Cal Newport

speaker

23,606 appearances 41 recordings 5 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 5d ago

Cal Newport’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 — 41 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 9.

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Deep Questions with Cal Newport · The AI Resistance is Forming. (Should You Join?) · 14 Sep 2026 podcast

So just like you were saying, I'm just using an LLM to do X is going to turn pretty soon to I'm using it for almost everything else because there is something that is irresistible about having a linguistic conversational partner podcast-host

that is listening to you that is reflecting things back that is largely telling you like this is good what you're doing is smart um you know there's a construction that especially the gpt models have where if you're asking for advice about anything it will always say podcast-host

Yeah, that's good. podcast-host

I like this a lot. podcast-host

There's just one thing I would change. podcast-host

And that turns out to be like the ideal way to give feedback to someone because it makes you feel smart, but it's not just fully affirmational. podcast-host

And it gives you that excitement of like, I have an idea that I just have to tweak it a little bit and this is really good. podcast-host

And it is pretty addictive. podcast-host

So anyways, that paper set it up is like, look, you let this in one place, it's going to spread other places. podcast-host

But I think what you're, push on this a little bit, because I think this is countercultural for a lot of people. podcast-host

You're saying struggle's good, quality is good. podcast-host

You know, for a human to have experiences that are quality, this seems to me like one of the big points in the way of excellence is the pursuit of excellence is life-affirming, right? podcast-host

That struggle is life-affirming. podcast-host

if you were to take the AI philosophy and apply it to the topic of excellence, it would say, having done something excellently is what matters, and the quicker you can get there with whatever help you can, the better, which completely belies what you found, which is that it's always the struggle and in the process in which we find meaning. podcast-host

So why, I mean, is that right? podcast-host

And why are we falling prey to that? podcast-host

Why don't we, why have we been trained to think struggle or friction somehow means that something bad is happening? podcast-host

Yeah, the podcast-host

I'm with you on that. podcast-host

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