Dialectic

All links and transcript available at dialectic.fm/celine-nguyen

Celine Nguyen (Website, Substack, X) is a writer, software designer at Watershed, and literary critic. She writes personal canon, a newsletter about literature, design, art, and technology that has grown to tens of thousands of subscribers. She has also written for The Atlantic, Asterisk Magazine, and more.

I discovered Celine with her reflection on two years of writing her newsletter, where she made the case for living a life of the mind, reading great things, and writing online:

"After 2 years, I’m convinced that reading and writing are the most dignified and worthy activities that anyone can do—and, in fact, are activities that everyone should do."

She also has written viral essays on research as a leisure activity and a case for reading Marcel Proust’s 3,000 page novel, In Search of Lost Time. In another favorite, she critically analyzes the mechanics of how great writers begin. Celine makes intellectual life and very serious books feel accessible and exciting rather than obligatory.

We spoke about much of her writing, taking your intellectual growth seriously outside of academia, and how she has become an influencer in a good way. She believes you can expand the market for what you love, and her success is evidence that there is a market for more than the low-hanging fruit that dominates much of the internet. Celine sees reading and writing through the lens of becoming, and I was inspired to raise my own bar. I hope you can say the same.

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Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams create their best work. Notion recently launched custom agents: helpful AI teammates that handle recurring work across your entire suite of tools. Automate you and your team’s repetitive tasks so you can focus on the deep work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic, and check out their latest round of updates here.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Opening Highlights

(1:35) Intro to Celine

(4:25) Thanks to Notion

(6:18) Start: Pursuing a Life of the Mind, Personal Curriculum, and Contextualizing the Present in History

(24:53) Research as a Leisure, Self-Cultivation, and Calibrating Rigor

(39:59) Effectiveness, Tools & Process, and Letting Output Drive Your Learning

(59:35) Parasocially Influencing People to Do Good Things (Like Reading and Writing)

(1:09:39) Drawing the Reader in and Expanding the Market for What You Love (and for Proust)

(1:24:07) Aspiration, Posing, and Pretending Your Way into Enthusiasm

(1:34:37) Preparation is Not Progress

(1:46:07) Copying, Writing Process, Mechanics, and Design

(1:57:25) Commitment, Finishing, Substack, Life Extension and Closing

(2:18:31) Thanks Again to Notion

Transcript and all linked references: https://dialectic.fm/henrik-2

Henrik Karlsson (Substack, X) is a writer and essayist. His newsletter, Escaping Flatland, explores attention, agency, relationships, and the inner life of making things. He is one of my favorite essayists, and I spoke to him previously on Dialectic 19: Cultivating a Life that Fits in Spring 2025. We met again in Copenhagen, this time on video.

Our first conversation focused on designing your life iteratively and relationships. This time is about the messiness of creativity and problem-solving. We circle a central theme of navigating through the woods of confusion when you are—and must necessarily be to grow—lost, and trusting yourself to reach clarity on the other side. Henrik walks us through how he (and so many of his favorite artists and thinkers, from Brian Eno to Charles Darwin to Ingmar Bergman) smashes apart his mental models in pursuit of seeing things more clearly. Or at the very least, offering up something new.

He also challenges my praise of boredom, describes how a ballerina finding balance in her body mirrors what creatives must do, likens desire to the energetic discovery of wandering (or dérive, like past guest Cyan Banister has spoken about), explains why the best art is like a Jenga tower, and reflects on what he believes in; Henrik’s humanity is on display. He challenged me to think much more ambitiously about the risks I take, the ways I am holding on to faulty models of reality, and how living richly is simply a matter of perspective.

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Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams create their best work. Notion recently launched custom agents: helpful AI teammates that handle recurring work across your entire suite of tools. Automate you and your team’s repetitive tasks so you can focus on the deep work. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Opening Highlights

(01:28) Intro to Henrik

(04:05) Notion

(05:58) Begin: Attention, Boredom, Predictability, Aliveness, and Dérive

(14:52) Confusion and Clarity: Mental Balance, Breaking Mental Models, and Making It Through the Woods

(31:37) Henrik's Notebooks, Personal Constraints

(40:54) Introspection as Subject, Not Object: Nick Cave, Rick Rubin, and Attending Outward

(46:56) Creative Risks, Constraints, and the Labyrinth: Eno, Von Trier, Cage, and Herzog

(1:03:47) Agency, The Right Kind of Risk, and What Else Is Possible

(1:23:29) Desire: Trusting Excitement and "Galloping Down the Street"

(1:30:44) Why Good Ideas Come from the Edges and Keeping the Space to Sit in Your Ideas

(1:44:58) Physical Space and Isolation

(1:51:19) Jenga Towers: Why Great Art Has Space and Spits You Back Out

(2:01:30) Conviction, Belief, Navigating Murkiness with Firmness and Openness

(2:15:54) Short Essays and How Reading Is Like Running

(2:22:27) What Love Is Like and Befriend Those We Read

(2:29:18) Grandfather Nils and a Final Reminder

(2:40:49) Thanks Again to Notion

A new experiment: I thought it would be fun to share audio versions of essays or writing from past or future Dialectic guests. Toby Shorin (ep. 7: The Shapes of Culture) recently published 'Body Futurism,' a piece based on a talk I heard him give in 2024 and that I loved.

You can read this piece at https://writing.tobyshorin.com/body-futurism/. It is provocative and feels increasingly prescient. Toby suggests that we must return to the body—and not just bodies in theory but quite literally your, my, our physical bodies, as the starting point for how we think about what is good for how we live and how we design and improve our societies. It was published Feb 25, 2026.

I'm calling this format Independent Study. You can think of it as curated audiobook versions of internet writing. We'll see if I do more of these, and feedback is welcome. But let me know what you think!

All links and transcript: dialectic.fm/cab

Are.na channel for this episode: are.na/jackson-dahl/dialectic-cab

Charles Broskoski (Website, Are.na, X), aka Cab, is an artist turned entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO of Are.na, a platform for collecting, connecting, and self-directed learning. I created an are.na channel for all of the references I used in preparation for this episode.

Charles began as an artist before becoming a software engineer, and started Are.na with many collaborators out of a desire to replace the now defunct del.icio.us after it was acquired by Yahoo. He and a range of collaborators have been working on Are.na for nearly 15 years, and he is now focused on it full-time, thanks to the platform’s 18,000 paying subscribers.

While I’m not a longtime Are.na user, I discovered Charles by way of his talk / essay, “Here for the Wrong Reasons” and was enthused by his philosophy of attention and how the things we encounter shape us.

Our conversation centers on patterns of noticing and what it means to know yourself through what you pay attention to, or as Charles calls it, your radar. We discuss creativity as decision-making, self-directed learning and research, and Are.na's channels as frames for what we encounter. We also talk about personal versus performative taste, opinionated design that still gives you space, building something that lasts, and why Charles believes creative people should start deeply personal businesses.

I hope you are inspired to be generous and scrutinizing with your attention, to create things that are personal and durable, and to remember that knowing yourself is a worthy journey of a lifetime.

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Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams build their best work. Notion is also where I compile research for episodes and where you can find all links and transcripts. You can learn more at notion.com/dialectic.

Special thanks to Earshot in NYC for hosting us for this conversation.

Timestamps

(0:00) - Opening Highlights

(1:21) - Intro: Charles Broskoski

(4:00) - Thanks to Notion

(5:26) - Start: Creativity as Self-Knowledge and Problem-Solving

(13:37) - Self-directed Learning and Casual Research

(21:33) - Skateboarding, Being a Beginner, In Defense of Posers

(33:26) - Contextual Patterns and Channels

(45:54) - Nodal Points, Your Radar, and Careful Attention

(1:04:57) - Subjectivity, Self-Knowledge, and Taste

(1:15:09) - Performance: Here for Fame and Not Love

(1:22:53) - Aspirational Attention

(1:29:02) - Designing Generous Tools

(1:42:44) - Space in a Product and Fading into the Background

(1:50:01) - Why Creatives Should Be Entrepreneurial & Building an Independent Business Online

(1:54:11) - Patience, Durability, and Antifragility

(1:59:48) - Personal Businesses

(2:10:27) - Grab Bag: Authenticity, Bohm Dialogue, Skateboarding, and Keeping Things Personal

(2:28:28) - Thanks Again to Notion

Full transcript and links: https://dialectic.fm/andrew-reed.

Andrew Reed (X, Website, Sequoia) is a growth investor at Sequoia Capital, where he has invested in companies including Robinhood, Figma, Klarna, Phantom, Vanta, and ElevenLabs. He is quietly one of the best growth investors of his generation.

We begin with how Andrew's competitiveness and humanity coexist—the twin brother rivalry, the football player who also did musicals, the Goldman analyst who came to value people over spreadsheets. He also shares how an early lack of confidence helped him become a great observer of people and situations.

We talk through his approach to investing: why spreadsheets are “always wrong” in one direction, how he underwriters revenue growth, and what he sees in the world-beaters he invests in. We discuss several of his most formative investments—Robinhood as a 27-year-old’s first check, and again during the first week of COVID; Figma at a price people thought was insane; and a 14-second conviction on Vanta’s—and what each taught him about conviction, timing, and not flinching.

Andrew shares his perspective on serving as a board member, knowing when to double down, closing deals, and how craft can be a commercial input. We also talk extensively about Sequoia Capital and its legendary leaders, from Don Valentine, to Doug Leone and Mike Moritz, to newly-appointed Co-Steward Pat Grady. Andrew reflects on what it means to apprentice at an institution where greatness is the expectation and the champagne toast lasts five minutes.

I hope this conversation inspires you to show up ready for the day you don't expect, to rise to the stakes rather than shrink from them, and to move through your life and work a little more lightly.

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Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is an AI-powered connected workspace where teams build their best work. Notion is also where I compile research for episodes and the home of this site where you can find all links and transcripts. My “What are You Building This Year feature with Notion on Instagram.

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Timestamps

(0:00) - Opening Highlights

(2:02) - Intro: Andrew Reed

(3:50) - Thanks to Notion

(5:23) - Start: Humanity, Spotting Weird, and Competitiveness

(19:07) - Investing & Great Founders

(37:53) - Andrew's Style, Pat Grady, and Continuous Learning

(47:31) - Doubling Down and Not Flinching

(56:09) - Empathy on Boards, Learning the Real Business, "Expensive" Prices, and Selling

(1:07:18) - Managing Ego and Becoming a Leader

(1:14:08) - Craft as a Commercial Input, Knowing vs. Feeling, Preparing for Big Days, Becoming a Great Closer

(1:28:39) - Sequoia Capital

(1:38:57) - Don Valentine, Mike Moritz, and Doug Leone

(1:51:29) - Closing Questions

(1:59:08) - Thanks Again to Notion