Hyperlegible 002: Utsav Mamoria

Hi friends 👋,

Happy Monday! Kicking off the week by sharing Episode 002 of Hyperlegible.

This is a conversation with Utsav Mamoria on his excellent essay, How to live an intellectually rich life, which broke out of containment in India and raced across the globe to the tune of 1,100 likes at the time of recording.

For good reason: Utsav combines philosophy, mathematics, biographies, personal experience, and hand-drawn sketches to create a map – quite literally – for living an intellectually rich life. He takes us on a journey through Moradoom, Igamor, and Evermore, before arriving at Luminspere, the Mountains of Knowledge with tools like the Axe of Satisfaction, Torch of Curiosity, and Oars of Consistency.

Utsav weaves together so many ideas so beautifully that you just need to read it, and then listen. Or listen, and then read it.

His one sentence takeaway: Consistency trumps everything.

But there were a lot of good sentences. Here are a few of my favorites:

"The way to live an intellectually rich life is to focus on two things: Put ideas above sensations, and try to have more diverse ideas than the ones you already have."

On Epistemic Anxiety: "Accept that you don't know everything about everything and you don't need to have a point of view on everything... develop expertise in a few fields while trying to read as broadly as you can."

"Building worlds in fiction is a given, but building worlds in non-fiction is done a lot less."

"Write something which has meaning beyond the current moment. It has to go beyond the zeitgeist."

"All learning requires us to suffer an injury to our self-esteem."

You can find Utsav on X at @utsavmamoria and subscribe to Tumse Na Ho Paayega here.

Going forward, I plan on releasing a few of these per week. This week, I have three killer interviews lined up, and just brought on an editor so we can increase both the quality and the cadence. North Star: when there’s something really great written on the internet, you can expect to find its author in the Hyperlegible feed within a few days.

I likely won’t send you an email every time (still playing with that), but you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and I may send a weekly roundup on Sundays with all of the conversations in one place. Subscribing helps you curate the internet, and helps us grow this thing to bring the good words to as many people as we can.

Hyperlegible is now sponsored by our friends at Readwise, which builds software that helps you get the most out of your reading. I’ve been using Readwise for years to support my newsletter, my curiosity, and now, this podcast.

I wanted to partner with Readwise specifically for a few reasons. One: I use it every day, multiple times a day. When I find an essay I love, I save it to Readwise, where I can highlight and annotate it to prep for either inclusion in essays or conversations on Hyperlegible. Two: I’m an investor in Readwise. Three: they partner with my favorite written-word-related podcasts, Founders and How I Write.

And Four (and most importantly): when you go to readwise.io/hyperlegible, you can find all of the essays that we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place. I want this to be the best place to go whenever you’re looking for something fresh and high-quality to read.

I am having a blast doing this podcast. It’s an excuse to talk to my favorite writers, and to share the fruits of their hours and hours wrestling with ideas with you.

As always, I hope you enjoy, and please keep sending me your favorite essays!

Thanks for listening,

Packy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.notboring.co