Cal Newport

speaker

23,606 appearances 41 recordings 5 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 6d 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.

Appearances

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

You can think about that the same way that the strain on your muscle helps the muscle grow. podcast-host

And if you want to get stronger, you have to have productive struggle. podcast-host

So I might expand what you're saying from, I'm just thinking out loud here, but I might expand it from one area that you really want to protect. podcast-host

I would think about my entire professional life and say, if this is a skill that there will be value in me getting really good at, I would be very wary about pressing the easy button because how do you get better if you don't first get okay? podcast-host

Yeah, it is weird that if we look back historically at figures that we admire... podcast-host

It's never the decadent king living, you know, the aloof king living a life of complete luxury and never has any hardship. podcast-host

That's never the character we look at. podcast-host

We always look at the character that had the struggle, that overcame obstacles, that produced something beautiful that was painstaking. podcast-host

We look at Einstein's hair going white from the effort of proving the general theory of relativity. podcast-host

And yet the model sometimes that seems to be pitched by the AI boosters is, hey, you could be like the king. podcast-host

You don't have to do it. podcast-host

Machines will do things for you. podcast-host

And you can just have the life. podcast-host

If you decide you want to go play croquet out in the Versailles lawns, you can just go do that. podcast-host

Which is interesting because it goes against... podcast-host

All human nature. podcast-host

We never look at that and say that's the ideal. podcast-host

But I want to expand, because I don't know if this works or not, but I want to expand your critique here beyond just creative work, because I'll tell you what I'm worried about as someone who observes and writes about technology and knowledge work. podcast-host

I'm really worried about what's happening in just standard non-creative office jobs, right? podcast-host

Because as I wrote about in Slow Productivity, podcast-host

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