Sean Carroll

The gumption traps that he talks about.

So is there some unified approach to maintenance that makes sense?

Can we look at all the examples that you look at in your book and say, like, okay, here's the right attitude to have?

Or is it more personal?

Is it more pluralistic?

Am I correct that you live on a boat?

Okay.

We'll put that out there if anyone wants a tugboat in San Francisco.

But you're not out there doing circumnavigations of the globe.

You're mostly at the pier.

Is there a lot of maintenance involved in that endeavor?

Do I get the feeling, though, that it's becoming harder in the modern world for people to do routine maintenance on the gadgets that they have?

I mean, a Model T you could fix, but a car that I would buy new right now, no one even knows what's going on there, at least the typical person in the garage.

Well, one thing that seemed to be a thread running through the book, and I don't even know whether this is intentional or not, but there's sort of a relationship, a tension maybe, between innovation and maintenance.

There's like one pull to just do things really quickly and get them to work.

There's another that says, well, let's slow down.

Let's make sure this is going to last a long time.

Am I correct in perceiving that?

Well, actually, I was going to ask about that.

So let's get into it a little bit.