Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Tyler Cowen recently wrote an article arguing that spending lots of time online is in fact a good thing. In this episode, Cal looks deeper at Cowen’s argument and finds some surprising common ground. ...

The white whale of modern productivity discourse is achieving an empty email inbox; a goal state that’s often referred to simply as “inbox zero.” In this episode, Cal looks at why the original advice ...

Cal talks a lot about his ideas for producing meaningful work in a distracted world. But how do other people tackle this goal? To help better under this question, Cal reacts to a 2018 article from Ope...

In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal is joined by David Dewane, the architect responsible for the “eudaimonia machine” featured in DEEP WORK. In this wide-ranging conversation, Cal and David talk about th...

Cal has been writing about time management for a *long* time. In this episode, he returns to a chapter from a book he wrote twenty years ago that is titled “manage your time in 5 minutes a day.” He re...

Phones have been receiving a lot of criticism recently, but what if these concerns are missing the mark? In this episode, Cal introduces the difference between primary and secondary phone harms, and a...

In last week’s episode, Cal discussed data that indicate that the rise of the smartphones is making humans measurably dumber. Here he discusses aggressive strategies for resisting this reality. He the...

Multiple listeners recently sent in a Financial Times article that asks whether humans have passed “peak intelligence.” In this episode, Cal looks closer at the data in this article to try to understa...

Modern knowledge work jobs should be cushy gigs. Fixed hours, air conditioning, no hard manual labor, flexibility. So why are we so often burnt out and what can we do about this reality? In this episo...

One of the most commonly recurring themes on this show is the conflict between too much versus not enough productivity. In this episode, Cal attempts to find new clarity in this debate by identifying ...