Andy Matuschak, an independent applied researcher and former founder of Khan Academy’s R&D Lab, dives deep into the intricate preparation process for impactful podcast interviews. He explores the commitment involved, highlighting a framework that entails over 200 hours of targeted study. The conversation touches on collaborative learning, effective note-taking strategies, and the use of tools like Kanban for organization. They also share insights on balancing thorough research with engaging dialogue, ensuring interviews remain both enlightening and accessible.
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Extensive Taleb Prep
Joe Walker prepared extensively for the Nassim Taleb interview.
This included a two-month probability and statistics tutoring program and Taleb's two-week risk institute course.
insights INSIGHT
Intensive Prep Process
Joe Walker's intensive interview prep involves 1–3 weeks of 8–14 hour research days.
He uses note-taking, spaced repetition, and memory prompts to retain information.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Expert Syllabus Consultation
Consult experts for a syllabus or reading list when trying to understand a guest's field.
This helps prioritize learning within time constraints.
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the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In 'Fooled by Randomness', Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the pervasive influence of chance and randomness in our lives and financial markets. The book argues that humans tend to underestimate the role of luck and overestimate the role of skill, leading to biases such as hindsight bias, survivorship bias, and the narrative fallacy. Taleb emphasizes the importance of recognizing and coping with uncertainty, and he critiques the tendency to seek deterministic explanations for random events. The book is part of Taleb's Incerto series, which also includes 'The Black Swan', 'The Bed of Procrustes', 'Antifragile', and 'Skin in the Game'.
Antifragile
Things That Gain from Disorder
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Albino Santos Mosquera
Genís Sánchez Barberán
In 'Antifragile', Nassim Nicholas Taleb delves into the concept of antifragility, arguing that some systems not only withstand stress and disorder but actually benefit from them. The book builds on ideas from his previous works, such as 'Fooled by Randomness' and 'The Black Swan', and is part of his five-volume philosophical treatise on uncertainty, 'Incerto'. Taleb provides examples from various fields, including science, economics, and history, to illustrate how antifragility can be achieved and how it contrasts with fragility and robustness. He also discusses strategies like the barbell strategy and optionality, and critiques modern society's attempts to eliminate volatility, which he believes are harmful. The book is praised for its revolutionary ideas and multidisciplinary approach, though it has also received criticism for its style and some of the author's views on mental health and other topics.
Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails
Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and Applications
Donald Geman
Pasquale Cirillo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Raphael Douady
Hélyette Geman
Espen Haug
Andrea Fontanari
This book, the first volume of the Technical Incerto series, investigates the misapplication of traditional statistical methods to fat-tailed distributions. It highlights the failures of these methods in real-world scenarios, particularly in finance, economics, and behavioral economics. The book discusses how switching from thin-tailed to fat-tailed distributions requires more than just a change in assumptions, and it explores the consequences of fat tails on statistical inference, including issues with sample means, empirical distributions, parameter uncertainty, and dimension reduction. It also addresses how many biases in psychology become rational under more sophisticated probability distributions and how most failures in financial economics can be attributed to using the wrong distributions.
This episode is a little different: I’m the one being interviewed—and my interlocutor is Andy Matuschak, an independent applied researcher focused on "tools for thought" (ways to augment human intelligence). Andy founded and led Khan Academy’s Research and Development Lab, and prior to that, he was a senior engineer at Apple where he helped build iOS. I first discovered Andy’s work in 2021, and it was a game changer for me and the podcast. We spoke on the show in 2022.
In 2024, I recorded some podcast interviews in the US, and had the pleasure of hanging out with Andy while I was in San Francisco.
In October, Andy dropped by my place in SF to go behind the scenes of my podcast research process and interview me while I prepared for a conversation with Larry Summers. This is an unvarnished, unfiltered look at my tech stack and how I prepare for my interviews. I'm very grateful to Andy for suggesting the idea and for so thoughtfully drawing out my current strategies, tactics and tools.
I support Andy's research. If you'd like to do so too, go here.
If you'd like to access my interview research notes for podcast interviews, you can support to access here.
The Joe Walker Podcast 
