Episodes featuring Cal Newport
Browse episodes where Cal Newport appears as host or guest. View all episodes →
Cal Newport and Brad Stulberg discuss how constant tracking and optimization culture paradoxically undermines the excellence it promises, and offer a simpler alternative framework.
Cal Newport takes apart Anthropic's "Global Workspace" report on Claude's "J space," arguing it confirms how language models have always been understood to work while the framing hints at consciousness to stir hype.
Cal Newport walks through the four notebooks he uses and argues a notebook only gets used if it has a specific job. He then answers listener mail on teen phone rules, remote work focus and attention.
Cal Newport argues that business executives misunderstand AI and make confident job-displacement claims that contradict what actual AI leaders say and what labor market data shows.
Cal Newport talks with Chris Moody, a former CNN correspondent who has lived without home internet in a rural North Carolina cabin for three years, about how it works in practice.
Cal Newport revisits his 2019 book Digital Minimalism to judge whether its ideas still hold in 2026 and adds new rules around AI, addiction, and phone habits at home.
Cal Newport argues that AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are deliberately stoking fear about their own products to inflate valuations, a tactic he calls doom trolling.
Cal Newport and psychologist Kostadin Kushlev explain why procrastination comes from context switching fatigue and dopamine down-regulation, not a fixed stimulation budget, and what actually fixes it.
Cal Newport examines the US government's export ban on Anthropic's Claude Mythos model, arguing oversight of AI is justified but this particular action was haphazard and likely corrupt.
Cal Newport makes the case that cognitive fitness, the ability to focus and think deeply, will matter as much in the 21st century as physical fitness did in the 20th.
Cal Newport looks at Anthropic's report on AI self-improvement and argues the existential risk framing is overblown and premature.
Cal Newport makes the case for deliberately stepping away from daily routines to restore deep thinking and make better strategic decisions.
Cal Newport explains how AI will make jobs more miserable by rewarding visible busyness over real output, and shares five strategies to build a career on genuine work instead.
Cal Newport, a theoretical computer scientist, examines OpenAI's claim that its model disproved Paul Erdos's 1946 planar unit distance conjecture. He argues the result is real and important but narrower than the hype...
Cal Newport and Laura Vanderkam argue the real problem isn't a lack of time but how we think about and organize our hours.
Cal Newport examines an essay arguing AI won't replace developers, and explains how over-relying on AI coding tools erodes the foundational skills needed to use them well.
Cal Newport talks with addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke about how digital platforms hijack the brain's dopamine system and what separates heavy phone use from a real addiction.
Cal Newport challenges the idea that AI is on the verge of taking over everything, explaining what viral capability charts actually measure and why recent gains are narrow, not general.
Cal Newport covers a randomized trial showing that blocking mobile internet apps for two weeks cuts screen time by 50% and noticeably improves focus, mood, and life satisfaction.
Cal Newport examines why AI CEOs like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are suddenly walking back doom rhetoric, tracing the shift to IPO pressure and a niche San Francisco subculture.