Episode notes
The engineer took out an axe and slammed it into the brick wall. It was June 1896. The young man had spent months working in a small brick shed behind his rented house, only to realize, at 4am, that the door wasn't big enough for what he'd built. His name was Henry Ford. His creation, the Ford Quadricycle. His atomic insight was simple: He began viewing the factory itself as the product. While others obsessed over the car, he obsessed over the factory. By the early 1920s, Ford owned an extraordinary 60% of the U.S. automobile market. But around 1921, the ground began to shift. And while Ford…
Curiosity Chronicle
by Sahil Bloom · English · Business
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E475 · 23 Sep 2026 · 12 min
7 Lessons From My 2:49 Marathon (That Have Nothing To Do With Running)
Last week I wrote about failing a marathon. Six days later, at 5am, I drove back to the course alone and ran 26.25 miles in 2:48:47. Not because I needed the official result. Because when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. In this piece, I talk about seven lessons from that solo marathon that have nothing to do with running — how to stack slow progress, how to stay in the long game, and why showing up through the valley is the whole game... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. Origin Financial -…
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E474 · 18 Sep 2026 · 8 min
Jevons Paradox: The Perils of Efficiency
In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons studied the impact of the increased efficiency of coal use. The common economic intuition said that as efficiency improved, people would use less coal. Jevons argued that the economic reality was different: As technology improved the efficiency of coal use, demand for coal would increase as people created and justified new uses. It became known as Jevons Paradox: technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a given resource lead to a rise in the consumption of that resource. I think the most interesting application of Jevons…
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E473 · 16 Sep 2026 · 11 min
I Think I Need to Talk About Failure
Last Sunday, I was scheduled to run a marathon with a goal of completing the race in 2:49:59. I trained all summer for the race, building up to 70+ mile weeks. I tapered. I carb loaded. I meticulously prepared for every detail. And honestly, I was certain I’d do it. But…I failed. After 21.45 miles at a 6:24 average pace, I stopped and walked off the course. I didn’t finish. DNF. That’s not something you read in newsletters or see on social media every day. It’s all about wins. Successes. Achievements. On Wednesday, I wrote about why failure is a good thing. It means you had the courage to go…
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E471 · 9 Sep 2026 · 7 min
It Was Just a Game of Catch
Last weekend, my family and I made our annual pilgrimage to a small community in northwest Connecticut. When I was 18 months old, my parents had rented a house there for the summer, seeking an escape from the New York City heat. The next year, we went back. The following, we went again. Soon, the tiny enclave became like a second home. I met my two best friends there. I caught my first fish there. I had my first crush there. But perhaps most importantly, I played my first game of catch there. As I remember it, I was probably about five years old. My dad had a softball and a couple of old…
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E470 · 4 Sep 2026 · 6 min
A Lesson From a Mentor I'll Never Forget
I first met Tim Cook in 2014. I was just starting my career in finance and had signed up for a local gym that opened at 5:00am. I started arriving at 4:45am so I could get to the office by 6:30. Each morning, there was a small handful of others who would congregate outside the doors at that time. Tim happened to be one of the people in that group. For the first six months, I talked to him almost every day and had exactly zero idea who he was. As our friendship grew and I came to consider him a mentor, I realized something deeper was going on. A few years later, he was still there. Doing the…
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E469 · 2 Sep 2026 · 11 min
9 Harsh Truths Nobody Told You About Success
I'm convinced that the market for telling people what they want to hear is much larger than the market for telling people what they need to hear . That one fact explains a lot of what you see in the world. But my goal has always been to be real. Even if it's unpopular. Because everything I write is something I hope my son reads someday, and I owe him the truth. Today, that truth is a few things nobody told you about success. It may not be what you want to hear . But it's definitely what you need to hear ... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and…
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E480 · 9 Oct 2026 · 7 minNew
The Loud Liker Theory
Confession: I’ve never been someone who was a natural in social settings. As something of an introvert, I struggled to build new adult relationships. I often felt others weren’t responding to my social signals. In most cases, I just assumed they didn’t like me and moved on. But it turns out I was actually falling victim to a damning collision of two psychological phenomena: Signal Amplification Bias: Our fear of rejection in social situations tempers our ability to convey social signals, and blinds our ability to recognize that tempering effect. The Liking Gap: We assume others like us less…
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E479 · 7 Oct 2026 · 8 min
The Stories You Tell Yourself
When I was 13 years old, a single story changed the course of my life. But to understand it, I need to take you back in time to a strange experiment from decades ago. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga was studying patients who had their corpus callosum surgically severed. His experiments led him to hypothesize that the left hemisphere has a specialized system he called The Interpreter, whose responsibility is to find clear cause and effect. Its job is simple: To take scattered, seemingly random data and facts about the world in front of you and stitch them into a coherent story that feels…
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E478 · 2 Oct 2026 · 8 min
My 90 -10 Rule for Routines
Confession: I'm a routine guy. I thrive on structure. I think of routines as a way to ensure execution against the daily action that contributes to long-term, compounding progress. But there's a dark side to routines that nobody talks about. When your routines become too rigid and complicated, they become a source of stress rather than strength. The routines meant to serve you can start to own you. This is where my 90-10 Rule comes in: 90% disciplined compliance. 10% open flexibility. 90% of the time, I'm locked in with my structure, but 10% of the time, I give myself the space to let life…
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E477 · 30 Sep 2026 · 8 min
The Middle Path to Happiness
In the 3rd century BCE, King Pyrrhus was preparing for an aggressive military campaign in Italy when a trusted advisor named Cineas asked him a simple question: After conquering Italy, what would they do next? Then Sicily. Then Libya and Carthage. And then? King Pyrrhus replied, "Then we will live a life of ease. Drink all day and have pleasant conversation with our friends." Cineas paused and spoke: "But what's stopping us from doing that today?" The story is one of the oldest documented cases of the Arrival Fallacy: the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create…
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