
Metamuse
Tools for thought, product design, and how to have good ideas.
Latest episodes

5 snips
Nov 25, 2021 • 54min
44 // Media empires with Dan Shipper
Journalism is changing, as newspapers and magazines adapt to being online and internet-native media empires like Vox and Vice upend the status quo. Dan Shipper is part of this as a founder of Every, a writer collective for business writing. Dan chats with Mark and Adam about the paid newsletter boom; the impact of recommendation algorithms on creator mental health; and content platforms like Wordpress, Substack, and Ghost. Plus: the pros and cons of antigravity machines.
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Show notes
Dan Shipper @danshipper
Every
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
Irvin Yalom
Substack
Firefly
Superorganizers
divergent mode
Nathan Baschez
The Economist, The New York Times, Disney
Vox, Vice
the death of journalism
editor
dopamine hit
Metamuse episode on social media
yellow journalism
BuzzFeed
crypto
Ben Thompson / Stratechery
Ghost
Pulitzer prize
kids want to grow up to be YouTube stars
Casey Neistat
YouTube algorithm changes
The Long Tail
Harvard Business Review
Bedrock Capital
The Athletic
Divinations
The Generalist

Nov 11, 2021 • 41min
43 // Storytelling
What do the Bible, TED talks, superhero movies, and Steve Jobs’ product announcements have in common? They use stories to share ideas, culture, and worldview. Adam and Lennart discuss this, and the role storytelling can play in product marketing and design.
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Show notes
the smell of autumn
Muse is hiring
Metamuse episode on our partnership model
local-first engineer
designer & storyteller
the Bible
superhero movies as modern myths
TED talks
Steve Jobs as a storyteller
Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone (2007)
marketing
marketing funnel
Muse’s onboarding
dark patterns
the medium is the message
lecture
copywriting
hero shot
html video
responsive design
CSS transitions
scroll hijacking
Explorable Explanations
WordPress, SquareSpace
Notion blew up on TikTok
vignette
aspect ratio
Guy Gavriel Kay
worldbuilding
iPhone 1 notes app
skeuomorphic
slide to unlock
BlackBerry
iPhone 1 commercial “Calamari”
Muse Pencil toolkit
iPadOS PencilKit
Metamuse episode on tool switching
marketing design

22 snips
Oct 28, 2021 • 58min
42 // Self-made tools with Linus Lee
In a world dominated by mass-produced software, making your own tools is a way to take back agency in your digital life. Linus joins Mark and Adam to talk about his experiences building a personal software ecosystem; tools that are a reflection of the maker’s values and taste; and packaging/sharing solutions like Docker, CodePen, Replit, and Deno. And: is it possible for software to ever be “done”? — Linus thinks so.
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Show notes
Linus Lee @thesephist
Surface Duo
Nintendo DS
Backbone.js
Spensa (farming technology startup)
Django
Replit
Monocle
full-text search
Ink (programming language)
changing lightbulb meme
DigitalOcean
August (Linus’ self-made x86 assembler)
Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu
situated software
stream fusion in mathematics
reverse proxy
software erosion aka bit rot
FileMaker Pro
newline-delimited JSON
flat dependency trees
dynamic linked libraries
Go static linking
not invented here
Hundred Rabbits
lil apps
Szymon Kaliski
An app can be a home-cooked meal
Lucerne (Linus' self-made Twitter client)
TweetDeck
Taylor Swift
Go by Example
multi-tenancy
Metamuse episode on local-first
whoami
game modding
Deno
Deno’s sandboxing and permissions
Qubes OS
Docker container
Heroku Buttons
macOS .app bundles
CodePen
xkcd on modern software dependencies
ProseMirror
Metamuse episode on filmmaking
curl maintainer has been at it for 23 years

8 snips
Oct 14, 2021 • 1h 2min
41 // Local-first software with Martin Kleppmann
Local-first is a set of principles that enables collaborative software without the loss of data ownership associated with the cloud. Martin is a computer scientist on the frontier of this movement, and he joins Mark and Adam to discuss how creative people put their souls into their work; a vision for a generic AWS syncing service; and why local-first could be a breakthrough for indie app developers.
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Show notes
Martin Kleppmann
University of Cambridge
Debussy four-handed piano piece
Martin’s previous startup, Rapportive
Apache Kafka
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
Writing a book: is it worth it?
Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud
Ink & Switch
Geoffrey Litt
Pixelpusher
the fish says “what the hell is water?”
“crushing it”
elevator pitch
Google Docs
realtime collaboration
defrag your hard drive
self-hosting an SMTP server and spam filtering
thin client
Peter van Hardenberg
Pixelpusher
Automerge
“there is stuff you always use; and stuff that won’t work when you need it”
Slack’s free vs paid message retention
federation, mesh network
CRDTs
How we pay for software
Swift, Kotlin
technology transfer
fuzz testing, Monte Carlo simulation
local-first Trello clone demo
end-to-end encryption
Firebase

Sep 30, 2021 • 48min
40 // Filmmaking with Maximilian Becht
The Muse team worked with Max and his film crew on the pilot episode of a new documentary series. Max joins Adam and Mark to talk about how making films compares to making software; why creative trust is the core of a great team; and why we should hire based on networks, portfolios, and auditions instead of CVs and interviews. Plus: 40 people stuck on a film shoot in the forest due to a forgotten shovel.
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Show notes
Maximilian Becht of Kosmovision
shooting day
post-production
E3
set runner
Film Academy Baden-Württemberg
Zellenflimmern (documentary on media inside prisons)
Making Movies
Create: a documentary series by Muse
watch pilot episode of Create with Katrin Friedmann
branded content
Marcus Hanisch (Create director)
location scouting
Jasper Techel (Create cameraperson)
Moritz Drath (Create sound and music)
professional network
After Effects
The Queen’s Gambit shot in Berlin
maker biographies
A Modest Genius (Charles Darwin biography)
Creativity, Inc. (Pixar founder autobiography)
Barbie and Ruth (Mattel founder biography)
film screening
the Hollywood model
gig sites
Christopher Nolan
wide angle shots
herding cats
production manager
“fix it in post"
the null hypothesis
suggest a protagonist for future episodes of Create

Sep 16, 2021 • 1h 2min
39 // Expressive tools with Weiwei Xu
Why are we driven to create, and to express ourselves online? Weiwei is the founder of Sprout, a collaborative creation space. She joins Mark and Adam to talk about how tools influence group communication and our sense of belonging; why we should make our online spaces feel more like bedrooms than stadiums or hotel lobbies; and why children’s tools have a special magic. Plus: Nintendo’s withered technology, Winamp skins, and cursor waves.
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Show notes
Weiwei Xu @weiweiwei33
Sprout
monowheel scooter
Dynamicland
growth mindset
HCI
Metamuse episode with Jason Yuan
MakeSpace
Google Hangouts, Zoom, Facetime
Miro
Pointing in virtual spaces
Slackmojis, Discord custom emojis
Sharpies, butcher paper, calligraphy pens and markers
Kindle
sushi knives
Deluxe Paint
introvert
Muse Backstage Pass
Winamp
iOS widgets
engagement loops
clickbait
Metamuse episode on video games
World Cup, European championship
Adam’s homepage
gwalb – grey with a little blue
Citizen Kane, Mank, Jaws
Nintendo’s “withered technology”
Switch

Sep 2, 2021 • 1h 5min
38 // Calm companies with Tyler Tringas
As the world’s economy is remade via software, some founders are finding the one-way ratchet of venture capital too restrictive. Tyler Tringas is working to expand funding options available to entrepreneurs via the Calm Fund. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about a return to classic good business practices; how founders can maximize their optionality; building an investment thesis out in the open; and how to be long-term ambitious.
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Show notes
Tyler Tringas @tylertringas
Calm Fund
Mexico City
digital nomad, slowmad
Earnest Capital rebrand
bootstrapper, indie hacker
building in public
Small Giants episode
brand episode
lifestyle business
The Entrepreneur’s new path of maximum optionality
the peace dividend of the SaaS wars
B2D
two-sided market
red ocean
winner takes all
craigslist, Thumbtack
covertible note, SAFE
Shared Earnings Agreement (SEAL)
Calm’s crowdfunding campaign
12factor
profit-sharing plans
co-op
carried interest
Joe Wallin
Calm Company Express

28 snips
Aug 19, 2021 • 51min
37 // Visual programming with Maggie Appleton
Creating software is typically done in text-based environments—but would programming be more accessible with graphical programming tools? Maggie joins Mark and Adam to talk about the relative success of Scratch, Shortcuts, and Zapier; how to make the abstract visible; embodied metaphors; and the false duality of artistic versus logical thinkers. Plus: how to make blinking lights for your Burning Man art installation.
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Show notes
Maggie Appleton @mappletons
egghead.io
Centre for Computing History
Pacific Pinball Museum
Nintendo 64
the noughties or the aughts
React
Scratch
Zapier, IFTTT, Integromat
low-code / no-code
Rocky’s Boots
circuit diagrams
DrScheme
Origami Studio
Muse memo on infinite canvas with Origami screenshot
LabVIEW
Logic Pro, Reason
the environment in Logic
iOS Shortcuts (née Workflow)
console loggings
end-user programming: embodiment
VS Code, npm, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, React hooks
cultural anthropology
Geroge Lakoff, Mark Johnson
embodied metaphors
Dan Abramov
Just Javascript
pointers in C
Redux actions
_why’s poignant guide to ruby
Learnable Programming
Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations, Beautiful Evidence
Graphviz DOT graphs
jigs in wordworking
Unity
episode with Geoffrey Litt
Flutter, SwiftUI
XState
Apparatus
direct manipulation
Dreamweaver
Interface Builder
Hacker News folk wisdom on visual programming
Adafruit
circuit debouncing with capacitors
walk uphill in the snow
Visual Programming Codex
Whole Code Catalog

15 snips
Aug 5, 2021 • 45min
36 // Text
Text blocks are a new beta feature for Muse. Mark and Adam use the opportunity to discuss the origins and philosophy of text in computing, including text as a datum in environments like wikis, REPLs, and social media; the writing workflow of collapsing spatially-arranged ideas down to a linear text buffer; and company memo culture. And Mark shares his vision for how the Pencil could become the X-Acto knife for fast text editing on a tablet.
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Show notes
Review Metamuse on Apple Podcasts
Podstatus
Cortex, Accidental Tech Podcast
“going viral slowly”
text blocks beta manual and memo
Notion, Roam, Craft
plain text
ASCII art
logograms
The Humane Representation of Thought
William Playfair
Literature & Latte, Scrivener, Scapple
terminal, REPL
Man-Computer Symbiosis
TTY = teletype
Roam backlinks and knowledge graph
view source
Sublime Text
Twitter was 140 characters for SMS
episode about iPad
emacs Org Mode, WorkFlowy
Miro, FigJam, GoodNotes
uncanny valley
IPython, Jupyter
Markdown
Atlassian’s wiki
“turn my ideas into our ideas”
responsive design
folio keyboard, Magic Keyboard
iOS voice input
Scribble
infinite canvas beta → flex boards
kill your darlings

Jul 22, 2021 • 53min
35 // The future of iPad
It’s been over a decade since Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s tablet as a “third device” between Mac and iPhone. Mark, Adam, and Lennart discuss iPad’s potential as a creative platform; multitasking, filesystem, and scripting/extensions; multimodal inputs; and the background process problem. Plus: why Apple should build its own pro apps for iPad to demonstrate their vision for the platform.
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Show notes
iPadOS 15
The Tragic iPad
Procreate
iPad with cellular network connection
user confusion on minimizing vs closing an application
Steve Jobs on the third category of device
prosumer software
iOS fork / iPadOS rebrand in 2019
the Dock, drag and drop
iPad morphing cursor
the history of mouse cursors
keyboard shortcut quick reference by holding down ⌘
macOS Big Sur Control Center seems designed for touch
Apple says it has no plans to merge Mac and iPad
Surface Studio and Surface Hub
Tony Stark’s lab
Apple device wifi password sharing
Universal Control to share a pointing device between a Mac and an iPad
episode with Rasmus Andersson
Macbook Touch Bar
frustrating text selection on iPhone and iPad