C. Thi Nguyen

speaker

3,183 appearances 5 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 7 Jul

C. Thi Nguyen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Two Percent with Michael Easter · #25: Why Numbers, Scores, and Metrics Make Life Worse | Thi Nguyen · 2 Jul 2026 podcast

A switch you can flip because...

Our basic relationship to games is one of variety, right?

There are so many games.

You can try them.

You can move them.

You can modify them.

And our basic relationship to metrics is not.

Like the way metrics function, one system tends to become dominant in a social arena.

And that's just, it's much harder.

So the philosopher Maria Lugones says that what playfulness is, is the ability to hold rule worlds lightly, to step into and out of different worlds with different rules easily, and to be in them, she says, creatively.

And I think that kind of relationship of being able to enter, but being distant, reflective, willing to tinker with,

That's a useful spirit, but it's so damn hard to do.

Yeah, she wrote me after I was giving some of the early material from this book in lectures.

And she said that

It had pulled her out of five years of depression because she realized now she was stuck in games she didn't want to be playing.

So she was, I mean, she told, she gave me permission to tell this story.

She said she was like me, you know, first generation Asian American immigrant, pushed to get good grades.

Also, unlike me, a varsity athlete, so pushed to score better.

Also anorexic.

Also so obsessed with grades.

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