The Human Thread Podcast

I’ve been making videos of myself doing absurd things I’ve never done. Competing in a Japanese Game Show running away from chickens . Pitching a product on Shark Tank . Speaking in cadences that are mine but perfected. In some cases they are smoothed of the verbal tics that make me human. In other cases, it’s a case of gibberish in absurd levels. I’m using Sora. The prompts are mine. The face is m...

So I used to live by my Google calendar. You know what I’m talking about, right? Those color-coded blocks stretching across hours and days. Purple for travel = new adventures planned. Red for birthdays. Yellow for holidays. And I thought THAT was my life. The trip to Boston. The California vacation next month. Time was just... the stuff between destinations. The boring parts you endure until the n...

I never met my father’s father. My grandfather. He passed away well before I was born, leaving behind only a few photographs and no videos or recordings of his voice. Yet he exists in me, his genetic legacy is coursing through my veins, passed down through my father and now extending to my children. This is a paradox. Someone being simultaneously unknown yet intrinsically part of who I am. I have...

I was first called a “chink” when I was in 1st grade. I didn’t know what it meant. I’m not sure the kid that called me that knew what it meant either. But he was taught the word, and taught what the physical attributes were to associate that word to a person. I felt confused. That moment (brief as it was) became the first entry in what would become a lifelong catalog of moments when I was reminded...

“Be Like Water.” You may have seen these words attributed to Bruce Lee on a t-shirt or bumper sticker. Here is the full quote: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." I keep going ba...

I believe there are two types of people: those that always want to keep their phone charged close to 100% and those that are ok with draining it all the way down. Recently when having breakfast with a friend the topic of health data and measurement came up. We talked about Oura rings, Whoop Bands, and Apple Watches. And then the topic of apps came up. It was recommended to me to try out this app c...

I just read about something pretty cool. Five people in a UC Berkeley lab experienced a color that's never been seen before by human eyes. They called it Olo—a super-saturated bluish-green that exists beyond what our eyes can naturally perceive. The only way to see it? Special laser technology that precisely targets specific photoreceptors in the eye. This got me thinking: If something exists but...

I have a financial planner. A separate financial advisor. An estate attorney. A banker. And an accountant. I don't have an attention advisor. Neither do you. We track every dollar. We ignore every thought. We guard our credit scores. And…we give away our focus for free. Something's deeply wrong with this picture. Money is renewable. Time isn't. Attention is the bridge between them. I run a company...

Last week at SFMOMA , I saw a piece of art called “Wall Drawing 1” by Sol LeWitt. It was a grid of carefully drawn lines. But it wasn’t on a canvas. It was drawn directly on the wall. I thought to myself, “that’s one way to make sure the museum never moves your piece out of rotation!” But then I read the placard explaining the piece and discovered that while Sol LeWitt was credited with the piece,...

There’s a moment. A split second where you decide whether you’re going to do something or let it slide. Whether you’ll step up or stay put. Whether you’ll send the email, ask the question, make the move. These moments are everywhere. And most of the time, we don’t even notice them. But they add up. Change isn’t always a revolution. Sometimes it’s a whisper. A slight nudge. A quiet decision to take...

In my previous posts, I've explored how expertise can sometimes kill creativity and how audience expectations create impossible standards for artists as they evolve . I have one final perspective to this topic. BTW Don’t hold me to this. Every time I think I’m finished with this though, another idea pops into my head. I have one more idea on this topic: The rules themselves. In every creative fiel...

Last week I wrote about expertise and how it sometimes kills creativity . About being uninhibited as a beginner (or possible just naive) can lead to breakthrough creativity. But there's another side to this story. The audience. You and me. The people consuming all this art, music, writing, and creativity. We play a bigger role in this dynamic than we might realize. We Forgive the Amateur What We P...

I was nineteen when I first heard Mozart's Salzburg Symphony #1 Divertimento in D major K. 136. Something about those opening notes captured me instantly. There was an energy, a freshness to it that I couldn't quite explain. Years later, I stumbled across Malcolm Gladwell's famous "10,000-hour rule" in his book Outliers , where he uses Mozart as a prime example. According to Gladwell, despite begi...

Recently, a colleague gave me some feedback. It wasn’t easy to hear, but it got me thinking about how essential real, unfiltered feedback is to growth. If asked, I will always stress the importance of feedback. But as a CEO, I realize it’s easy to get lazy about seeking it out. People hesitate to be honest with someone in a leadership position. And my colleague definitely eased into delivering the...

Recently, I underwent a colonoscopy and, like anyone who has experienced it knows, the preparation is no joke. Instructions are precise: what to eat, what not to eat, when to drink the solution, and how much. I opted for the pill option instead of the drink but it still required swallowing 12 pills in a row at a precise time and then repeating the process 6 hours later. I followed the guidelines t...

The other day I was meeting with a former colleague for a coffee catch up. During the conversation he lamented the challenge he was facing finding another job after he was laid off towards the end of last year. I asked if he had connected with someone that I introduced him to late last year and his response was, “No. I took a look at the company and it didn’t seem like a good fit.” I have a rule....

In a world obsessed with speed and automation, the smallest details still require a human touch. In this episode, we explore the underrated craft of kerning—yes, the space between letters—and what it reveals about our approach to life, relationships, and the pursuit of excellence. From typography to the way we show up in the world, precision matters. Sloppy spacing signals carelessness; expert spa...

Today, I listened to the latest episode of the Hidden Brain podcast , hosted by Shankar Vedantam. They discussed a study revealing that during conversations, people admit their minds wander about 24% of the time. In this episode, Alison Wood Brooks , a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, said: “We interrupted them every five minutes in a conversation and asked them, were you listening...