Episode notes
Have you ever noticed that growth feels like destruction? That getting better feels like getting worse? You're not doing something wrong. You're just experiencing something nobody told you about... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place. Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed. Lemon - The Al agent that turns your…
Podcast
Curiosity Chronicle
Sahil Bloom · Business · English
Delivering curiosity-inducing content every single week. This is the audio version of my newsletter. Sign up at the bottom of the page!
More from Curiosity Chronicle All episodes →
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E457 · 22 Jul 2026 · 11 min
A Few Things I've Changed My Mind On
I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information or evidence. It's not that they lack conviction in their beliefs, but more so that they've developed enough self-awareness to understand what it would take to change them. The world will pressure you to stubbornly resist such change. To cling to every belief as though it might be your last. But there's immense power in resisting that pressure. I like to think of it as a software update. The update…
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E456 · 17 Jul 2026 · 6 min
How Old Will You Be If You Don’t?
Last week, I wrote a piece about reinvention. Specifically, the myth of too late and how to reinvent your life at any age or life stage. It clearly struck a chord. I received thousands of replies in the days following the piece. One reader reply referenced a two-decade-old newspaper advice column segment that had resonated on the subject. Me being me, I decided to try to find the column. After all, if something was still etched into my reader's memory 20+ years later, it must have been good. I did , and it was even better than advertised... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe -…
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E455 · 15 Jul 2026 · 9 min
The Cobra Effects of Life
In colonial India, a bounty on cobras was supposed to reduce the snake population. Instead, people started breeding cobras for profit — and when the policy ended, they released thousands into the streets. The result? More cobras than ever. This is Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And it's not just a business problem — it's happening in your life right now. From sleep scores to morning routines to money, the things we measure can quietly start to own us. Here's how to spot it and fix it... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe…
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E454 · 10 Jul 2026 · 7 min
The Life-Changing Magic of Active Optimism
There’s an old children’s fable I recently retold to my son about a farmer whose wagon wheel gets stuck in the mud. He calls on Hercules to come to his aid. Hercules appears, but rather than lifting the wagon, he speaks: "Do you think you can move the wagon by simply looking at it? Put your shoulder to the wheel." The farmer did so, and the wagon lurched forward as the wheel easily came unstuck. The simple read says this is a story about effort. But it’s also a story that frames one of the most important traits in life: It’s what I call Active Optimism : A belief that things will work out…
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E453 · 8 Jul 2026 · 15 min
How to Reinvent Your Life in 30 Days
Every single week, I invariably get a handful of emails from readers around the world with a similar general message. Stuck on a path. Living a life they didn’t really choose. Scared it’s too late to make a change. Given the frequency of these messages, I decided it warranted a deeper, more tactical guide. Here’s exactly how I would approach reinvention (at any age or life stage): ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments,…
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E451 · 1 Jul 2026 · 8 min
Why Are You In Such A Rush?
There’s a beautiful Zen parable that goes something like this: A man is walking across a field when a tiger leaps out from the trees and runs toward him. Fearing for his life, the man sprints away but quickly halts at a steep cliff. Facing a terrifying drop, with the tiger bearing down on him, he grabs hold of a single vine and lowers himself over the cliff’s edge. Looking up, he sees the tiger above. Looking down, he notices another tiger pacing on the ground below. And to make matters worse, a small mouse begins gnawing at the vine that holds him in place. Beginning to feel hopeless, with…
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E450 · 26 Jun 2026 · 6 min
The Zipper Test: How to Stop Fooling Yourself
My son just turned four. One of the things I love most about the age is the unbridled curiosity with which he explores the world. He's deep in the classic "why" phase, taking me down explanatory rabbit holes that go long past my point of comfort. But one of the most interesting prompts he asked recently was this one: "Tell me all about zippers." On any given day, zipper is replaced by some basic thing that we interact with. It might be tell me all about our car , or trees , or cooking pans , or the microwave . I have a rule that I always engage with him on these little curiosity quests, even…
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E449 · 24 Jun 2026 · 9 min
7 Lies I Finally Stopped Telling Myself
A few years ago, as part of the research for my first book , I asked a group of centenarians for the advice they'd most like to give to their younger selves. One of them offered this piece of wisdom: "The most damning lie you can tell is the lie you tell to yourself." Those lies dilute your attention, pull you toward distractions, and cut into your confidence. They give you an easy out when the truth requires more painful accountability. Those lies keep you from running at full power. Self-protection that becomes self-rejection. In the years since that conversation, I've often found myself…
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E448 · 19 Jun 2026 · 7 min
The Helsinki Bus Station Theory
In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography. In the speech, he offered a powerful thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that you find yourself at the large bus station in the center of Helsinki. There are two dozen platforms at the station, each with several different bus lines departing from them bound for a wide array of destinations outside the city. Each of the different bus lines departing from a given platform follows the same route for a few miles to get out of the city. Minkkinen likened this…
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E447 · 17 Jun 2026 · 7 min
The 2 Types of Knowledge: Real vs. Surface
In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta. After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at universities and institutions around the country on his findings. There’s an apocryphal story from that tour that I first came across while reading the transcript of Charlie Munger’s 2007 commencement speech at USC Law School. Max Planck’s chauffeur, after having heard Planck practice and deliver the talk so many times, had the entire thing memorized. He jokingly asked Planck if he could deliver it at the final lecture.…
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