photos, which are just, like, him living his best life. And, uh, they put out this video of him dancing and mocking the police.

Georgia:

Oh, wow.

Ben:

And then they call the police, and the police is like, uh, “It’s unbelievable that he would distort the facts.” And I’m like, “Surely, you’re the police. You have constantly seen people...” It’s like they have never considered a criminal would lie.

And yeah, I don’t know. Uh, just posting his, like... And then he is, continues to have gotten away with this largely, even though it was one... And it’s incredible to have found out what we have.

Georgia:

He did, in fact, get away with it. It is-

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, the fact that they would just broadcast it straight was just... It seemed like a skit in some way in the way they were like, “Of course, the criminal, the dirty, terrible, nasty criminal,” and he’s just, like, dancing in the background. Anyway, um-

Georgia:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... yeah. Mm, neat. Um,

is there anything else I should ask you about, uh, about this before we move on to the next thing I wanted to talk about?

Georgia:

Um-

Ben:

About this essay?

Georgia:

See-

Ben:

Or how it impacted you?

Georgia:

Oh, I did find out that, um, again, this isn’t an area of my expertise, but, uh, uh, Inkhaven, that’s the author of this, uh, one, one of the main things he appears to do with OSINT these days is, um, using AI in it, both to do OSINT and also to, you know, identify deepfakes and that kind of thing.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Um, so yeah, there is action in this space, and I recommend anyone who’s interested check that out because he seems like a smart dude.

Ben:

Yeah. It is paid, but we will certainly put a link to the sy- Substack in the, uh, description-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... of the video, uh, and of the podcast. Um, well, yeah, thanks. I, I, I honestly had never read a Bellingcat piece before, so this, uh, continues to be... This podcast continues to be an education for me.

Georgia:

They’re so good. I- they’re more of a news organization than a, a blog, but I, I always read them in my RSS feed, and I’m like, “Oh, what are these guys doing today?” Um, they’re interesting.

Ben:

I mean, it... The post feels like a blogger doing the news.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

It doesn’t feel like a news guy doing a blog.

Georgia:

Yeah, no. I was thinking about that, that, um, you know, the style is just so approachable that it’s like, you know, I can kind of imagine someone, like, banging this out in a room or whatever. But, like, this is a news organization. Uh, in one of their other pieces I was just reading before this where they, um... You know, they have like two photos and, like, no idea where on Earth they were taken, uh, and they managed to narrow it down in, just sort of in one... And I imagine, like, okay, how...

When I read stuff like this now, I kind of think, like, “Okay, how would I write it up?” And they’re going down piece by piece, and, um, then at one point they’re like, “Okay, we have, like, beaches in these, like, vague area of the world we think it’s in,” um, like a, a... I forget how big. You know, 300, uh, like, radius circle, a 300-mile radius circle of a very populated area. Then we spent two weeks going over, uh, hundreds of Google reviews and hotel listings, uh, until we found a place that matched the photo. Um, and then it just moves on after that. But I was thinking, you know, if this was a personal blog-

... or if I were, you know, writing this piece for a personal blog, it wouldn’t end... I’m not saying they made the, uh, only good decision here, but I definitely would have la- labored on the two, two weeks piece.

In the two weeks where you don’t know you’re going to find the piece at the end or find the real place at the end. Um, so yeah, they’re professionals. They’re a news organization. If one were doing this personally, I think they’d be justified in spending a few more, uh, paragraphs complaining about the two weeks. Um, but I thought that was a really beautiful marker of professionalism right there.

Ben:

Yeah. No, that kind of thing always reminds me of, uh, the scene from “HPMMR” where, uh, Snape and M- Moody are in the graveyard trying to, uh, poison, um-Voldemort’s father’s bones, ‘cause they’ve heard it might be useful in a ritual of resurrection.

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

And, uh-

Georgia:

And they’re like, “We both know this probably isn’t gonna work,” or something

Ben:

... Moody’s like, “So this, this idea that he can be resurrected with his father’s bones?” “Yeah.” “So you come here to, like, pour poison on them?” And he goes, “Yes.” And then he’s like, “But, like, did Tom Riddle know about this?” And he goes, “Yes.” “So why wouldn’t he have just moved them?” And then Snape goes, “Ha, I just won a sickle off Dumbledore that you wouldn’t have thought about that by the fifth bottle.”

Uh, and, uh, and he’s like, w- so and so Snape says, “So I, I try the other guy’s bones as well in this graveyard just in case he-”

Georgia:

Mm

Ben:

... “switched them with them.” And he goes, “But he definitely would’ve just moved them to a place you have no idea, right?” And Snape goes, “Yes.” And then he just says, you know, um, I think the line is,

“They considered their pointless work in silence.” But it’s not pointless, it’s like fruitless or, like, you know, point-

Georgia:

Still very low probability of reward-

Ben:

Yes

Georgia:

... but the reward is clearly so good that-

Ben:

I mean, he just, it’s-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... it’s the right call to, you know, do it in te- in s- for the safety. But, uh, yeah, I think, uh, that happens a lot. Uh-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... and I respect the hell out of it when they do it, and when it pays off, it’s incredible.

Georgia:

Uh, it’s really impressive.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah, I imagine the-

Ben:

I- if, uh, if, uh, Voldemort would come... But yeah, I think they poured LSD on one of them. Uh- ... and, uh, you imagine Voldemort-

Georgia:

It is pretty good

Ben:

... coming back and going, “Okay, well, these... I’m really screwed up.” And they would go, “Thank God we did the things that we were supposed to.”

Um, yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah. It’s, um, I imagine their, uh, you know, the collective Bellingcat draft spin, so to speak, is probably littered with a lot of times- ... they put, like, months into investigations and it did not work. And, um, that is the really impressive part, is, like, this body of knowledge that, like, every now and then as a blogger, I, you know, I, I’m, like, trying to, like, do a piece, but what I’m doing isn’t journalism or whatever, so at the end of the day, I can’t just write... And I did a bunch of research and I’m still confused at the end of the day. Um-

Ben:

Oh, I do that all the time

Georgia:

... they mostly apply their standards of this, which is, you know, reasonable for them, but-

Ben:

No, I managed-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... to turn that... Whenever I’m like, “I’m gonna answer a question X-”

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... I then turn it into a post of, like, seven interesting thoughts about X-

Georgia:

Mm

Ben:

... by which I did not answer the question.

Georgia:

Mm.

Ben:

I learned some things, and that’s in the post, and everyone who cares about the question is like, “Oh, Ben also cares about that question. Isn’t that great?”

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

I never answer the question. I never get to an answer. But, uh, you learn something. Um-

Georgia:

Aspiring bloggers in crowd take note. Yeah. Sometimes it’s interesting that I w- that this is confusing and here’s why. Sometimes that’s also kind of almost as good as an answer.

Ben:

Yeah. What’s the... You know, posing a well-formed scientific question can, uh, be half the work to answering it.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um-

Georgia:

Also, Bellingcat, I would read the hell out of here’s, like, where this investigation petered out in your draft spins, but probably not as much as the investigation. So I don’t know, keep doing what you guys are doing.

Ben:

I bet at this point they can get at least one post out of, you know, failed investigations that we’d put crazy amounts of work into.

Georgia:

Yeah, it seems likely.

Ben:

I’m sure that would be great. ‘Cause they have 30 staff and they’ve been around for, like, you know, five to 10 years.

Georgia:

That sounds right, yeah.

Ben:

I bet they’ve got amazing deleted files or a drafts folder. Um-

Georgia:

Yeah, I should think so.

Ben:

I just, I do wanna check one more time, like,

you read it in 2019 probably.

Georgia:

Yeah, I believe so, yes.

Ben:

You may not have read it since then-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... until, like, this week.

Georgia:

Yeah. I, I suspect so.

Ben:

Anything else about it that, like, surprised you or that you had, like, forgotten?

Georgia:

Yeah. Let’s see.

Hmm.

Seeing how some of the tools have changed since then is kind of cool. Again, I’m not an expert in this. Um,

you know, I’m sure Bellingcat’s, like, more recent works have more... I mean, they w- write a lot of stuff about what tools they use. That’s one of the cool things they do. They don’t just do stories, they also do, like, here’s, um, here are tools we like. They have, like, you know, lists of, like, uh-

Ben:

Workshops on using the tools?

Georgia:

Workshops on using the tools. Uh, and also workshops on, like, strategies and things. Like, they have a whole post on how to, um, uh, use shadows in photos to help geolocate them, um, or at least narrow down the spots where a photo could’ve been taken. Um,

so that’s cool. And it w- yeah, I was reading this being, being, like... and being like, uh, oh yeah, like I...

Not an expert. My impression is that Yandex, uh, is no longer as good as Google Images for reverse searching images. And like, oh, that’s cool, I remember when that wasn’t true.

Ben:

Right.

Georgia:

Um, I assume, like, a lot of the Instagram tools have been, like, deprecated, but then replaced by different Instagram tools, because it’s a beautiful ecosystem out there that often large apps do not want to exist, but it sure does.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Um, so that’s kind of interesting stuff to see.

Ben:

Yeah. The specific tools were so- they were like, uh, “Oh, it took all of our people a while to download the files, so here is the Instagram file downloader, which is a little faster.” And that was, like, one of the three most important tools of this whole project that they, like, listed at the top.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, and I can believe it. Um-

Georgia:

Yeah, yeah. If you’re, uh, uh, done that stuff-

Ben:

You need to get 60 people free online, and th- that’s a friction point for them being able to, like, search through stuff.

Georgia:

Yeah, yeah. Um,

the tools in ver- other OSINT investigations, you know, that people have done or that I’ve looked about, you know, sometimes you just have to look for, uh, through, like, you know, 40,000 4chan posts or whatever.

Ben:

Right.

Georgia:

Uh, y- it’s probably in here, maybe. Um, but yeah, the tools make a lot of difference for dealing through that, especially if you do not want to spend two weeks on it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

And sometimes you have to spend two weeks on it either way.

Ben:

Yeah.

Um, you have come here-

Georgia:

Impressive

Ben:

... to, uh, Inkhaven for the second time.

Georgia:

Yes, I have.

Ben:

Thank you very much. Uh-

Georgia:

Thanks for having me back.

Ben:

Has it been, uh... What’s, what’s it been like? How have your... How’s your week been so far? Anything surprising?

Georgia:

It’s been good. There’s been a lot of blog posts, and I’ve read some of them, and I would write- like to read a lot more, but there’s a lot of them.

Ben:

Nice.

Georgia:

Um-

Ben:

Well, yeah, we just, uh, added a feature where you can, uh, if you’re a l- resident or a writing advisor, you can mark on the public page which ones you’ve read and, uh, keep a track of them there and up vote on them.

Georgia:

Oh.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Ben:

That’s what I’m doing at 10:00 PM each night, going into the study and just reading pieces.

Georgia:

Oh, nice.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Has people brought you anything surprising for, uh, feedback on? Anything you didn’t expect?

Georgia:

Um,

I gave a workshop a bit ago on some of my thoughts on, um, uh, clickbaiting your audience with your titles more, which I don’t think everyone should do, but I think if you’re good, maybe you should do it. Um-

Ben:

I think it was specifically the word, the key word in the title was-

Georgia:

Oh, e- excuse me, ethically clickbaiting your readers. You’re right. I’m...

Ben:

Um, the, uh, yeah, and so did people bring you any ethical clickbaits or did you-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... encourage them to do them?

Georgia:

Brought me, like, a, a, a series of, like,

diary stories about their life, uh, and were like, “It helped me choose good titles.” And I was like, “Oh, these are, like, fantastic and are, like, not the kind of thing I would usually think of clickbaiting,” but, like, the

y- yeah, the prose is, like, fast and cutting, and it’s, it... Reading it, it seems like the kind of thing you might, like, uh, that would be appropriate to clickbait your audience on, a little on, because it’s good reading-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Georgia:

... that they might, uh, be swayed into and would enjoy once they had been tempted into it.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Georgia:

Um, and it was cool.

Ben:

What was the ethical part? ‘Cause I think it’s, it’s sad to, like, set up a question and not give them the answer, but, uh-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... what are...

Georgia:

Um, I think it’s a little bit necessary, and also to some degree it’s the problem of, um,

nuance where, like, if the answer is at all complicated, um-

Ben:

You can’t just put it in the title

Georgia:

... the sort of... Yeah, the, like, the promise you offer them, like, “Here’s why this happens,” like, you’re not necessarily-

Ben:

Do you have an example of one that you like, that you think is a good ethical clickbait?

Georgia:

Um,

no, I’ve forgotten everything I know about clickbaiting.

Ben:

Nice.

Was there one in the talk?

Do you wanna check your phone?

Georgia:

Yeah, would love to check my phone. Yeah, that’s a great suggestion.

Ben:

Thank you.

Georgia:

Thank you.

Ben:

I thought of it myself.

Georgia:

Wow.

Scroll up to win this. Post this.

Download a PDF.

Okay. Yeah, no, I can do it from one of mine. It’s taking a while. Uh, download. Um,

yeah, okay. So a piece I wrote a while ago that, um,

got some...

It got a lot of attention. Uh, it got on Hacker News twice, which I didn’t know could happen. Um- ... and also, and this is the, um, I’m g- gonna take a second to brag since I’m here. Uh, it got the highest award there is, which is it n- got mentioned on a, the Patreon bonus episode of a Starcast podcast that my...

Star- Star Wars podcast that my sibling listens to. Um-

Ben:

Aw.

Georgia:

It wasn’t even about, a podcast about trees. They just brought up trees.

Ben:

I was, I was wondering whether it was a Star Trek-

Georgia:

It’s the tree one. Yes.

Ben:

It’s the tree one.

Georgia:

And I-

Ben:

Which has the most incredible clickbait title of all time in that it says a true fact-

Georgia:

Yes

Ben:

... and everyone needs to click on it because they do not believe it.

Georgia:

Yes, exactly, yeah. If you can baffle your audience with something that is, like, kind of true, that’s a really good way to do it.

Ben:

Yes.

Georgia:

Or get them a little angry that-

Ben:

Arguably

Georgia:

... you said something so clearly false- ... and then explain why it’s true.

Ben:

Right.

Georgia:

That’s always a little scummier, but listen, if it works, it works. I’m not here to judge. Uh, so the title of this post, I attribute the title as the, um... I think the post was, like, good and was interesting, but I think the title is the only reason anyone read it. Um, which was, uh, “There’s no such thing as a tree,” parentheses, “phylogenetically,” close parentheses.

Um-

Ben:

Which we all call, uh, “There’s no such thing as a tree,” ‘cause no one’s remembering the word phylogenetically.

Georgia:

Exactly. The one piece of cons- of, like, uh, good feedback I d- received on this was that, um, on the, on the title of the piece, uh, the fact that I forgot tree ferns was another good instance of feedback, and also that I ca- said pineapples grow on trees, which they don’t. I’ve seen a pineapple plant. I don’t know why I said that.

But on the title, uh, yeah, I told, someone told this to someone else, and they were like, “I would’ve clicked on this and have, if I’d seen it in the wild, uh, if it didn’t have the word phylogenetically there, because that’s nerd stuff.” And I’m like, “Okay, you’re fair enough and you’re right.” So I appreciate it.

Ben:

I see.

Georgia:

That was the one error.

Ben:

So as long as it’s, as long as it’s true, but the true part is, uh-

Georgia:

Forgettable

Ben:

... in parentheticals and uses a complicated word, then people will click on it, because they go, “Well, what’s going on here with the words that we all understand?”

Georgia:

It’s pretty good, right? Yeah, because that is the most forgettable one, and it s- sort of answers the, you know, not exactly. I think even if you’re like, “Ooh, I know something about phylogenetics,” you’ll still be a little confused at that point.

Ben:

I can’t tell at this point-

Georgia:

Mm

Ben:

... whether we should summarize for the reader the point that the post makes or merely r- leave them, uh-

Georgia:

Well-

Ben:

... needing to click on the title in order to find out the answer.

Georgia:

Yeah. We’re off the Bellingcat track right now, but that’s fine. Uh, what I will, uh, as a clarifying example, here are some other titles I considered for this piece. If I really wanted to be the most direct, like, best summary of that piece I could do, hear me out, uh, “Trees are paraphyletic.”

No one is going to read that. This... Unclickable.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

I’ve never even heard the word paraphyletic before.

Georgia:

Exactly. Um, it mean, it means they have, uh, they evolved from, like, different common ancestors. Like, the common ancestor of all trees was not a tree.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

And plants keep evolving into trees.

Ben:

Right.

Georgia:

And trees evolve into plants, and vice, uh, you know, vice versa all the time.

Ben:

I see.

Georgia:

Um, yeah, but that, that’s unreadable. No one wants to read that.

Ben:

No.

Georgia:

Or I could’ve gone, like, really artsy with it like, oh, “Convergence.” Also unclickable. No one wants to read that. Even fewer people somehow would’ve clicked on it than the last peop- uh, last, uh, idea, which was no one. So-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... yeah. Um-

Ben:

That’s a good example. Great.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Uh-

Georgia:

Those are some thoughts on clickbaiting, which Bellingcat doesn’t do. They, uh, if they do, they do it good.

Ben:

Again, the title was great. It was, uh, how is, you know... Uh, let me get the exact wording. “Locating the Netherlands’ Most Wanted Criminal by Scrutinizing Instagram.” Again, it sounds false, uh-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... which-

Georgia:

It, it’s setting up an unexpected thing that is true, but n- not in a way that’s like-You, you still kind of understand what the po- post is going to be about, which I think is, um, one of the core, uh, uh, bits of ethical clickbaiting. Um

Ben:

I think it sounds like they did less work than they did to me. If you told me that was the name of a post, my guess is that one guy-

Georgia:

Mm

Ben:

... read a detailed comment on Instagram and then found the answer, not that-

Georgia:

That’s true, yeah

Ben:

... 60 people did incredible amounts of botany and-

Georgia:

60 people who I kind of assume are mostly strangers, like

Ben:

Yeah, the answer, I mean-

Georgia:

Who put this together

Ben:

... I think they said, like, a key part was done by a, an ITV news reporter in London.

Georgia:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

From Twitter. Um

Georgia:

They might have known, but, uh, also maybe not.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

But anyway, any- anything, uh-

Georgia:

We’re good

Ben:

... so you were here for all of the first Inkhaven.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

And you’re on schedule to be here for the whole second Inkhaven.

Georgia:

Yeah, that’s the plan.

Ben:

Anything, uh, surprising you this second time around?

Georgia:

Um-

Ben:

I imagine many things surprised you the first time around, but, uh-

Georgia:

Yeah

Ben:

... they’re, uh, full and it faded into the background.

Georgia:

That’s a good question. Um, well, I was working at the first one, and it is, um, chiller now that I’m not als- trying to do 40 hours a week. I’m like, “Oh, I could write some stuff now.”

Ben:

Nice.

Georgia:

That’s crazy. I didn’t write a post about every day the last time, and I’m not doing it this time-

Ben:

Great

Georgia:

... uh, because that’s crazy. Who would do that?

Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Ben:

Um, nice.

Georgia:

Uh, and also, I mean, again, I have read fewer posts than I would like. Gotta read more. Um, they’re all good again.

They were all good last time, and somehow, my God-

... you picked a good crop of c- crop of bloggers. They’re all good.

Ben:

Wonderful. Thank you.

Georgia:

Um-

Ben:

Yeah

Georgia:

... yeah, there’s gonna be some good stuff at the end of this.

Ben:

Yeah, there’s already, uh, some wonderful stuff.

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, I really like the Thessaly Blue story about the viscera. That was crazy.

Georgia:

I don’t think I know this one.

Ben:

It’s, it’s-

Georgia:

I’ll have to read it

Ben:

... pretty high up. Uh, yeah. Um, but yeah, lots of good, uh, lots of good slime mold science. Just people going, “Oh, you can just gather data and do stuff?”

Georgia:

I like the amount of data gathering going on. Yeah.

Ben:

Do you like, uh, “Turns Out Salt Is Salty”?

Georgia:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

That was one of... That was a pretty good c-

Georgia:

But other things are also salty.

Ben:

Yes.

Georgia:

That would, that would be the clickbait I would go for. I mean, don’t get me wrong, salt is salty is, like, that’s an almost perfect title, no notes. But if I was going to clickbait it a little more, I might have done other things that are also salty.

Ben:

Yeah. I think something was bimodal, like certain things a lot of people thought were very s-

Georgia:

I think it was baking powder.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Some people tasted it as being quite salty, and others were like, “No.”

Ben:

There’s no salt here.

Georgia:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah.

Georgia:

Who the hell knew?

Ben:

Uh-

Georgia:

Empiricism, try it today.

Ben:

Uh, great. I think let’s, let’s wrap up there. Uh, thank you very much. Uh, my guest has been Georgia Ray. This is the Inkhaven Presents podcast. Done. We nailed it.

Georgia:

Hell, yeah. Very good

Transcript:

Ben:

Welcome to Inkaven Presents, Readings from the Archive, where I invite writers from the internet and other people to bring essays that they love or that maybe they’ve written, to read them, and then discuss them with us. My guest today is Scott Hoffman. A little different from other guests.

He is the co-founder of Folio Literary Management,

that over the past few decades has represented over 500 New York Times bestsellers. He then went on to be the founder and CEO of International Literary Properties, which owns dozens of catalogs and thousands of books

from people like Tennessee Williams and George Simenon. So anyway, thanks so much, Scott, for coming with us today. It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Scott:

Thanks for having me.

Ben:

So I understand you’re going to read

the first chapter of “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity” by Byron Reese.

Scott:

That is correct.

Ben:

Why did you choose this today?

Scott:

I chose it for three reasons. One, I think it’s a book that if the Inkaven audience hasn’t already read, that it would be something that they would gravitate towards. It was written five or six years ago before the AI boom came into the sort of collective consciousness, and a lot of the predictions that the author makes were quite prescient and are still a thoughtful way about thinking about some of those topics. The second is that it’s one of the books that I represented, and in fact, because of the nature of the book and because there were so many technical subjects,

it revealed to me that part of my job as a literary agent was, in some ways, to serve as a translator.

Byron is a really, really brilliant guy, but he’s an elliptical thinker. And so when he puts together these very large, complex thoughts, he’ll start at one and he’ll end at 100, and he’ll often elide over the things in the middle because that’s the way that he thinks. But it’s hard to do that in a general trade book. You need to sort of lay out the steps for your

lay audience. And so I did a lot of editing on that book. Enough, in fact, that they offered me cover credit, and I said, “No, that’s okay. I’m an agent. I don’t do that.” But then I got to thinking that, yeah, you know what? Maybe it would be interesting to be the author of a serious nonfiction book. And so Byron and I collaborated on his next book, my first, which was a geeky pop science book about waste, of all subjects.

Ben:

Nice.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Excellent. Yeah, I think that’s a really valuable role to help certain people communicate well. I’m reminded, I believe it was, and we’ll correct this if I’m mistaken, Roger Penrose’s “The Road to Reality,” which I think

spends several pages explaining fractions at the beginning of the book, and then in two pages, differential calculus. That’s a guy that doesn’t quite know how to pace something for his audience.

Scott:

Right.

Ben:

And I can imagine Byron maybe had some similar-

Scott:

Yeah. And it’s interesting. In nearly all of the careers that I’ve had or nearly all the jobs I’ve had within my current career,

there’s been a large translation aspect. When starting International Literary Properties, it was effectively a finance company that acquired copyrights and cash flows from authors and playwrights, and I spent a lot of my time explaining this crazy archaic book business to finance people, and conversely explaining finance to authors and their representatives who just don’t think that way. The kind of personality that can sit in a closet for six months and create a brilliant nonfiction book or write an amazing novel is generally not somebody who’s going to understand how to discount a cash flow or understand

the time value of money.

Ben:

Yeah.

So this is the first chapter, and you worked on this with him. He’d already written, I think you said, one self-published book.

Scott:

He did, yeah. It was called “Infinite Progress.” Did very, very well. Got some lovely quotes from some major thinkers.

It really launched his

speaking career.

Ben:

Hmm.

Scott:

He sold, I think, certainly in the five figures in numbers of copies of-

Ben:

Oh, wonderful

Scott:

... of that book. And yeah, a mutual friend introduced us. We were both living around Austin, Texas, at the time. And Byron said, “Yeah, I was thinking about maybe pursuing traditional publishing rather than self-publishing. I think my audience is big enough.” And so we started talking about the ideas. We started talking about his platform. In the publishing industry, a platform is your ability to sell copies of your book to individuals, right?

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

A podcast could be a platform. A TV show could be a platform. An amazing blog might be a platform from which to sell books. And I concurred, and then we talked about what the ideas might be. We worked out “The Fourth Age” and sold it to Simon & Schuster.

Ben:

Man.

Scott:

And it’s been a fantastic success, and so much so, in fact, that we’re talking to S&S about doing a revised and expanded second edition now.

Ben:

Oh, wonderful.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

So you helped with the editing and the ideas of this book. Is that unusual, or did you do it to a greater degree with this book? Or how often does that need to happen with writing?

Scott:

Yeah, it’s interesting. I would say that I

probably did more editing on this book than I did on others.

For most first books, whether they’re novels or whether they’re nonfiction books, literary agents will get more involved, certainly if they’re novels.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

And that comes down to a weird quirk of the publishing business. So when a publisher decides to publish a nonfiction book, they generally don’t buy that book based on a full completed manuscript. They’ll buy it on a book proposal, which is effectively a business plan for the book. And then the publisher will work with the author, and the agent sometimes, to shape the content and turn it into the finished product. But for novels, you need the full manuscript because if anybody out there has written a novel, you know how different the final draft is from what your first draft is. And with no proof of concept, no track record,

the publishers really don’t want to be buying a pig in a poke.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

And so they want to see that completed, polished manuscript. Now, the editor at a publishing house will probably still do more editing, but the agent and the author together will want to make it the best book possible to give it the greatest possible chance of publishing success.

Ben:

Got you. Well, I’m looking forward to hearing this chapter that you helped with.

Scott:

For sure.

Ben:

So I think we’ll turn to that now. Here’s Scott reading his chapter

Ben:

Uh, thanks so much for reading it. I enjoyed that. Um, what occurred to you differently reading this out loud than when you read it first, uh, in the book as a chapter?

Scott:

Y- you know, it’s interesting. Not, not very much, because the way that I generally deal with editing is, um, is a very oral, A-U-R-A-L, uh, practice. I will read the words in my head the way that I would imagine they would be read out loud, and make sure that they flow, make sure that the cadence is right, make sure that the, that the ideas are, uh, are succinct, and that one idea flows into another logically. And so w- if you do your work well as an editor, uh, a book should sound well, sound... should sound good

When, uh, when, uh, when somebody reads, uh, reads aloud from it.

Ben:

Nice. Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. Um, yeah.

Scott:

And, and, and interestingly enough, like, uh, uh, w- I, I... there may, there may or may not be any, uh, uh, any people writing fiction who are in the, in the audience, but, um, when it comes to dialogue, one of the biggest mistakes that authors make when they’re, when they write dialogue is that they write it using words without thinking how it’s going to sound.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

And so the masters of dialogue have a, a finely attuned ear for how people speak. For instance, people, uh, people speak in contractions. Uh, people, people will say something like, “Oh, you know, that, that, that’s not the way that that works.” Uh, and, uh, mediocre dialogue writers will render that on the page as, “That is not the way that that works.”

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

And it just doesn’t sound like that if you’re listening to somebody in the real world. And so the ability to, uh, the ability to, to parse writing, uh,

th- through your ears effectively, uh, is a, is a, uh, it’s a, a critical task for a good editor.

Ben:

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Um, so it seems like this book was one where, uh, Byron had already had a very successful, uh, self-published book first-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... which gave you, I assume, a lot of confidence that a, a traditionally published book would go well.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, uh, can you tell me a time where, uh, a s- you get a book pitch or a book proposal, and the person did not have much of a platform, but you were confident that this... something about the s- the pitch was gonna be a successful book at the end of it?

Scott:

Sure. Um, you know, most of the, uh, most of the novels that I’ve represented in my career, uh, have been from folks who did not have a, a large platform, didn’t already have a large following. But the concept of their book, uh, and the writing itself were so strong, the plotting, the characterization, uh, the emotional impact of those books was, um, w- was, was good enough to overcome the fact that they were relatively unknown. Um, one of my favorite books to have worked on is a extraordinary book called “The Color of the Sea” by a guy named, uh, John Hamamura, who unfortunately has, uh, has passed away.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

But, uh, when I read that book, it blew me away. It was loosely based on the story of his parents. Uh, it’s about a young Japanese American man, Japanese American woman who fall in love on the eve of World War II, uh, and are torn apart by the war. Uh, she and her family are interned in a ca- uh, in a camp in Arkansas. He gets drafted and winds up in the Pacific Theater as a translator, and is instrumental in the bombing of Hiroshima, which destroys him because his family is from Hiroshima.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

Uh, and you know, it’s, it’s fascinating that even though John, um, even though John has, uh, has unfortunately passed away and, and will probably never get... well, and, and won’t get to see it, uh, we’ve got a ton of interest right now from, uh, from film and TV production companies, uh, about turning this, uh, turning this, this extraordinary story either into a, a feature film or a TV show.

Ben:

Wow. And it just... you read the, you read the story, or you, you read the opening chapters?

Scott:

I... Well, so yeah. So the, the way that, the way that it usually works when an agent is reviewing fiction is there’ll be, uh, a query letter, right? Just a one-page letter saying, “Hi, here’s who I am. Here’s the book I’ve written. Here’s what the audience is. Here’s why I think it’ll be, it’ll be interesting, and here’s, uh, here’s where it would fit on the, on the shelf in the, in the bookstore.” And in some cases they’ll include, uh, a sample chapter or two. And it’s interesting because agents and editors get such a large volume of submissions from writers who want to be published traditionally, uh, the way that people in the industry read is that we, we basically read until we can stop, and then we do, and we move on to the next thing. Uh, and with John’s book, I just didn’t wanna stop. And in fact, when I ran out of the material that he had sent, I sent him a, uh, an actual postal letter. This w- it was... that was long enough-

Ben:

Wow

Scott:

... that, uh, that that happened. And, uh, and asked him to please send me the rest of the manuscript. He did. Uh, we did some, uh, some editing on it, and then, uh, and, and then sold it and published it, and then the rest was history.

Ben:

Wow. Um, that’s lovely. Uh, yeah, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, rare for a fiction story. I think it’s hard to get those published, and-

Scott:

Yeah. Yeah

Ben:

Um, how about nonfiction? I think you were telling me about a, a lady who wrote a book called “Whip Smart” who, uh, came to you with that, uh, preexisting platform?

Scott:

Yeah. Melissa Febos I think is probably one of the most talented modern writers. Uh, she’s now teaching at the, uh, at the University- at the University of Iowa, uh, at the, uh, the writer’s, uh, program there. And she writes, uh, writes routinely for the, uh, for the New York Times. I met Melissa, uh, when she was a graduate student at Sarah Lawrence. I’d gone up to give a talk and, uh, you know, there were maybe 30 or 40, uh, students there, and she came up to me afterwards and said, um, “I’ve got this memoir and I’m, I’m trying to get it published, and do you think you’d be interested?” And I, I said, “Well, I, I...” said, “Maybe, probably not. I don’t really represent a lot of memoir. The nonfiction I do tends to be business nonfiction or sort of like, uh, big thinky type stuff. Um, your story would have to be absolutely extraordinary for me to be interested.” And she said, “Well, why don’t you take a look and, and let me know?” I said, “Sure, I’m happy to. And even if I’m not the right person for it, maybe I can refer you to an agent.”

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

And I started reading, and I was immediately captivated. Um, she’s... The... She could, I mean, she could write about, uh, she could write about paint drying and, and she could make it absolutely fascinating. But this book was about the time that she spent, um, working at, uh, as a student in, uh, when she was going to NYU as an undergrad, uh, working as a professional dominatrix and also being an active heroin addict.

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s, uh, that’s a lot to do at the same time.

Scott:

Uh, tell me about it. Tell me about it. And, and the book wasn’t really about either one of those subjects. It was about setting boundaries for oneself-And then being, and then having those boundaries pushed-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

... and crossing that line, and then crossing that line, and crossing that line that you thought you, you thought that you would never cross. And that’s what really, what made me really interested in it, and, uh, and why I wanted to represent it. Uh, I did after some complications, uh, in the beginning. Uh, sold it to, uh, to St. Martin’s Press, and it’s in print. It still sells well. She still gets lovely royalty checks-

Ben:

That’s nice

Scott:

... and it’s, uh, it launched an amazing career.

Ben:

That’s wonderful. Um, yeah, I think, uh, this is helpful. I’m getting a sense of these. Another question I wanna ask you is about bloggers who turn into authors.

Scott:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um,

when is the right time if a, if a, a... Actually, the first question is why should a blogger want to be a author? When is it appropriate?

Scott:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

When is it a good fit? ‘Cause, you know, they have a pu- place where they can write.

Scott:

Right, right.

Ben:

They sometimes even have a readership. When do you think is a good fit for them to become an author of a book?

Scott:

It, it really depends on the blogger, and it depends on the nature of, of their blog. Uh, for some bloggers, they probably shouldn’t ever go the traditional publishing route. They’re doing a fantastic job reaching the, nearly all the audience that they want to reach. They’re monetizing their writing in a way that, uh, that fairly, fairly reflects the value that they’re adding without having any middlemen involved. Uh, and for, I would say, a- and I w- so okay, so, so for the vast, vast majority of, of bloggers, pick any random blogger, they probably don’t have a big enough audience to interest the traditional publishing world.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

So let’s say 99% of bloggers are, are either g- either good to go just continuing in the blog format, or if they do decide to publish, self-publishing-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

... which, which, you know, which is, is a very viable way to go. Uh, in fact-

Ben:

I’ve done that with Less Wrong. We’ve published a bunch of Less Wrong books.

Scott:

Absolutely.

Ben:

Sold a few thousands copies.

Scott:

Well, uh, yeah. And, and, and not only that, but the, but the thing I lo- uh, the thing I love about self-publishing and, and, and now that, that so many of these barriers to entry have been torn down, is that, um, you can kind of crowdsource, uh, your acquisition work as a publisher, and you can see something that you might not have thought was going to be all that popular all of a sudden really takes off. Uh, and some publishers, and certainly some agents, use self-published works as kind of a farm system for, uh, for signing clients that then go up to the major leagues and publish with, uh, Harper Collins or Simon & Schuster or, or Random House. Um, where it gets interesting for a, um, for a blogger to, to do a traditionally published book, uh, there are a couple of, a couple ways to do that. One, when they have in some way hit a, uh, hit a barrier to growth, to, to, to growth in their audience, um, that, uh, that’s due to the medium.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

There are only a certain number of people who read blogs. But if you take a blogger who’s got 100,000 readers, 200,000, 500,000 readers, chances are that there would be a lot more people who would be interested in, in what that person has to say, uh, and that person may want to read in book form. And so somebody like that can take the core audience that they’ve got from their blog, have that be sort of the, uh, the, the nearly guaranteed sales that will make a publisher think that it’s a safe bet, uh, but that can then, can like, but then can expand those concentric circles of readership. Um, there are... Believe it or not, there are still some people who go into physical bookstores or people who go online, uh, with the intention of buying a book. They don’t necessarily know what book they want to buy. Uh, and if they happen to be interested in, uh, prediction markets, and there’s a blogger who’s written a book about prediction markets, and it winds up on one of the tables at, uh, at their local bookstore, then they might buy it and become a, a super fan.

Ben:

Hmm, hmm. That’s interesting. So yeah, how much... Uh, ‘cause I imagine you have, uh, uh, represented people who’ve gone from having good blogs to having good books.

Scott:

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Ben:

How often is it the case that, A, they’re, they’re reaching a different audience versus they’re reaching mostly the same audience, and how much are they taking basically the content of their blog and the subject of their blog and just turning it into book form-

Scott:

Yeah

Ben:

... versus finding a new angle on them and their perspective on the world?

Scott:

So the, the... A bunch of questions in one. Um, the, the first question is it’s difficult to tell, uh, whether the audience is just selling books to, uh, to their blog readers or whether, or whether it’s expanding. Um, we think that the ecosystem broadens, uh, when, uh, when there are traditional pu- when there are traditional books, uh, at play, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t be certain of it. The, um, it’s, it’s really difficult to track who consumes-

Ben:

Hmm

Scott:

... uh, traditionally published books, and so we’re left to do some educated guesswork about that. Um, o- one of the other things that I meant to say too about, uh, when, uh, when a book really works for a blogger is because there are no barriers to entry in blogging, uh, there are very often bloggers who have incredible, smart, insightful things to say, but might not have the academic credential to back it up or might not have the, um, the gravitas that they would like to, uh, to g- to effect the change that they want in whatever area they’re writing about. And, you know, there’s a reason that, that the phrase, “Oh, yeah, that’s the person who wrote the book on the subject,” exists. And so for somebody who’s a blogger who’s got, uh, who’s got a following and who’s got some really fascinating ideas, but who doesn’t have the, uh, the imprimatur of, uh, of a, a large publication or a university behind them, doing that traditionally published book and getting it reviewed in traditional media can be a big step towards broadening their audience to people who, who say, “Oh, yeah, that’s not just some run-of-the-mill, uh, crazy person blogging about this. This is, this is somebody who’s thoughtful, uh, and has, uh, and has something, uh, material to add to the debate.”

Ben:

Hmm, hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Um, have you, uh, have you reached out to bloggers before and been like, “I think, I think you should write a book”?

Scott:

Oh, sure. Yeah. All, all the time.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

All the time. I think i- if I, if I recall correctly, uh, uh, the first b- and I reach, I’ve, I’ve been reaching out to bloggers for, oh, uh, you know, I’ve been in the business for a little over 20 years and, and, and for more than 20 years. Uh, I think, uh, one of the first non-fiction books I sold was the companion book to the, uh, entirely invented holiday, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.And, uh, yeah, uh,

Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy were the two, uh, the, the two guys who invented, uh, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Ben:

Dear Professors Chumbucket and Slappy.

Scott:

Exactly. Exactly. And to the, the Honorable Chumbucket. Uh, I reached out to them after, after having read some of their, uh, some of their online writing, and, uh, we got a book that we published, um, we published with, uh, with Penguin. And, you know, that book, uh, had some, uh, had some ame- uh, the s- the sales were great, uh, and it was mostly a humor book, and it did really well. And, and, and in fact, it, uh, it reminds me of, of one of my all-time, uh, one of my all-time dad jokes, which is, uh, what’s a pirate’s favorite letter?

Ben:

Mm-hmm. R?

Scott:

See, you’d think. But a pirate’s true love always be the C.

Yeah.

Ben:

Okay.

Scott:

So I, I’ve got two, I’ve got two kids who are seven and five, and they groan at my jokes, so...

Ben:

I almost wanted to ask you to read a chapter from that book.

Scott:

Shiver me timbers.

Ben:

Oh dear.

Scott:

Uh, I did another, uh, another blog to book. Um, uh, Heather Cox and Jessica Morgan, uh, were fashion bloggers, and they had this amazing blog, uh, where they made fun of badly dressed, uh, celebrities that was called Go Fug Yourself, F-U-G-

Ben:

Fug

Scott:

...’cause fugly was the new pretty. Uh, and, uh, we did, uh, we did a couple of books with, uh, with Heather and Jessica-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Scott:

...uh, that were different versions of the stuff that was on the blog. Uh, some were blog posts that were just reprinted in, in print format, some was new material for the book. Uh, but then Heather and Jessica branched out and started to write, um, young adult fiction that, uh, appealed to the blog audience, but was not the blog content. And so I did a couple of books with them that were novels that, uh, that were also quite successful.

Ben:

Nice. Excellent. I’ll, uh, I’ll keep my mind out for anyone who, uh, is wildly successful as a blogger and be like-

Scott:

I-

Ben:

...all right, time to-

Scott:

Well, you know, I, I’ve-

Ben:

...enter space

Scott:

...I’ve spoken to some of the, uh, some of the Inkhaven, uh, writing advisors-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

...and, uh, they are wildly successful bloggers, and we’re talking about maybe doing some books together.

Ben:

Oh, that’s wonderful.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

I’m glad to hear it. Um, yeah. Uh, all right. I really wanna ask you about International Literary Properties.

Scott:

Sure.

Ben:

I don’t know, how did you get the idea? How did you, how were you like, “I know what we’ll do. We will gather so many catalogs. We will bring them under one place, and they will-”

Scott:

Uh-huh.

Ben:

Were you like, “This is a great business opportunity”? Were you like, “I don’t like how other people are managing these properties, and we can do a better job with that”?

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

How did it even start? I, I... Please tell me.

Scott:

Yeah. I, I mean, how, how much time do you have? Um, the... Ultimately it came down to, to pattern recognition.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

There were a few patterns that I noticed. Um, uh, one was, uh, one had to do with music publishing becoming a viable investment category. Uh, you know, in the past five years, Bob Dylan has sold his publishing rights, and Bruce Springsteen has sold his publishing rights, and, uh, Paul Simon has sold his publishing rights. And as I was agenting, um, you know, if there’s one universal truth in the book business, it’s that authors, no matter how successful, always need money. And they’re constantly calling their a- their agents and saying, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, Mr. Agent or Ms. Agent, uh, what c- what can you, what can you get for me?” Um, and for so many of these writers, the most valuable thing that they own is the copyrights on their book. And so I started looking at it from a seller’s perspective. If musicians were able to sell their catalogs, I thought that authors who also receive royalties, uh, should be able to do that. And so I looked around for who was running this secondary market in literary royalties, and nobody was. Now, I thought that that was quite curious. Um, another reason that, uh, that I thought that the business needed to exist is because in, in almost every other established business on the planet, when somebody gets to the end of a long and successful career, somebody else from that industry will come in and reward them for what they’ve built and take care of their legacy. So if you’re a doctor and you’ve built a medical practice in America, uh, and you decide that you want to retire, some other group of doctors will come in, buy your practice, make sure your patients are taken care of. Um, if you’re a car dealer, right? Another, another car dealer will come in and will, will purchase your, uh, your, your inventory and your physical plant, will take over your salespeople and your customer base, and, uh, and you can, you can monetize that in, in your lifetime. And that just didn’t exist in the book business at all. And so you had this haphazard system where in some cases agents were taking over for their authors, but that’s not really an agent’s job. And an agent has to be fanatically focused on selling new books and, uh, and getting new books published that often these lovely backlist books-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Scott:

...that are four or five or 10 or 20 years old languish without anybody really, really caring for them. Um, similarly, if you’re an 80-year-old author, chances are you’ve got an 80-year-old agent who’s also looking to retire. Um, and a lot of, uh, a lot of authors wind up passing their intellectual property and their royalties down to their kids who just don’t understand the publishing business anyway. They might have other careers. Some of them have done an amazing job, right? So Matt Salinger, for instance, runs the J.D. Salinger catalog, and he’s, he’s an extraordinary steward of that. Um, but he’s, uh, he, he’s the exception rather than the rule. And so what we wanted to do at ILP was two things. One, um, provide a, a way for these authors to get rewarded during their lifetimes for, for what they’ve built, and then two, to also manage these legacies and introduc- and introduce amazing literary works to entirely new audiences, even after the author, him or herself, is gone.

Ben:

Wonderful. Um, and so large, by and large, uh, have you fully purchased the rights to make calls about, you know, uh, film or TV adaptations and all the future revenues from the things?

Scott:

Y- you know, every, um, every property that ILP, uh, bought, I’m no longer the, the CEO of ILP-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

...although I continue to be a, a, a significant shareholder. Uh, e- every deal is different. Every deal is bespoke. Uh, every author or every heir wants something that’s different. And when you step in f- fairly far down the line, you’re constrained by what’s already been done. And so there are a bunch of properties that we bought where the film and television rights had already been granted, and there was no way to revert them, and so there was no way we were gonna be able to do anything-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

...with those film and television rights. Um, there was a fascinating story where, um, we acquired the Robert Bolt catalog. Robert Bolt, amazing playwright, wrote, uh, “Man For All Seasons.”

Ben:

Oh, yeah.

Scott:

Uh, wrote the screenplay for “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

I mean, amazingly, amazingly talented guy. And, um, his, uh, his widow, who was a, a, a lovely woman who in, in her time had been a, a, a remarkably successful, um, actress, uh, was responsible for, for managing the, um, managing the estate.And with everything that’s been going on in the world, we thought that the story of A Man for All Seasons, uh, would, would really resonate with, with a modern audience. And so we, we wondered if there, if there was a possibility to get a remake done or to revert the rights from whichever, uh, whichever studio had them. And so we talked to her, and she said, “Oh no, those rights are gone. Robert told me we’d never be able to get them back.” And, uh, we said, “Well, that’s interesting, but, um, but

can, can we, can we see the contract?” And she said, “Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s in a shoebox in the attic somewhere.” Uh, and she lived in this, uh, in this amazing house in the, in the English Midlands that was built in like 1690 or something. And, and you, you know, you go to the house, and it’s one of those houses where the, where the doors are hobbit sized because everybody was so short back then.

Ben:

Okay, yeah .

Scott:

Um, we sent, uh, we sent an intern, and he poked around in the attic, and he found the, uh, found the original film contract for A Man for All Seasons. And amazingly enough, it only granted the studio one feature film, no television-

Ben:

Ooh

Scott:

... no remake rights, no prequel, no sequel. And so we, uh, we’ve now got-

Ben:

Have they, have they gone on to make those things?

Scott:

Uh, they, they made one feature film.

Ben:

They just made the one.

Scott:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Great.

Scott:

They, they had not... Yeah, they hadn’t infringed on the-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Scott:

... they hadn’t gone beyond the scope of the grant.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, but um, but we’re now working with one of the, uh, one of the people... Well, ILP is now working with one of the BBC Studios in-house production companies on a remake of, uh, of Man for All Seasons.

Ben:

Wow.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Wow. Uh, yeah, it’s just so interest- I mean, I spent my whole life at the very like front of like the author experience-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... where like I’ve started a blog, I’ve written my first post, and I go, “Great, let’s keep going.” You’re much down the end, uh, other end-

Scott:

Yeah

Ben:

... of the scale here.

Scott:

Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s extraordinary. I mean, when I got into the business, I, uh, books to me seemed like, seemed like things that just, uh, that just, that spontaneously generated.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

I, I had no idea what it actually took to write a book and certainly what it took to get, to get a book published.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, I just gotta ask one more on that. So how do you, how do you think about, uh, w- like you’re working with the B- your, uh, ILP is working with the BBC on, uh, this, uh, adaptation. How does that... Ha- do you try to just find someone you trust and then give them a lot of creative freedom? Are you trying to be involved in that?

Scott:

Uh, again, it really depends.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Um, there are some extraordinary creative, uh, filmmakers and, uh, and television showrunners who, uh, who, who do amazing things with, uh, with books. So George Simenon’s Maigret, for instance, we’ve got a TV series on the air right now.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Um, we did, uh, w- we... And in particular, so we owned, uh, ILP owned a portion of the Simenon estate, and the rest of it was owned by Jean Simenon, who was, uh, who was George’s son. And Jean was heavily involved. He knew his father’s work more than... Or he knows his father’s work better than anyone else. And in fact, he’s the CEO of, uh, of George Simenon Limited, which is the company that was, uh, that was formed in which ILP is a shareholder, uh, in order to, uh, to preserve the, the Simenon legacy. And so Jean was involved in every comma in the, uh, in the screenplays on that. There are others where we would just, um, just license, uh, just license the work and, uh, and say, “Yeah, it’s gonna turn out the way it’s gonna turn out.” Uh, this particular showrunner or this particular filmmaker, uh, had their vision, didn’t really want any editorial input. Uh, but in general, uh, one of the ways I think that ILP adds value is by understanding the DNA of the works in the catalog, uh, the catalogs that they own, and making sure that whatever gets done into any medium is faithful to what the author originally intended.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, well, uh, yeah, I, I wish the best of luck with, uh, all of those things.

Scott:

Thank you.

Ben:

Um, I think I wanna go back a little bit to, uh, your work as an agent. So I understand there’s been, uh, radical changes for the publishing industry with the in- advent of e-books and all the online-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... parts of the world. Um, what have been the big changes in the industry for, for an agent or from your perspective over the last, you know, few decades?

Scott:

Yeah, it, it’s interesting. Um,

uh, I f- I thought that the introduction of e-books w- was going to be a, uh, was gonna be an event that changed the industry much more than, than it truly did. Um, I got that one completely wrong. I also thought that, uh, that the e-book format would see its biggest growth in areas where the consumers tend to have more disposable income, business books, um, serious nonfiction, that kind of thing, and I was totally wrong about that. Uh, the e-book business really saw its growth in genre, whether it was science fiction, whether it was fantasy, whether it was romance. Um, and, uh, you know, I thought that because at the b- in the beginning of the e-book trend, you needed a, a, a bespoke or a, a singular device to read it, and, you know, a Kindle at that point was $300 or $400.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Um, but as smartphones became more prevalent and, uh, Kindle reading or whatever your, whatever your preferred e-reader was, uh, is there all the time, and you didn’t... and there was no incremental cost to it, um, people wanted to read... But the people who were heavy readers in one genre just found e-books so much more convenient. Um, part of it also stems from the demise of, uh, of mass market paperbacks as a format. And, you know, there are, there are some fascinating stories about, about... You know, so mass market paperbacks are the, are the ones that you would buy in an airport, the, the, the thriller-sized novels, as opposed to a trade paperback, which is that larger, more sort of literary feeling format.

Ben:

Yeah, the mass market ones you can really smell the glue .

Scott:

Um, ex- exactly. Exactly. And, um-

Ben:

Which I like. I’ve got such positive associations with that smell.

Scott:

Oh, well, yeah, I mean, there’s, I mean, so many of the books that I read growing up were, were mass market paperbacks.

Ben:

Yes.

Scott:

And, uh, and, you know, the, the, the, the

authors like Stephen King and, and, and mega bestsellers, uh, so many more of their books were read in mass market format, m- mass market format than in hardcover, uh, just because they were less expensive and the demand is, b- was higher. Uh, but the mass market, uh, book business was interesting in that it wasn’t... The mass market paperbacks weren’t distributed the same way that hardcovers and trade paperbacks were. They were largely distributed by the companies that distributed magazines to drugstores, to bodegas, to corner stores. Um, and as the magazine business started to implode, uh, those wholesalers started to go out of business. Um, then what you had happen was you had this amazing, uh, amazing round of consolidation. And, you know, every, uh, every neighborhood in, in New York City used to have its own independent drugstore, its own independent pharmacy, and there would be a, a rack jobber, they called them, who would put a rack of paperbacks that would appeal to the people in that neighborhood. Uh, but when CVS bought that-... uh, bought that company or when Walgreens bought it or when Duane Reade bought it, all of a sudden those purchasing decisions were being made by corporate and so you had this winner-take-all phenomenon where there was a now, now instead of having a local author or now instead of having somebody who’s, um, who was writing the kind of fiction that appealed to the, the ethnic group in that particular neighborhood, it was gonna be John Grisham and Nora Roberts and Stephen King in every store. And so you had this winner-take-all thing, um, where those people have done really well but the rest of the, the, the rest of the genre or the, the rest of the format is, has almost completely disappeared and been replaced by, by e-books.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

Um, I also thought that e-books would take a much larger market share than they do right now. Uh, e-books as print, e-books as words themselves, uh, compared to digital audio, are only about 15% of the market now and digital audio is about 15% of the market and growing strongly and, uh, I don’t think very many people saw that, saw that coming.

Ben:

I think part of that is I think most of the like, you know, hardback printed books, if you go to the Kindle version I think the price is pretty similar. It’s, you know, it’s not like 99 cents as you can get for some of the cell phone-

Scott:

Right

Ben:

... restaurants, like $15.

Scott:

Right. Right.

Ben:

Um, which I think, uh, then you go, “Well, I’d enjoy a nice physical book if I’m paying a similar price.”

Scott:

Well, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. The, the, the people who are digital readers tend to be digital readers. The people who are physical readers tend to be physical readers.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

The people who are hardcover buyers tend to be hardcover buyers. The people who are paperback buyers tend-

Ben:

Right

Scott:

... to be paperback buyers and there’s not a lot of overlap.

Ben:

Interesting.

Scott:

Um, library readers, uh, are generally library readers. They are not in a lot of cases book buyers. There are some who may, uh, but by and large the, the, the Venn diagraphs, uh, the Venn diagrams do not overlap in, in most of those areas. And that, and that’s one of the reasons why, uh, why the, the business, the, the book business in general hasn’t really been afraid of libraries. Uh, you know, you think, “Oh, well you’ve got these institutions that are giving away this product for free,” but in reality it’s, uh, there are library readers who are great evangelists for so many, for, for so many books and they tell their friends who are book buyers about it and, and you’ve got this interesting equilibrium.

Ben:

Yeah. It is, it is surprising how these things can sometimes be synergistic. I, I have a similar experience with, um, sometimes people make, uh... So we make the web forum Lesswrong.

Scott:

Mm. Yeah.

Ben:

And we make all the software for that-

Scott:

Sure

Ben:

... and it’s open source.

Scott:

Right.

Ben:

So other people make other web forums in like neighboring subjects and I think sometimes people go, “Oh, that’ll probably take away your, uh, like readership or something.” And I go, “I think it mostly just adds a bit to it.” There’s more excitement about it.

Scott:

It’s, yeah.

Ben:

Slightly different crowd.

Scott:

It, it’s incredible.

Ben:

They link to each other.

Scott:

It’s incred- I, I, I’m often, uh, I, I often, uh, uh, I’m in rooms where I’m talking to people who are aspiring writers and so many of them are paranoid about having their works stolen, about having this amazing idea and then, uh, and having it, uh, you know, having it pirated and, uh, and, and published with, you know, without them getting any credit and without them making any money on it. Um, and the, that just rarely if ever happens. You, you should be lucky that somebody wants to pirate your work. For, for the vast majority of authors their biggest problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, there’s an author called, uh, Cory Doctorow who writes, uh, kind of speculative fiction.

Ben:

Yes.

Scott:

And, um, I-

Ben:

He, uh, he recently commented on Lesswrong for the first time.

Scott:

Oh, really? That’s awesome.

Ben:

Yeah, it’s cool.

Scott:

Okay. Yeah, I, I could see, yeah, I, I could see his worldview and, and the Lesswrong worldview being, being, uh, worlds that were, that are, that are pretty close. But, um, Cory Doctorow went to his publisher and said, “Hey, um, I would love to keep publishing with you but I also want to make the books available in electronic form on my website for free so everybody can read them,” and his publisher said, “You’re nuts. Th- that’s how we make our money is by selling books. If you give them away for free we won’t make any money.” And Cory said, “Well, one, I think you’re wrong. Uh, but two, I don’t really need you ‘cause I can post them on my, on my website for free anyway.” And his publisher to their credit said, “Well, okay. Let’s, let’s try the experiment.” And in fact the way that I found Cory Doctorow, uh, was by reading the EPUB version of, uh, Little Brother that I downloaded from his website and I was reading it on my phone... Or actually no, it was a PDF that I downloaded ma- on hi- from his website. And I got about three or four chapters in and I, I just didn’t like the experience and I didn’t like the size of the type- ... so I went onto my preferred electronic bookstore and I bought a copy.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah, PDFs are, uh, often not the, the perfect-

Scott:

They are not good mobile format.

Ben:

You’re like, “Ah, I love-”

Scott:

No.

Ben:

“... I love the margins. I’m just gonna try and zoom in-”

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

“... with my fingers and then I’m gonna try and...”

Scott:

Exactly.

Ben:

Um-

Scott:

Exactly.

Ben:

Uh, okay. So would you say, um, would you say that the, uh, the e-book introduction has been the biggest change to your industry of agency over the last two or so decades?

Scott:

No. I would say that, um, I would say pr- that probably the, the, the biggest change is the consolidation among traditional publishers.

Ben:

Ah.

Scott:

When I started in the business there were 20 or 30 publishers including a lot of independent publishers and when you were submitting a book to try to get it published there were a lot more places where you could buy it. And then slowly the, uh, the big five or four wound up eating the world, right? Now you’ve got Bertelsmann which is Random House is one of them. You’ve got Hachette, you’ve got Harper Collins, uh, you’ve got Simon & Schuster and you’ve got Macmillan and those large conglomerates have started to absorb those smaller independent publishers. Um, there was an initial wave of that happening maybe 70 years ago or so when hardcover publishing houses started to buy softcover publishing houses. Back in the beginning of trade publishing, uh, in America, uh, hardcover publishers would just publish hardcovers and then they would license those, uh, those softcover rights to another publisher.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

They realized quite quickly that, you know, we talked about Stephen King selling more in, uh, in, in mass market paperback and they realized how much money the mass market, uh, or the, the paperback publishers were, uh, were making and said, “Well, why aren’t, why aren’t we doing this ourselves?” And they wound up acquiring these, uh, these softcover publishing houses so that consolidation was a big change in the business.

Ben:

I don’t have a good sense of it. I, obviously you won’t know the numbers off the top of your head, but if I walk into, like, you know, a large bookstore like, I don’t know, Barnes & Noble or something, I, I don’t have, uh... My, my vague guess is that most books are published-- or a lot of, like, no single bookstore owns more than, like, five-- a few percent of the-- uh, publishes more than a few percent of the books. But perhaps I’m wrong about that.

Scott:

Uh, I would say that the big five publishers probably have published more than 80% of the titles-

Ben:

Oh, geez

Scott:

... in, in any given bookstore.

Ben:

That’s a lot.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

I didn’t know that.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

And it was the, I assume, less than 50%, like, a decade or two ago.

Scott:

Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s right. That’s right.

Ben:

Interesting, interesting. Um, and so that’s just changed who you go to and what you’re, you’re like, instead of it being the 50 options, it’s like five.

Scott:

Exactly, exactly. And, and you know, there were, um... When, uh, when you’ve got multiple publishers, uh, interested in publishing a book, obviously only one of them can, can really effectively do it. And so as an agent, we often hold auctions for the intellectual property. And there’s a big difference between, between an auction that’s got eight bidders in it and an auction that’s got two bidders in it.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. And that must change, it must change the importance of your relationships with the people at those places.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

I imagine you take them out to dinner more. I, I ...

Scott:

So, so this is, so this is something that, this is something that I, that absolutely fascinated me. Uh, the interplay between literary agents and, uh, and publishing houses is different than it is in, in most other businesses. Uh, the first time I ever went out to lunch with, uh, with an editor, I was a, I was a baby agent. I was probably 28 years old. And, uh, I reached for my wallet to, to pick up the tab, and the editor said, “What are you doing?” And I said, “Oh, I’m, I’m, I’m picking up the tab.” He said, “No, no, when, when, when editors and agents go out to lunch, the editor always... We-- I’ve got an expense account for this.” And-

Ben:

Oh, right

Scott:

... I think it was, I think it was a Harper Collins editor, and he said, yeah, I think he said, “Uh, yeah,” he said, “I’m, I’m, I’m always happy for Rupert to, to pay for, to pay for lunch.” And that was, that was an aha moment for me, because it’s the only business I’m aware of where when a buyer and a seller, uh, go out for a meal, the buyer picks up the tab.

Ben:

Mm, mm.

Scott:

And that’s largely because agents do a lot of editors’ job for them. Uh, they go through more manuscripts than the publishing houses could, uh, could ever manage on their own, and they serve as, in some ways, a screen for, for quality.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

Um, and so the publishers don’t have to have that overhead in-house to do that.

Ben:

Gosh, yeah, they must appreciate that. I, I do the front lines of less wrong every day where people send in new content.

Scott:

Uh, you, right, exactly. You’re like, “Oh, my gosh.” Um-

Ben:

And there’s such great stuff-

Scott:

A-

Ben:

... and there is such not great stuff.

Scott:

And, uh, a-and they get it effectively, effectively quote unquote “for free” because the agents, uh, take a percentage of what the author makes, and so the publisher

doesn’t really... Uh, at least it’s not on the publisher’s P&L.

Ben:

Yeah. Um,

just on the top of my head, maybe there’s not much here, but has, uh, have language models started to enter your world at all? Are they changing any of the writing you’re getting? Are you having to put everything through a pangram check to check-

Scott:

Ah

Ben:

... the LLM writing of the-

Scott:

Well, y-y-you know, it was, it was interesting. I had, um, I had one client who, uh, who got, um, who got accused of plagiarizing.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

And, um, it, it-

Ben:

In, in a published book?

Scott:

Yes. Yeah, in a, in a, in a published book. And, um, some, uh, somebody, some rabble-rouser decided to, to run it through one, uh, one of those online plagiarism checkers, and it came back as having a, a high likelihood of being plagiarized. And it turned out that, um,

w- it w- the author had not stolen from other people. The author had used a lot of what they had written on their blog, uh, as text in the book, and was attributed as such, but... Or so a lot of it was attributed, a lot, uh, and a lot of it was just, you know, the author wrote it, the author can sell it in whatever format they want to.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Um, and so it was not in fact plagiarized, but it, but it showed up that way. Um, we ha- I haven’t really seen-

Ben:

Just, just because the plagiarism check checked whether it was on the internet-

Scott:

Yes

Ben:

... and they were like, “Oh, it’s on your blog.”

Scott:

Exactly.

Ben:

Oh, I see.

Scott:

Exactly.

Ben:

That seems fine.

Scott:

Yeah. A- or, and, and interestingly enough, it, there were enough other places where other blogs had quoted this author- ... and that text appeared verbatim-

Ben:

Oh, that’s funny

Scott:

... that it, that it tripped the, uh, that it tripped the tripwires. Um, there are some, uh, publishers now, some small publishers, uh, who mostly go direct, uh, direct to Kindle or direct print on demand, uh, who heavily use AI. Um, and people don’t under- people don’t know that, uh, that, that it’s AI who’s writing this stuff. Curated by a human, edited by a human, perhaps plotted by a human, um, but they’re doing quite well. Um,

i-in the traditional world, I, I don’t know.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, I’m sure that there are people who are using LLMs to definitely do their research, uh, maybe to do some of the, the, the work-a-day prose creation. Um...

Ben:

But it’s, yeah, it’s not, uh, it’s not an active problem that you’re having to deal with, with people saying-

Scott:

No, not yet. Not yet.

Ben:

Good. Well, uh, when it does, uh, call me, I can give you some tips.

Scott:

Which, what, what’s interesting, what’s interesting about, um, about AI is that, uh, it, it makes some things possible for, uh, for less popular works. So there are a lot of works, for instance, that don’t get translated into, into other languages.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

Um, there’s no demand in the Russian language, and so you can’t afford to pay somebody $3,000 or $4,000 to, to translate into Russian. But if the LLM can do it at 99% of the quality of a human, um, you, you then have, uh, you, you’ve got that, that Chris Anderson long tail thing where books that were, that had zero ec- zero economic value now, now have non-zero economic value.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

The same thing applies to audio, right? Uh, you know, you and I were talking about audiobooks before the, before the podcast. And in order for most, most books, they hire a human narrator, and they pay that person a, a few thousand dollars. It takes seven or eight hours to, to record. And so only the top, you know, fraction of a percent of the three million books that are published each year get released in audio format. But now that you c- now when you can have an AI create a, a realistic voice, every book can be, uh, can be consumed in audio format.

Ben:

Yep. Yeah, that will be interesting. We will definitely be moving more in that direction.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

And if it’s not now, then N months later it will be-

Scott:

N, exactly

Ben:

... in other languages.

Scott:

Where N is a relatively small number.

Ben:

Um, so, uh, you’ve spent your whole career working with writers in lots of different ways.

Scott:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Uh, sometimes reading, sometimes giving feedback, sometimes editing-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... sometimes so on. Um, now you’ve come to Inkhaven.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Which, loved having you here.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, has anything surprised you about these writers? Has anything been different, uh, than you expected?

Scott:

There’s, there’s a lot of, um, there’s a lot of writing talent here. Um, I was very favorably impressed by the quality of writing that makes it onto their actual blogs, given that they’ve got a requirement to post 500 words every, or more every day.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

Um, I would have thought that the quality of the posts would be, would be significantly lower than, uh, than, than it truly is. But not only, uh, not only are people doing really fascinating thinking here, but they’re articulating tho- those thoughts extremely well. And, uh, I think that’s a, that’s a credit to the, uh, to, you know, to what you’ve set up as this environment that fosters, uh, that fosters the discussion, that fosters the debate, that af- that, that affords them, uh, access to, to writing instructors and people who can coach them along, and to bloggers who’ve, you know, who’ve been doing this and who are remarkably successful at it. Um, it- it’s, it, I, I mean, I think we all think that the world is a better place when, when there are more ideas out there, when there are better ideas out there, and when those ideas are, are stated more plainly and more clearly.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

And I think that, I think that Inkhaven is really, is, is succeeding massively in, in, in ad- in advancing that goal.

Ben:

Oh, thanks very much.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, you, uh, uh, admirably... Not only I invited you out here, uh, to, like, give people input on what things they should write about and, uh, what the industry looks like and so forth, um, and you were like, “I will also publish every day.” And I was like, “Amazing. That was not required, and you did.” Um-

Scott:

Yeah. You know, it, it was interesting. When, um, when my, uh, when my first kid was on the way, uh, I was required to be at home. I usually travel a lot for, for business, but I, uh, uh, the, you know, our obstetrician told us that the baby could come any, any time in the next month, and so I didn’t wanna go very far from, uh, from where my, uh, from where my wife and my son were. Uh, and so I started writing a blog at that point that was, uh, that was just kind of a, uh, it was a, a, a lark. Uh, I was living-

Ben:

Is this your wine blog?

Scott:

Yeah, this is the wine blog.

Ben:

It’s fun.

Scott:

It’s, uh, it’s weirdwine.com. Uh, I was living in Austin at the time, and, you know, the s- the slogan of Austin is Keep Austin Weird.

Ben:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott:

And, uh, I tend to, I tend to have a, a, um, a fondness for wines and spirits and cocktails and restaurants that are off the beaten path. So I started this blog called Weird Wine, and I blogged pretty, pretty consistently. Uh, then, you know, then the baby came and life changed, and, you know, I would write a po- a post now, uh, now and again. And I was really thinking about, um, at this stage in my career doing some more writing. And, uh, I think I was reading, uh, Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen’s-

Ben:

Sure

Scott:

... blog. And I saw the, I saw the, the advertisement for Inkhaven. So I went to the webpage and I said, “You know, I’m at a, I’m at a point where I could spend a, a significant amount of time at, at an event like this.” And I actually considered applying as a resident.

Ben:

Oh.

Scott:

Uh, and then I got to the bottom of the page and said, “Oh, and yeah, and by the way, if you’re a publishing professional or you’re experienced in the business of writing, drop us a line.” So I said, “Oh, okay, this is, this is, this is the perfect fit,” and I reached out to you and, uh, and, and, and here we are.

Ben:

Yeah. I was, uh... It’s so lovely as an experience to kind of plant a flag in the ground for great writing on the internet.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

And then, um, oh, my mind’s blanking. But each time someone has filled it out who I had no... Oh, yeah, yeah. I can’t, I can’t sadly say-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... who they are ‘cause they were with a, uh, an institution that needs to give them permission.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

But a, a wonderful person came last time, uh, did some great sessions, gave some great advice, uh, who I, I had no relationship with you. And again, I had no relationship with you.

Scott:

Yep.

Ben:

I was like-

Scott:

Yep

Ben:

... “Okay, I’m just gonna chat with this cool, uh, literary agent from New York. All right, we’ll do it.”

Scott:

And, and, and let’s be fair, I mean, there, there, there’s some blog posts that, uh, that come from Inkhaven, certainly from other places, that are, that are absolutely ludicrous and, and are, and are batshit.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

But that’s great. Right? Because it forces people to articulate what it is about those ideas that are more wrong.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Right? And if the goal is for people to be less wrong-

Ben:

Uh-huh

Scott:

... uh, having... You, you need, you need something to compare it to.

Ben:

Yeah, you’re gonna have to keep trying.

Scott:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Keep working.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Keep doing it now.

Scott:

Yeah, exactly.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh, um, so yeah, has anything else about the, the people here surprised you, uh, that is other... I mean, again, you said that you were like, “500 words a day daily for a month, the quality couldn’t be that good,” and you were a little-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... impressed by that-

Scott:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... which is lovely. Uh, anything else that... I mean, we had a great time. Uh, I’m so glad you came to Bodega Bay, uh-

Scott:

Ha

Ben:

... so that you could, uh, put on the excellent poker tournament.

Scott:

That was fun. That was fun. Yeah.

Ben:

Uh, you’re like, “I’ve, I’ve obtained poker chips. We’re going to have a poker tournament.” And then was it 27 buy-ins?

Scott:

I... Yeah, I think so. I think, yeah, the, uh, around probably 20... 28. 28.

Ben:

That’s awesome.

Scott:

We wound up with a, we wound up with a $560, uh, prize pool to distribute.

Ben:

Yep. And then, uh, somehow, heaven knows, given that I was fairly inebriated-

Scott:

Ha ha

Ben:

... I managed to come first.

Scott:

I-

Ben:

I, I don’t play poker very much, but that was very fun.

Scott:

And I, and I pro- It wasn’t fixed, I promise it wasn’t fixed.

Ben:

Everyone was like, “Really? Did you just fly him out here so that he could win $280?”

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

It’s like, “No, no, it wasn’t the goal.”

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Anyway, I, uh, I since then, uh, for the Light Haven Library, picked up two lovely folio editions. There was this, of the, uh, The Master and Margarita.

Scott:

Oh, beautiful. Yeah.

Ben:

Uh-

Scott:

Ah

Ben:

... with tons of great illustrations.

Scott:

Bulgakov, really fun.

Ben:

Yes. I read this as a teenager. It was crazy.

Scott:

Mm-hmm. Woland.

Ben:

And-

Scott:

One of my, uh, one of my college roommates used, uh, used Woland as his, uh, as his username in, in online games. That’s how, that’s how geeky we all were.

Ben:

And then also some, uh, Lovecraft stories.

Scott:

Ah, very nice.

Ben:

Uh, so these will-

Scott:

Call of Cthulhu, yeah. Yeah

Ben:

... the purple thing there. So these will be in the Light Haven Library, which is, uh, where I spent the winnings on.

Scott:

Well, you know, you, you asked, you asked if I was surprised by anything else, um, uh, at the, the, the people at Inkhaven, and the, there’s a remarkable diversity of, uh, of age, of background, of professional accomplishment. I mean, there are people here who have had successful startup exits and, you know, are, are wealthy beyond what most Americans would, uh, you know, would even think of, and there are, you know, 22-year-old kids who-

Ben:

19-year-old kids.

Scott:

19... They’re 19-year-old kids who are living in their parents’ basements and, uh, and, you know, maybe, like, maybe working as baristas in some places. And, and those people come together as equals and really listen to each other’s ideas and give each other suggestions. And it’s, it, it’s like-I, I, it’s, it’s like what I’d wished my undergraduate experience would be like. It’s, it’s a place where ideas are celebrated, and, um, there’s a culture of, a culture of curiosity, uh, that is, uh, that’s just, that’s really, that’s unique in, in my experience.

Ben:

Wonderful. Um, well anyway, once again, I’ve said it before, but thanks so much for coming. It’s wonderful to get connections to-

Scott:

Yeah, for sure

Ben:

... professionals in this whole world. Um, it’s been really fun having you. I think this is your last day. You’re heading out.

Scott:

It’s sadly my last day, yeah. I’ve gotta go do some stuff with, uh, with my kids. But, uh-

Ben:

But you started-

Scott:

I would, I would have loved to have stayed for the whole thing.

Ben:

You’ve started your, uh, uh, so far two posts into your fictional series about a curious prediction markets universe.

Scott:

I am, yeah. It’s, uh, it’s a-

Ben:

Do you think you’ll keep that going?

Scott:

It’s a... Yeah, it’s a... I, I will, I will. It’s a, it’s a short story called “The Cohort,” um, that imagines what would happen if one day, uh, prediction markets allowed betting on individuals’ mortality. Uh, 1,000, well, 999 random people are named in this cohort, and then there’s one high-profile, uh, commercial celebrity, uh, who is also named. And, uh, uh, the, uh... It deals with people in different, uh, different walks of life and how the prediction market, uh, impacts them or doesn’t.

Ben:

Mm.

Scott:

Um, how it changes incentives, uh, how people exploit it, and, uh, and hopefully, you know, creates some interesting characters who have some, uh, some, some moral dilemmas that, uh, that, that will be, uh, that’ll be fun to read about.

Ben:

Yeah. I’m excited for the rest of it. Uh, it’s funny how people do more fiction here than they expected. Uh, most of your posts, I don’t know if you’ve written fiction before, uh, even though it was very skillfully done.

Scott:

You know, I, I have. Um, yeah, I’ve got a novel in a drawer that, that probably-

Ben:

Oh

Scott:

... should stay in a drawer. Um, but the nice, the, the nice thing is-

Ben:

Doesn’t every agent have a novel in a drawer?

Scott:

Well, many do.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

Many do.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, and many, and many, uh, many agents have published novels. Uh, one of-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

... in fact, one of my colleagues at Folio is a, is a quite successful, uh, middle-grade novelist, guy named John Cusick. Um-

Ben:

I should clarify that the, uh, Folio that produced these books is not the same as-

Scott:

Different, different Folio, yeah. Different-

Ben:

It’s a popular... It’s a good name.

Scott:

It i- it is, it is. A g- good, a good literary name.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, our original, uh, our... We, we originally considered naming... Well, my, uh, my business partner, uh, my, my co-founder and I, uh, were in the car and we were trying to come up with a, a name, and we were having a very hard time, uh, brainstorming, so we decided to do, um, to do a, a counterfactual and say, “Okay, what, what’s the, what’s the worst possible name for, for a literary agency?” And we came up with The Mustache Agency.

That was-

Ben:

That sounds great.

Scott:

It’s, it’s, it’s like, like shades of old-timey villains-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

... twirling their, uh, twirling their mustaches.

Ben:

“I had to call the Mustache Man.”

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

You know what I’m doing?

Scott:

Right, right. Uh, and then I said, “Ah, you know what? We really should probably do something, um, uh, something literary,” and I was thinking Shakespeare, and I was thinking the First Folio, and I’m like, “Oh”-

Ben:

Mm

Scott:

... “okay, this hasn’t been used, so let’s do it.”

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, that’s great. And so yeah, you’ll, uh, you’ll head out and-

Scott:

The, the fiction, the fiction thing, though, um,

w- writing good nonfiction requires, uh, a lot of research and, uh, a lot of fact-checking.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

Uh, and writing good fiction, at least good short fiction, can... Uh, the, your, your source can be, can solely be your imagination and your experience.

Ben:

Yeah.

Scott:

So I, I think that that’s one of the reasons why more people are, are, are indexing heavier on fiction here than, uh, than they might otherwise.

Ben:

It’s funny that you say that, because I think that’s somewhat true for some of them, but I think some of the people who came in intending to write fiction actually found that they had a harder time with the fiction they wanted to do in a day. Uh, again, the ef- the people, you know, they do the occasional effort posts-

Scott:

Mm, right, right

Ben:

... where it’s like a three-day piece.

Scott:

Right, right.

Ben:

And whether it’s, uh, an ana- an ana- an, an analysis or a research piece or a story, those, you can’t do those every day. They take, you know, a couple days. Um, but yeah, some of the, uh, some of the fiction pieces have been-

Scott:

One, uh, one, one of the, one of the other, other things I think is that I think that a lot of the people who, uh, who came here were so locked into the, the nonfiction paradigm and the blog paradigm that they had somehow forgotten or overlooked, um, how effective fiction can be as a, a, as b- as a medium for transmitting new thoughts.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Scott:

I mean, if you look at, like, if you look, like, at Heinlein, or if you look at, um, Ayn Rand or, uh, Frank Herbert or other SF and fantasy writers, a, a lot of, you know, Philip K. Dick, a, a lot of what is now reality in, in our world was, was envisioned by Jules Verne back in the-

Ben:

Yeah

Scott:

... back in the 19th century.

Ben:

Yeah. Man, I love reading Heinlein. It’s so... It’s one of those books where, you know, there’s a page of, like, physics calculations-

Scott:

Yeah

Ben:

... about, like, you know, things between the Moon and the Earth.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

And had the calculations gone a different way, the plot would’ve gone a different way.

Scott:

Yeah.

Ben:

It actually mattered, like, the, the-

Scott:

The Moon is a harsh mistress with, with gravity weapons

Ben:

... calculation of... Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

It’s... Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Uh, so that’s, uh, it’s very close to my heart as a less wrong.

Scott:

Yep.

Ben:

All right, we should wrap up, but, um-

Scott:

Thanks

Ben:

... it was a lovely chat.

Scott:

This is awesome, yeah.

Ben:

And, uh, uh, if, uh, I don’t know whether you’re at the stage where you, uh, look for more book proposals.

Scott:

You know, I always... Uh, if, if... Uh, I, I take on very few new clients, but we’ve got close to 30 active agents, and so, uh, check out our webpage at foliolit.com, uh, or if you wanna email me directly, scott@foliolit.com. Pretty easy.

Ben:

Wonderful. And if, uh, uh, if I’m a wildly successful author and want to sell you my catalog, I can also reach out for that.

Scott:

You will, and I will, uh, I will gladly refer you to my colleagues at ILP- ... and, uh, they are the best in the business.

Ben:

Great. All right. Well, thanks so much.

Scott:

Thanks.

Ben:

And, uh-

Scott:

Really appreciate it

Ben:

... we’ll end there. Thank you.

https://www.rationalanimations.com/

00:00 Intro
00:36 Reading
06:19 Interview
35:52 Sponsor

Ben:

Welcome to Inkhaven Presents Readings from the Archive, where I invite internet writers to bring, read, and discuss an essay with me. Uh, my guest today is Alice Liu, uh, who writes the blog Signore Galilei.

Alice:

Yes, Signore Galilei.

Ben:

And, uh, is also the lead script writer for Rational Animations, a fantastic YouTube channel.

Alice:

Well, thank you.

Ben:

Thanks for having... Thanks for coming. Um, what, uh, what essay are you gonna be reading today?

Alice:

I’m going to be reading Tides Are Weirder Than You Think from my first Inkhaven appearance.

Ben:

Wonderful. Um, I don’t think there’s anything in particular we need to know about it going in. Uh, we’ll put some of the images up that come from the essay.

Alice:

Sounds great.

Ben:

All right. Well, uh, let’s listen to that.

Nailed it.

Alice:

Awesome.

Ben:

Uh, great.

Um,

all right. Well, uh, thanks very much for reading that.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

I enjoyed listening to it.

Alice:

Yeah, of course.

Ben:

Uh, I’m curious, uh, did... Do you notice anything new or different about the essay from reading it aloud than when you were reading it?

Alice:

Yeah, I noticed that... So when I write scripts to be read aloud, um, I don’t... There’s different formatting things especially. So like parentheticals work really well in

written form, but when you’re speaking them out loud, you have to sort of like format them differently. Like you have to, you have to s- introduce the parentheses instead of just writing them.

Ben:

That makes sense. Um, when you wrote this piece, which was, which you wrote here at Inkhaven-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... in the first cohort, um,

did you, did you generally, both in this piece and other pieces, did you generally know the science and then you just were doing a writeup or did you have to do any, like, research when you were writing the pieces?

Alice:

I do some research. So usually I come in knowing a little bit, and then

I research the rest of it basically. Um, my goal is that I want to be able to sort of condense, um, a few hours worth of research into one post that people can read.

Ben:

Yep. Uh, how much was it with, uh, with your tides piece?

Alice:

Um, I’d say that I knew up to the part where there were, um, both 12-hour and 24-hour tides, and I did not know the reason why at that point.

Ben:

Oh, fun.

Alice:

So yeah. So everything after that is stuff that I researched for this, this, this post.

Ben:

That’s nice. Um, yeah. Uh,

darn it, I had a dumb follow-up question, but I get to cut me saying that. Um- ... yeah. Uh,

oh, um, and where did you, uh, how did you come up with the idea for the tides piece? Where did the seed of that arrive from?

Alice:

Okay. So I think... Let’s see. What was the seed exactly? I really like going on Wikipedia rabbit holes. This is just a thing about me, and one time a while ago, I was... discovered something called the pole tide, which is one of those extra astronomical components not in here, which is that because the Earth’s pole wobbles around a bit, it’s not... by a few feet a year, um, it’s... that causes it a little bit of tide that’s not from another astronomical body.

Ben:

Huh.

Alice:

And so I was like, I could go right into that, but that seems like it would be

too deep, so I need to explain everything else first.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

And then I realized that explanation would just be a good post by itself.

Ben:

That makes sense. So, uh, I always get confused by the magnitude of these things. So the, the Earth’s pole is off by a few feet-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... and does that cause a much larger shift in tides?

Alice:

No, it’s, it’s a very small shift in the tides. I, I think it’s less than a centimeter. Um-

Ben:

Amazing.

Alice:

Yeah. But, but it, it adds up, all these little bits, um, they, they change the astronomical components just enough that you can still measure them.

Ben:

That’s cool. That’s cool. Um,

yeah, I also like going down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Curious, uh, have you been down one recently?

Alice:

Okay, um-

Ben:

What’s the last Wikipedia rabbit hole?

Alice:

Last Wikipedia rabbit hole. Well, this is not the most recent one, but this is the most recent one that I’ve, I’ve posted about, is about, um, the Khwarazmian Empire. So, uh, it’s a empire that ruled Persia, um, but they were actually based in Central Asia. And when the Mongols came and conquered them, so they’re... that’s the era, in the 1200s, um, it was like as deadly as World War I, supposedly.

Ben:

Ooh.

Alice:

Yeah. It was... It’s one of those ancient wars or medieval wars that, like, you don’t know about ‘cause it’s in a corner of the world we don’t talk about in our school systems or whatever. Um, but yeah, it’s like, it’s weird to me that it was that significant to the people of the time, and we barely know about it.

Ben:

I’m curious, do you have a sense of how long that war lasted?

Alice:

It was like three years.

Ben:

Three years, interesting.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Crazy. Uh, how did you, how did you begin this Wikipedia rabbit hole?

Alice:

Well, okay, this one...

Okay, I think the way I came into it this time, so I... If you read my, my piece about it, I s- as I keep coming back to this one war for over and over again, it’s just a thing that happens in my mind.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Alice:

Um, but one of the ways you can get in there is that algorithms are named after a person, Al-Khwarizmi, who was named that because, or referred to that in the text, uh, because he was from this empire.

Ben:

Oh.

Alice:

Yeah. So-

Ben:

That’s fun

Alice:

... directly a word in our modern English and we just don’t know that.

Ben:

How interesting. That’s a, that’s a fun way to find out about a massive war.

Alice:

Yeah, seriously.

Ben:

Algorithms, I wonder where that comes from. Oh, dear.

Alice:

Yeah, you imagine someone, you know, in post whatever future, and them being like, “Oh, I wonder where, you know, what the stories of these poppies that people wear.” And then, “Oh, wow, there was a whole war, World War I that we didn’t know about.” Yeah.

Ben:

Um, so yeah. I think, uh, had you done much blogging before Inkhaven One?

Alice:

I had not. So I had my YouTube channel, um, same name as the blog, Signore Galilei, um, and that I’ve been doing for a few years. Um, but this was really my first blogging as such.

Ben:

It’s kinda... I don’t know whatever that was. That was the most

unhelpful...

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

I don’t know how to put things in AirPlay mode.

Alice:

That’s legit.

Ben:

Um, sorry, will you say the answer one more time?

Alice:

Okay.

Ben:

You said you did a little bit of writing on, uh, blogging for, writing for-

Alice:

Yes. So I, so I... What I had done before Inkhaven, um, I had...

Before Inkhaven, I had my YouTube channel for several years.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

I still have that going. Um, and it’s sort of similar to blogging in some ways, but I would say that, like, ration- like, Rational Animation scripts and my own YouTube scripts are really a s- in my mind, a little bit of a separate thing from blogging. So Inkhaven was my really firstReal blog.

Ben:

That makes sense. Um, I think in a minute I wanna ask you how you look- you feel look back- looking back on it.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

But, uh, what was it like at the time? How were you s- were you... Was anything about it surprising or unexpected?

Alice:

So Inkhaven in general?

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Yes. So the most unexpected thing about Inkhaven was that somehow I was the first to post on several days.

I came in thinking I was gonna be so late, ‘cause I’m late on, like, so many deadlines in the world, but something about this space at Lighthaven and the fact that everyone else was always working was, like,

just exactly the correct environment for me.

Ben:

Oh, that’s nice.

Alice:

Um, so I would, I would... Several days I would write tomorrow’s post as it approached midnight, and then post it just after midnight, whereas everyone else is posting their own post- ... for, for the actual day before midnight.

Ben:

That’s nice. Yeah, I think it was a competition between you and Zvi Benson-Tilson-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... for who could post earlier.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

He would sometimes, yeah, he would post one I think just before midnight, and then one minute after midnight. He would have-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... two ready.

Alice:

That’s awesome.

Ben:

Um,

why did you apply? Why did you, uh, want to go to Inkhaven?

Alice:

So I was suggested this by, uh, my boss at Rational Animations.

Ben:

Oh, nice.

Alice:

Yeah, so you can see our little dog flush here.

Ben:

They have, what, been wonderful supporters of us this whole time.

Alice:

Yeah. Of course. Um, so basically my boss came in, he’s the one who runs the whole channel. Um, he came in and was like, “I’ve heard about this amazing blogging retreat that’s going to be happening. I think that you should go to up your skills,” and I agreed wholeheartedly. Um-

Ben:

I can’t believe I didn’t know that even though I’ve talked with him about this so many times. That’s great. Um, nice. And then, uh, yeah. What were you... What... Which pieces of writing during Inkhaven were you most proud of?

Alice:

So I like the one I read, um, the Tides Are Rooted Than You Think. I like...

I feel like it’s interesting ‘cause most of the ones I wrote were, like, explainers in this vein.

Ben:

Yep.

Alice:

And I think this is one of the best examples of that. But the ones I’m most proud of, I feel like, are the few exceptions to the rule.

Ben:

Oh, yeah?

Alice:

So I did one, um, fiction piece-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... that was sort of, um, a extended math joke, um

But it was very fun. Uh, and then that one was about, um, you know how there’s all those puzzles where there’s a bunch of perfectly logical mathematicians and-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... and some evil prisoner thing is happening to them?

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

So that was, that was... That one was I was proud of. And the other one, um, was Philosophy Shaped Mind Shards, which was sort of a more... the most personal one I wrote there.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

And that was about some way that my mind goes on weird tangents that are self-destructive.

Ben:

Oh, okay. Um, interesting. Um, yeah. How do you, uh, how do you feel about the writing looking back now? How do you feel about Inkhaven?

Alice:

I feel like, yeah, I, I think this might be something that other people say as well, but it’s like you can’t tell from the effort you put in how people are going to receive it.

Ben:

Right.

Alice:

I really, I really liked all the pieces I wrote at Inkhaven. I’m still doing, um, the weekly posting, um-

Ben:

Forever Haven.

Alice:

Forever Haven, yes. I’m one of I believe seven people left from the original cohort.

Ben:

Yeah. Many of whom are still posting, but only seven of you have managed every week since-

Alice:

This is correct, yes

Ben:

... in, how many months is it? It’s been December, January, February, March, and now nearly end of April.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

So five months.

Alice:

Five months, yes. So I think... I hope I can keep it up.

Ben:

I hope so, too.

Alice:

Uh, yeah. So I think,

I think I’ve, I’m proud of this body of work. I’ve, I really like what I’ve done. I think

it represents the kind of writing that I really like to do and the kind of explaining that I really like to do.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alice:

And that’s, that’s sort of the, the big overall view of it.

Ben:

So you said you weren’t sure which... You know, the, the effort did not necessarily translate into-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... the readership or something. I think, uh, I think the one that we read was maybe the one that did best on Hacker News.

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

But a couple of others, there was something about, like, I think mechanical, um-

Alice:

Yeah, so one of the other ones that went, went onto the Hacker News front page, um, was about I designed a mechanical calculator.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Alice:

And I learned a whole lot about gears while doing it.

Ben:

Wonderful.

Alice:

So that was fun.

Ben:

And I presume that one was the one where you’d done all the, all of that work before Inkhaven.

Alice:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

And then you did a nice writeup.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Nice to... How, how did you make all those diagrams for it?

Alice:

Um, those diagrams are... Some of them I found as, as Creative Commons ones, um, and the other ones were just, like, screenshots of my 3D modeling software.

Ben:

Very nice.

Alice:

So it worked, it worked pretty well. That one was fun. And then since, since the end of Inkhaven, during the Forever Haven pieces, I had a couple other ones go on Hacker News. Um, one was about the mountain that weighed the Earth. So there was an experiment done with a mountain in Scotland-

Ben:

Oh, yeah

Alice:

... to figure out the mass of the Earth, and it was within, like, 20%. Um, and then-

Ben:

What was the rough shape of the experiment?

Alice:

So the experiment was you compare the, where a pendulum is on the north and south side of the mountain, and the idea is that the tiny gravity of the mountain will deflect the pendulum ever so slightly, and you can figure out how much that deflection is using a telescope and the stars and comparing it to the, to where the stars are in the sky. And then if you can figure out the mass of the mountain by looking at the rocks in it, then you can figure out the constant of gravity and use that to calculate the mass of the Earth.

Ben:

Wow.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Wow. What, what year was that done?

Alice:

Ooh, s- I want to say 1770s.

Ben:

Nice.

Alice:

Yeah. It was a little bit after the Transit of Venus experiment-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... because they used the extra funds that they didn’t spend.

Yeah.

Ben:

That’s great.

Alice:

Yeah. And the other one that’s gone pretty well is, uh, uh, the coal-fired aircraft carriers of Lake Michigan.

They were, they were coal-fired paddle wheel passenger ships that were converted to aircraft carriers on the lake, um, to use as training, um, for pilots in World War II.

Ben:

They were, they were, they were paddle wheel boats.

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

So you’re all paddling with your-

Alice:

Yeah, so there, there, there’s a big wheel, and they had, were horizontal paddle wheels as opposed to the big vertical ones.

Ben:

Ah, yeah.

Alice:

And there were coal boilers pushing this paddle wheel with the steam engine, and they basically sailed around Lake Michigan in different wind conditions. And the idea was that if you were, uh, training as a carrier pilot, you could do it of, free from the danger of German submarines.

Ben:

Wow.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Nice. Um, wonderful. Uh, yeah. Um, when did you get into writing for Rational Animations?

Alice:

So I actually won a script writing contest they did-

Ben:

Beautiful

Alice:

... um, in 2022. So they hired me January 23, um, as originally as part-time, and then I became full-time February 25 or 20- 2025. Yeah.

Ben:

Gotcha. Um, and how many pieces have you written for them now?

Alice:

Ooh.Probably around a dozen.

Ben:

A dozen.

Alice:

Um, several of them are still in various stages of production and-

Ben:

And I always enjoy telling people that the Rational Animations, like, you know, staff count, I think I chatted with, uh-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... uh, your CEO, and he was like, “Yes, we have, uh, one writer-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... and 40 animators.”

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

And I was like, “Do you need more writers?” And he was like, “I need more animators.”

Alice:

This is true, the animators are always the bottleneck.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Um, which kind of takes a little bit of pressure off of me. Like, I can write, like, six scripts, and we can use only three of them because the animators are the slow step.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, i- is there anyone else? So you work with Rob Miles there, ‘cause he does a lot of the narrations.

Alice:

Rob Miles does the narration. He also does a lot of the editing, ‘cause he will be like, “I don’t want to narrate that because I don’t agree with it.” And then

Ben:

That’s it. That’s classic Rationalist.

Alice:

He, yes, he’s very deep into the editing process. My, my... The CEO himself steps in as well. There’s a couple other people who are, like, part-time for us in the writing department. Um, Justin Kuiper, who’s another Inkhaven person, is-

Ben:

Oh

Alice:

... now involved in that-

Ben:

Oh

Alice:

... after Inkhaven One.

Ben:

Well, he won the, uh, he won the wr- the, uh, Rational Animations writing competition in Inkhaven One.

Alice:

Yeah, it turns out that competitions are a reasonably good way for us to, uh, hire people.

Ben:

Oh, that’s fantastic.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

I’m much happier to hear that. I just thought it had not panned out. That’s wonderful.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, I still have to get him one of, uh, Ben Landauer-Taylor’s lovely, uh, g- uh, long-lasting 1,000-year glass plaques-

Alice:

That would be fun

Ben:

... for one of his essays.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um,

yeah. Um,

so yeah, it sounded like you explored your writing styles during Inkhaven.

Alice:

For sure, for sure.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh, was there any particular... What, what about Inkhaven encouraged you to do that? Was that just something you brought in, or was there anything else-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... I suppose?

Alice:

It’s... Just because I had to do so many posts, I think. Um-

Ben:

Oh, right

Alice:

... because, like, I easily get bored doing the same thing over and over again.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Alice:

And there’s, there’s a s- if I do it the same thing every month, it’ll take a very long time for me to get bored, but if I do the same thing every day, I’ll get bored very quickly.

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

So I felt like I wanted to do these, like, experimental ones in between all of the, my standard explanations.

Ben:

Yeah, I think, uh, I won’t go into it too much, but I think also, like, I did my first-ever piece of fiction, and it was a-

Alice:

Nice

Ben:

... weird crossover fan fiction, and I had so much fun doing it, and hopefully... It was just, it set something up, and hopefully I’ll get to do more of it. But yeah, I, I get the same, I get the feeling. Um, what was the best thing and what was the worst thing about doing Inkhaven?

Alice:

Best thing was all the people. I know it sounds very cliche, but, but I always tell my friends about this, is if you get 41 people in a building and they all have to write for 30 days, they all at least have 30 interesting things to say.

Ben:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Alice:

So there’s, uh, you know, 1,200 interesting things around.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

So...

Ben:

And this time we have 55 people.

Alice:

I know, it’s... And, and it’s, and it’s exciting as well-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... um, to be back and to see this whole new cohort, and they’re, they’re a slightly different vibe, but they all are exciting people-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... which is awesome.

Ben:

Yeah. What have you noticed, uh, coming back so far? You’ve been here four days?

Alice:

Yes, yes.

Ben:

Any, uh, any... What have you noticed so far?

Alice:

Um, well,

I noticed, like, people are... come from sort of a wider collection of backgrounds, I think.

Ben:

I think so.

Alice:

Um, and then the other thing is, uh, there’s a lot of meta posts.

Ben:

There is a lot of meta posts.

Alice:

I know.

Ben:

I don’t know what to do about that. I’m either gonna have an LLM flag all of them and, like, down-weight them on the website.

Um-

Alice:

It’s possible. I think, I think there’s a value in having a small number of meta posts.

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

But it is possible we have passed that.

Ben:

Yeah. I just keep seeing new posts where, like, the AI-generated image is me s- with my boot stamping on someone’s face- ... as they write. I’m like, “Okay, I guess that was your choice.”

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, and they are funny. Um,

and then what was the worst part of Inkhaven?

Alice:

The worst part of Inkhaven.

I did not sleep very well.

Ben:

Oh.

Alice:

I

was just... Part of it was just I was too excited, part of it was just, like, I’m used to not being cold and humid at the same time. Um, ‘cause in New Jersey when it’s cold it’s dry, and when it’s warm it’s humid. So...

Ben:

Which, uh, which building were you in?

Alice:

I was in the top part of B.

Ben:

Oh, you’re right, cool.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

That makes sense.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

In the room with the, with the stained glass window.

Ben:

Yeah, it’s a really... With the, with the little face that’s been replaced-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... with the lady from, uh, Spirited Away.

Alice:

Yeah, that was very fun.

Ben:

Um, that makes sense. Uh, which, uh, which writing advisors when you were at Inkhaven did you get much out of?

Alice:

Oh, let’s see. Um,

like the, the people who were writing advisors or the coaches?

Ben:

Oh, uh, sorry, I meant the writing advisors.

Alice:

Okay.

Ben:

Or you can mention the coaches if that’s more-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... relevant to you.

Alice:

Sure. Uh, so let’s see.

I... The Slime O’Time O people.

Ben:

I thought you were gonna say that.

Alice:

The Slime O’Time O people I talked with a lot. Um, and they-

Ben:

They bring such a good energy.

Alice:

They do. They do. And

I honestly feel like when I was getting review from them, it wasn’t like I was scheduling a review time and then blocking it out, I was just, like, chatting with them and then like, “Oh, hey, here’s my piece.”

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

And they’d be like...

I was... And then they’d be like, “Oh, okay, we’ll talk about it because it’s an interesting topic.”

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

And that was awesome. Um, I also got feedback from Alexander Wales and Scott Alexander on different things.

Ben:

Yep.

Alice:

Um, Scott was definitely more of a scheduled moment, but he had fun feedback.

Ben:

Scott Alexander Wales.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

They, uh...

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah, Slime O’s, uh, the, uh, the girl slime, that’s what I like. Anyway.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Rusty, uh, came on the podcast. We-

Alice:

Awesome

Ben:

... released that still, and, you know, they’ve got such a wealth of scientific background, and I was like, “What do you wanna read?” And she was like, “My Immortal Harry Potter fan fiction.”

Alice:

Wait, that’s amazing.

Ben:

I hadn’t read it. I had to read it for that. That was my job that week.

Alice:

You had to read My Immortal?

Ben:

I had to read... I read 15 chapters.

Alice:

Oh, that’s amazing. I, my-

Ben:

It was a hoot

Alice:

... friends in high school did a lunchtime out-loud reading of it day by day, one chapter at a time, for like a month.

Ben:

Ai, ai, ai. All the wonderful things that you can get if, uh, you’re not allowed to have an editing process.

Alice:

Yes. Yes, this is true.

Ben:

Um, has your writing changed much over the course of writing for Rational Animations?

Alice:

Yeah. So I think there’s an emphasis in our Rational Animations videos, which is we try and set things in stories more. Um, and we don’t always... Sometimes the stories are just like, “Here’s what some scientist did, that’s cool.” And the... But, like, we’re trying toMake every video like have that narrative arc.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Alice:

Um, and I think that usually when I’m writing an explainer, the thing that’s carrying it is I’m extremely interested in this, and I want you to be extremely interested-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... in this too. And I think that

because at Rational Animations I’m writing a lot of topics that I’m not originally interested in, but then become interested in as I research them, um, I think it’s a little bit of a different vibe.

Ben:

That makes sense. Um, do you have any different, any... I, I suspect the answer may well be no, but do you have any different goals coming back at Inkhaven too?

Alice:

Yeah, I, so I’ve been writing all my posts on a single theme of going back this time.

Ben:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Alice:

So I’d been, so the first ones I, I posted some fiction from college that I thought was gonna be incredibly cringey, and then was like only a little bit cringey. Um, beyond that I did one about Artemis II, so going back to the moon. I did one about places I’ve gone back. I did the Khorasmi Empire one that we discussed. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s fun.

Ben:

Nice. Yeah. Um, and there’s also a bunch of the, uh, Inkhaven alumni back as well at the same time.

Alice:

Yeah. I, I managed to get that good week.

Ben:

Yeah. I think, uh, when, uh, a bunch of the guys came back at the same time, like, uh, uh, Tomas and Vishal, and they were like, “Ah, yes, Inkhaven has returned.” Uh-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... the, uh, yeah. Um,

and how much do you s- of your time is writing for Rational Animations? Is it essentially a full-time job?

Alice:

Yeah, at this point it’s a full-time salaried-

Ben:

Nice

Alice:

... job thing.

Ben:

And it’s, you know, 40 hours a week of, uh, work on that stuff?

Alice:

Yeah, so yes. Um, it’s, it’s not... The ni- the n- the nice part about it is it’s not 40 scheduled hours a week.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Um, it is I have to do an amount of work that approximately is that many hours.

Ben:

Sure, sure.

Alice:

Um, and I can decide when I can get it done.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Um, some of the things are meetings that I have to do with people in different time zones. Um, but it’s, I really appreciate that flexibility for my own work style. Um, but still having that goal I need to hit.

Ben:

It is, it is a remote organization?

Alice:

Yeah, we don’t even have an office.

Ben:

That’s funny.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Have you, have you, how many of the people you work with closely have you met in person?

Alice:

So let’s see, my, my, my boss I met while I was on a trip to Rome. Um, I have,

well, there’s Justin, there’s Jackson Wagner, um, and there’s Rob. And I don’t think I’ve met any of the animators in person.

Ben:

Okay.

Alice:

There’s one who’s, who’s in the same metropolitan area as me, but I- ... we’ve, we’ve been meaning to meet up but haven’t done it.

Ben:

Yeah. And I think you, you do a lot of coordinating over Discord?

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

That’s-

Alice:

Yes, we do everything over Discord. Um-

Ben:

Discord, the bane of my existence.

Alice:

It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an app. It works. It is-

Ben:

Nice

Alice:

... and it is free, unlike Slack.

Ben:

I just have a f- yeah, well, the, the great thing about us is we have a nonprofit access to Slack.

Alice:

Oh, yeah.

Ben:

So it’s free for us.

Alice:

I wonder if we should do that.

Ben:

I recommend it.

Alice:

Okay.

Ben:

I prefer the feature set of Slack much more to Discord.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

And then I just have like Scott Alexander and Alicorn who are like, “I will not use Slack.” And I’m like, “Great.”

Alice:

That’s legit.

Ben:

Um,

uh, which of your, uh, videos or which of your pieces of writing with the Rational Animations are you most proud of?

Alice:

Ooh, I really like the one I did on infohazards.

Ben:

Oh, yeah?

Alice:

Um, it was very fun, and

I just, it,

it was, so it’s, it was like

writing it was the funnest I think. Um, and it felt like

we were able to bring in all these different ideas about things in history that were acted as infohazards, or ways that like these different classification schemes and so forth.

Ben:

Yeah. And I think you can be playful with that where, you know, describing the things, you get to be like, “Oh, maybe we shouldn’t be describing this,” or you get to-

Alice:

Yeah, yeah. We, we were very careful, um, not to share any infohazards that would affect the viewers in real life.

Ben:

Yeah. That makes sense. Um-

Alice:

Even, even no matter how minor, yeah.

Ben:

How long did you work on it for?

Alice:

So I probably was involved in that

on and off for a couple month. This was when I was part-time.

Ben:

I see.

Alice:

And then the animators took their time doing it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Um, but it, I like the aesthetic that it came out of it.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

It was sort of like s- like a spy/ you know, detective vibe.

Ben:

It was. That was really fun. Um, Mr. Doggo with his glasses.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, what, uh, what’s your favorite bit of animation that they’ve done with a bit of your writing?

Alice:

Ooh, w-

Ben:

Even just a single drawing or just like a, a little, uh, cut between things.

Alice:

A favorite bit involving my writing.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Okay. Um, there is a moment in one that we did about takeoff speeds, um, where I mentioned that on the top supercomputer of 2024 or whatever, um, a training run of the size we expect, um, by the model that, we were using Davison’s model, um, would have had to start in the Jurassic period. And it has a little dinosaur walk by.

And I, I love that. And the dinosaur’s got the taco glasses.

Ben:

Oh, that’s nice. Yeah, I love just like small little animation jokes, like when I watch like, uh, I think it was Spirited Away.

Alice:

Hmm.

Ben:

There’s a point where there’s a dialogue going on, and there’s like some fleas or something that go through and they accidentally cause like a magical bad ritual to happen for like one of the mou- mice or something.

Alice:

Oh, no.

Ben:

And they go, “Oh, no.” And I’m like, “Oh, is this about to be a whole plot point or something?” And then whilst you’re watching it, they manage to like do the anti-ritual and get the mouse out of it. And no one mentions this in the whole thing. It’s like my favorite like-

Alice:

Yeah, the animators are great. They have so many little things. There’s, there’s a couple times where like they show people from Rational Animations.

Ben:

Like Rob or someone?

Alice:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Oh, that’s nice.

Alice:

As, yeah. Yeah. Ro- there’s, there’s a fun bit which is because Rob is narrating and has his own channel, we often like cite something by Rob Miles.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

And then we have to say, “That’s me, the narrator, Rob Miles,” “... by the way.”

Ben:

That’s fun. That’s fun.

Alice:

Which is funny ‘cause I’m not Ro- Rob Miles, but I know it’s being-

Ben:

You have to write it for him

Alice:

... spoken by Rob Miles, yeah.

Ben:

That makes sense. That makes sense. Um, da, da, da, dum. Um, yeah. Let me think for a second.

Alice:

Hmm.

Ben:

Um, yeah.

Um, what kind of person do you think Inkhaven is good for?

Alice:

Who?

Ben:

Who in your life would you be like, “You, you must do Inkhaven. It is the right shape for what you need”?

Alice:

I mean, m- the obvious answer is the other people writing at Rational Animations. Um, the, the part-timers. Um, I mean, I mentioned one of them already was, was here, but like it’s-It’s awesome if you are the kind of person who just needs, like, someone to yell at you to post all the time.

Ben:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alice:

Like, like you only get better at creating stuff for the internet if you post your stuff on the internet.

Ben:

Mm-hmm.

Alice:

And this is the best place to make that happen-

Ben:

Mm

Alice:

... ‘cause you have to. Um, there are... If you have a lot of ideas already, that also really helps.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

So I always keep a list of ideas, just, like, anything that pops into my head that might make a blog, I just write it down on my phone.

Ben:

Yeah, I think, um,

we had a great, uh... I think the first time Gwen did office hours-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... in, in Cave-In One, a young lady came up to him with just, I think, a list of, like, 40 blog post titles.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

She was like, “Which one should I write?” And he just went through them and he’s like, “Here’s what I- here’s what I’m really interested in and here’s what would be more interesting as well.”

Alice:

Okay.

Ben:

“I’m not interested in these ones here.” But he just like... That was such a good, like, bit of feedback for her. I think she-

Alice:

Yeah

Ben:

... uh, got a lot out of that. Um-

Alice:

That’s awesome.

Ben:

Yeah. Um, gotcha. All right, so you got- you got the rational animations going.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

You’ve got your, uh, Signore Galilei.

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

Uh, and, uh, you’ve also got your podcast.

Alice:

Yes. I do a podcast with my dad. It’s called The Lunaverse with Dr. Charles Liu.

Ben:

Nice.

Alice:

Um, we... He is an astronomer. Um, I... So on the podcast, we get other scientists, um, usually astronomers, but sometimes other t- kinds of people.

Ben:

Oh, nice.

Alice:

And we talk about their work, we talk about, like, sci-fi and pop culture. Um, just like all the-

Ben:

You had Neil deGrasse Tyson on it yet?

Alice:

We have not. My dad has been on Neil’s podcast.

Ben:

Aw.

Alice:

But Neil has not been on ours yet.

Ben:

Aw. Uh, what, uh, what sort of... Uh, can you give an example of a guest that you’ve had on?

Alice:

Okay. So we had a guest, um, who posts on Reddit as andromeda321- ... and is the person who answers everyone’s astronomy questions on Reddit.

Ben:

Aw.

Alice:

Um, she is a professional astronomer as well.

Ben:

That’s very nice.

Alice:

Um, yeah. We c- we get a lot of people who do, like, black holes or exoplanets. Those are, like, big right now. Um, but it’s fun to, like... There’s so many corners of astronomy because it’s, like, most of the universe.

Ben:

It’s... Yeah, it’s a bit like a internet excavator.

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

Um, what, uh... Like, what’s, what’s, what does her job look like from day to day? What’s she, like, working on?

Alice:

Yeah. Oof. I-

Ben:

Is she just, like, at a big, like, observatory and just gathering data?

Alice:

So most of the time what astronomers do, these days the observatories are mostly automated, so you can send one grad student down there to run-

Ben:

Crazy

Alice:

... a lot of things. Um, yeah, there’s like... The engineers who manage the things are, are very important, but most of the time what an astronomer does day to day is they’re taking data from some observatory, um, and teasing out as much facts as they can, uh, from these... Basically, just a diagram of the colors of light you’re seeing, um, the specter-

Ben:

Yes

Alice:

... respective. Yeah. So yeah, my dad does colliding galaxies, for instance.

Ben:

Colliding?

Alice:

Colliding galaxies.

Ben:

Oh, colliding.

Alice:

Yes. So

he’ll, like, look at these, these populations of galaxies from halfway across the universe and be like, “Uh, what can we learn about the star formation histories of these galaxies?” And because these things live for billions of years, it’s like... The analogy is like what, um, can a mayfly study the aging process of a tortoise?

Ben:

Ooh,

that’s tough.

Alice:

It’s tough, but what you do is you get a lot of different galaxies in different stages of the same process-

Ben:

Yes

Alice:

... and you just compare them to each other.

Ben:

I’ve always thought that the correct, uh, like, spirit animal for Inkhaven-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... would be a tortoise that was already 100 years old.

Alice:

Ooh.

Ben:

Just to, just to be like, oh yeah, you know, history is long, time is slow. We’re just, uh-

Alice:

I feel like it’d be good for Lighthaven as a whole maybe.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

But for Inkhaven specifically, I feel like not that-

Ben:

Oh, no, sorry. I meant Lighthaven.

Alice:

Okay.

Ben:

I meant Lighthaven. Sorry.

Alice:

Lighthaven for sure. Yeah. Inkhaven, I feel like we are not slow.

Ben:

No, no, no.

Alice:

We are late, but we are not slow.

Ben:

No, Inkhaven would be the mayfly.

Alice:

Yes.

Ben:

Every day, you know, you better post before the mayfly, uh, passes on.

Alice:

Exactly.

Ben:

Um, yeah, wonderful. Um,

I think I’m coming towards the end of the questions I had prepared.

Alice:

Mm-hmm.

Ben:

Um, is there something else I should ask you about?

Alice:

Okay. Um, the thing that came to mind for me is I had a good time presenting stuff about YouTube to, to Inkhavenites.

Ben:

Oh, right.

Alice:

Like, whatever the correct demonym is. Um-

Ben:

Inklings.

Alice:

Inklings. I love that. It’s, it’s like, um, from, uh, Splatoon.

Ben:

Oh, yeah. I really thought you were gonna say it’s, uh, like the, um, you know, the, um, uh, Tolkien group that used to meet in Oxford.

Alice:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

But yeah, sure, Splatoon, that’s right.

Alice:

Yeah. That’s... It’s also that.

Yeah. So, so me and Justin had a fun conversation the other day, um, just, like, at, Rat Park as a public thing, and we were just going back and forth about YouTube inside baseball, and people were interested in it in a way that I really liked, uh, even though most of them are not themselves doing YouTube yet. Um, but some of them, several of them would like to, so...

Ben:

That’s great.

Alice:

I, I encourage people to start YouTube channels even if they are bad, the same way that you should start a blog even if it’s bad.

Ben:

Yeah. Interesting.

Alice:

If you are the kind of person who likes to blog, you might be the kind of person who likes YouTube.

Ben:

Yeah, I’m currently going through that myself. What should you start by putting up on YouTube?

Alice:

Um, so

the trick is you find, like, a few things you would enjoy doing. And, and again, survivorship bias, right? Um, but the, the, the advice I hear is you, you find a few different kinds of content you enjoy doing, you post them and see, like... Basically, you want to have a loop of finding what, both what you like doing and what the audience likes.

Ben:

Can you give me two different examples of a thing that you like doing, that someone likes doing that you think, like, is a good one to get started with?

Alice:

Yeah. So for instance, very early in my channel, I had... My, my very first video is I took a webcam and turned it into a microscope, um, by reversing the optics.

Ben:

Wow.

Alice:

Yeah, you can just... It turns out if it, it’s the correct kind of webcam, you can literally just unscrew it and screw it back in, and now it’s a microscope.

Ben:

That’s crazy.

Alice:

It’s crazy that, like, this is a $20 piece of technology, and it works.

Ben:

So you just, like-

Alice:

I filmed myself doing this and narrating over it

Ben:

... and you cut it and speed it up, or you just like-

Alice:

Yeah. Yeah, cut it and sped up, and so forth.

Ben:

Nice.

Alice:

And at some point I transitioned to my, like, glorified slideshow CGP Grey, Nian Misali-esque videos. And, but I valued having the ability to try out these different genres, um, that are-

Ben:

How long was that video?

Alice:

That video was

maybe

five to six minutes.

Ben:

Cool.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Pretty short.

Alice:

It was, it was fun. It’s... You can watch it if you want. It’s, it’s not amazing, but it’s not terrible.

Ben:

We’ll put a link in the channel.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

In the details.

Alice:

You should maybe put some links to the better videos too.

Ben:

I mean, we’ll put, you know, everything we’ve chatted about.

Alice:

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Ben:

But, um, that’s fun. Uh, yeah, no, I’m just, uh, started with this one. This is, like, video number five or six or so.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

So, uh-

Alice:

Yeah. And I, I like, for podcasts like this one, if you ha- Like, I like...

If you know what theme you want to do ahead of time, it’s a little different than trying everything out possibly.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

But you can, you know, vary the way that you present it if you would like to do that.

Ben:

Yeah.

Alice:

Yeah. You can be like different, slightly different ways of editing or slightly different ways of-

Ben:

Yeah

Alice:

... of all the other sorts of things.

Ben:

Different kinds of thumbnails.

Alice:

Yeah. Because you want to both drive your internal engine, um, that makes you want to keep doing it-

Ben:

Mm-hmm

Alice:

... and also you want to drive engagement because you want people to see this thing for a reason.

Ben:

Yes.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

Um, yeah. Uh, it’s a fun... Our YouTube channel is, like, the Lightcone channel-

Alice:

Mm-hmm

Ben:

... which means that basically the last video uploaded was the full Fooming Shoggoths album.

Alice:

Nice.

Ben:

And then a few debates I hosted during COVID.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

And now we’ve got a bunch of these coming.

Alice:

That’s awesome.

Ben:

Uh, but every YouTube channel, you know, you can sort them by, like, top, newest, and oldest, and when you do oldest, you just get crazy stuff.

Alice:

Oh, my gosh. I searched Veritasium by oldest one time-

Ben:

Ooh

Alice:

... and they have, like, songs.

There’s a song about different kinds of chemical bonds, which is not a great song, but it is fun that it exists.

Ben:

Certainly. Certainly. Um, well, thanks so much for coming on.

Alice:

Of course.

Ben:

And thanks so much for coming back to Inkhaven.

Alice:

Yeah.

Ben:

It’s been fun to have you.

Alice:

It’s, it’s been fun being back.

Ben:

Great. All right. Well, I think, uh, we’ll end it there. Uh, farewell until next time.

https://www.inkhaven.blog/about
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00:00 Intro

04:53 Reading

09:51 Interview

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01:29 Reading

13:24 Interview

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00:00 Intro

01:17 “Units of Breath”

07:16 Ben & Drew Discuss

41:23 Sponsored by WordPress.com

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01:51 "The Cognitive Decoupling Elite"

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01:13 “More Legal Systems Very Different from Ours: Video-Game Law”

11:55 Ben & Alec Discuss

48:50 Sponsored by WordPress.com

Link to Thessaly's Blog Post: https://substack.com/home/post/p-193204269

Here are my favorites from the final day:

mingyuan writes about (and to) all the residents:

Ben Goldhaber reflects on Inkhaven:

Gold Takes

Thirty Reflections from Thirty Days of Writing

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6 months ago · 9 likes · Ben Goldhaber

William Friedman compares Japan and Germany:

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The Clock Set Back: Japan And Hungary

It occasionally strikes me that Japan and Hungary are basically the same country in the sixteenth century. It is true that they’re at opposite ends of Eurasia, Japan is an island and Hungary is landlocked, they speak different languages and worship different gods and by the time the comparison to Hungary is applicable in Japan, Hungary has stopped exist…

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6 months ago · 1 comment · WSCFriedman

Justin Kuiper recounts the story of Norman Borlaug:

Kuiper's blog

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Kuiper

Daniel Paleka writes about writing in public:

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and the attitude of the knife.

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.’ — Frank Herbert

Vishal’s Substack

Inkhaven Day 30

Note: At 11:59 PM on November 30th 2025, I was eating a banana in the basement of Aumann Hall (as you do), when I slipped on a banana peel (unrelated) and smashed head first into the Lighthaven Blogtech Mainframe (sponsored by Wordpress dot com). This somehow prevented all 41 residents from meeting the submission window, causing all of us to the fail ou…

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6 months ago · 21 likes · 8 comments · Vishal Prasad

mingyuan reflects on raising children:

Ben Steinhorn describes tall people in groups:

Hauke Hillebrant analyzes Eurocope.

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and the power of perception.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. — W.B. Yeats

As Our Days

Every Great Power Fought World War One For A Different Reason

There’s a nice, simple throughline narrative for World War Two: A bunch of countries (Germany, Italy, Japan, the USSR) wanted to conquer lots of territory. The countries they tried to push around didn’t like it and formed a coalition to stop them. Add in the…

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6 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · WSCFriedman

Amanda writes about moves, renovations, and the elusive Before Times:

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6 months ago · 1 like · Amanda From Bethlehem

Croissanthrology contemplates the future:

Croiss Lite

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This Tomás Bjartur post became a running gag in my circles. One night I boldly decided to have Claude Opus 4.5 generate a continuation of it. You can find it here. (Attach about every kind of trigger warning you can imagine…

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6 months ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Croissanthology

Logisticks writes about advertising for fantasy authors.

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and the virtue of originality.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all. — Abraham Lincoln

Jenn writes about Montaigne’s Epistemology.

Lucent considers Wikipedia, from the perspective before its creation:

Lucent

Decompose Your Desires

If you’re reading this, you remember a world before LLMs. However much you understand the math, they still feel a bit magical. Typing a few lines and getting back competent prose or working code sits in the same category as watching a jet take off for the first time. You can only fully feel that if you lived in the before times. Anyone born into a world…

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Michael Dayah

Aelerinya describes how to develop the perceptual acuity involved in cooking:

Lux ex Machina

To cook well, train your Inner Flavor Simulator

This is the guide I wish I had when I started cooking…

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Lucie Philippon

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Whatever can be done another day can be done today. — Michel de Montaigne

Lucent talks about strategies, perceptions, and phases:

Lucent

Instinctive Wiseman Luck

Richard Wiseman did an experiment where he handed people a newspaper and asked them to count how many photos were inside. Some dutiful souls started flipping pages and tallying. Others stopped almost immediately. On page two, in huge type, he’d printed, “Stop. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper…

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6 months ago · 6 likes · Michael Dayah

Sasha Putilin describes meditation’s interaction with smooth muscle:

Jenn considers Brown Fields, Mausoleums. Ben Pace remarks on Despair, Serenity, Song, and Nobility in “Hollow Knight: Silksong”.

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and expressing gratitude.

Great things happen to those who don’t stop believing, trying, learning, and being grateful. — Roy T. Bennett

Alex Altair on having really, really strong convictions.

Adria Garriga-Alonso on why we might want to settle an old philosophy debate quick:

Linch Zhang on how people have been getting smarter throughout history:

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Here’s something that nobody points out in educational debates: humanity has gotten dramatically smarter over history, even without substantial genetic changes…

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Linch

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and the virtue of self-awareness.

I bet the sparrow looks at the parrot and thinks, yes, you can talk, but LISTEN TO YOURSELF! -- Jack Handey

Mutually Assured Seduction

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6 months ago · 2 likes · Margarita Lovelace

Guy Nosilverv explains how to get out of the car already what jhanas are, for the benefit of killjoy skeptics like myself:

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6 months ago · 33 likes · 4 comments · Guy

William Friedman explains how Medieval Venice accomplished the improbable: building a massive preindustrial empire by being good at trading:

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6 months ago · 3 likes · WSCFriedman

Nikola Jurkovic on keeping promises between childhood and adulthood, and between humans as we are now and humans in the future that might be:

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6 months ago · 1 like · Nikola Jurkovic

mingyuan on the underrated art of maintaining a functional space:

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Inkhaven is brought to you by WordPress.com and the dream of brevity.

Soon I’ll find the right words, they’ll be very simple. -- Jack Kerouac