Rob Henderson: An Internet Academic
North Star Podcast
Rob Henderson is one of my favorite up-and-coming writers. I like him because he's one of those people who doesn't fit into a category. He's a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, but I met him in a book club about technological stagnation. He's spent years in the academy, first at Yale and now at Cambridge, but most of his influence comes from his online writing. Most of all, he's interested in human nature. In particular, psychology, status, and social class.
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Chrisman Frank and Ana Lorena Fabrega: How Childhood Education Will Change
North Star Podcast
This week, I have two guests. Both are affiliated with Synthesis, a new kind of online school where kids learn through games and simulations. One is Chrisman Frank, the CEO of Synthesis. The other is Ana Lorena Fabrega, who is their Chief Evangelist.
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Ash Fontana: Building Artificial Intelligence
North Star Podcast
Ash Fontana is an entrepreneur, investor, and author. As an entrepreneur, he was only of the early employees at an online investing platform called AngelList. From there, he became the Managing Director at Zetta, the first investment fund focused on artificial intelligence. Now, he's the author of the AI-First Company.
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Li Jin: Creating the Creator Economy
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Li Jin, the founder and managing partner at an early-stage venture capital firm called Atelier.
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Zena Hitz: Liberal Arts Thinking
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Zena Hitz, a tutor at St John’s and the author of an excellent book called Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Her book explores the meaning and the value of learning for its own sake, through images and stories of bookworms, philosophers, scientists, and other learners, both fictional and historical.
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Tiago Forte and Will Mannon: Building Cohort-Based Courses
North Star Podcast
I have two guests today: Tiago Forte and Will Mannon.
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Gagan Biyani: Building Silicon Valley Startups
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Gagan Biyani, the current CEO of an education startup that helps teachers run Cohort-Based Courses on the Internet and has students from around the world. Gagan also founded a multi-billion dollar online education platform called Udemy. Afterward, he founded Sprig, a food delivery platform that grew to a nine-digit valuation but eventually failed. So today, he has the distinct pleasure of being both the founder of a unicorn and the founder of a massive failure.
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Trevor Bauer: Playing Professional Baseball
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Trevor Bauer, who is arguably the very best pitcher in Major League Baseball. I wanted to interview Trevor not only because he's an excellent pitcher, but because he takes a radical approach to the game. He's a physicist and a scientist. A scholar and an entrepreneur. And you don't find that combination very often.
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Nik Sharma: Building DTC Companies
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Nik Sharma, the founder of Sharma Brands and an advisor to companies like Judy and Cha Cha Matcha. Nik is one of my very best friends, and my go-to person for all things commerce. Since we first met, we've spent hours exploring the future of marketing and commerce together, and recorded this podcast to give you a window into what our conversations are like.
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Kevin Kelly: Seeing the Future
North Star Podcast
My guest today is Kevin Kelly, who co-founded Wired Magazine in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for the first seven years. As one of the most important futurists of our generation, he's published a number of books including The Inevitable, What Technology Wants, and New Rules for the New Economy which is my favorite one. Coolest of all, he's also a founding member of the board of the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit devoted to encouraging long-term thinking.
info_outlineMy guest today is Sara Dietschy, a YouTuber with more than 620,000 YouTube subscribers. This is the fourth interview I’ve recorded with her. It’s her second appearance on the North Star Podcast, and I’ve been interviewed twice on her podcast called That Creative Life.
Sara makes a couple of videos every week focused on creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship. Most of her revenue comes from paid partnerships, and she’s teamed up with brands like Intel, AT&T, Visa, Squarespace, and BestBuy, and Adobe.
This episode begins with a discussion of what it means to be a YouTuber, so Sara shares lessons about hiring and monetizing a channel. Then, she talks about her creative process with ideas like her “one for them, one for me” model of creating content. We also talk about the future of influencer culture, homeschooling, the Despacito music video, and what we’ve learned about delegation.
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Links to Sara:
Other Links:
Paul Graham’s Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule
Eric Weinstein- What Should We Be Worried About
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SHOW NOTES:
2:02- This isolation of creative hiring. What it means to be a YouTuber. How Sara learns about new technologies.
12:36- What Sara is most opinionated about. How quantification affects Sara’s creative process.
19:30- How Sara creates her content using the “one for me, one for them” model. David and Sara’s creative process. Sara’s relationship to Twitter and YouTube. The future of influencer culture.
31:01- What is good and bad about obsessive personalities. The future of public school and the positives and negatives of homeschooling. The difference between excellence and genius and how school only trains for excellence.
48:02 The gift of truly hating something. The art of video editing and what makes it difficult to delegate. How YouTube has changed over the past ten years.
1:00:55- What Epidemic Sound is doing well. Why Despacito was so popular on YouTube.
1:06:17- Who has done well with delegation. What is so difficult about hiring for creative roles. Why Sara hired a meme creator.
1:18:42- Why differentiation is free marketing on the Internet. Love languages for hiring. David and Sara’s brand dissection podcast plan.