Late blooming, hidden talent
Henry Oliver: Hidden talent my podcast. Neuroscience: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Daniel Dennett; also GLP-1s. AI, Meta: Dwarkesh Patel with Mark Zuckerberg, podcast. Arts: The life and death of Hollywood.
Henry Oliver: Hidden talent, my podcast conversation
Neuroscience: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Daniel Dennett; also GLP-1s
AI, Meta: Dwarkesh Patel with Mark Zuckerberg, podcast
Arts: The life and death (again) of Hollywood
Home Education / non-mainstream Education UnConference, London on April 27th, (Free). UnConference on non-mainstream education. Families, educators, and curious people are welcome. Do come if you have any interest.
My podcast with Henry Oliver is out. He has a book out looking at the lives of successful people who had their success later in life. He also keeps a Substack that broadly looks at humanities and the arts, often through a literary analytical lens.
The book avoids the self-help career type book by leaning into biography and life writing and by not providing any simple algorithms.
Henry observes this hidden talent is across pretty much every domain: arts, business, sports. In our conversation, we also cover music, maths and philosophy domains where traditionally people think achievement only comes young.
We discuss the failure to recognise the talents of women and minorities, particularly historically. It’s almost too obvious to note but the wide variation in later blooming talent and its breadth of domains I found fascinating.
We also touch on how philosophy infuses modern life even if we aren’t aware, in particular John Stuart Mill and certain classical liberal and even utilitarian ideas (feminism, veganism).
Summary:
A conversation with Henry Oliver, author of 'A Second Act', exploring the concept of late bloomers (Henry’s Substack here).
Oliver elaborates on societal pressures, hidden talents, and how these impact individual successes at various life stages, advocating for a broader recognition of potential beyond conventional timelines.
The dialogue includes themes such as the significance of networks, the role of luck, and the historical context of late blooming, challenging prevailing notions of talent and achievement.
Following this, the conversation delves into the philosophical contributions of John Stuart Mill, particularly focusing on his expansion of utilitarianism and its inadvertent influence on contemporary moral behaviors like vegetarianism. It contrasts Mill’s stance on liberty and value measurement with other philosophers and highlights the importance of engaging with diverse perspectives for personal growth. The chat connects Mill’s philosophies to present-day issues.
We end on Henry’s advice: the importance of personalized approaches to absorbing content, seeking expertise, the application of tailored advice over generic guidance; and to ignore those who do not have recent advice experience.
On Hidden Talents and Societal Barriers:
"So in the case of someone just happens to emerge later, and in the case of someone has been held back, I would call that hidden both times. Because very often when you've been held back by your circumstances, people like actually cannot see your talents. And so they are hidden, not in the sense that you've kept them in, or you were scared, or whatever, but in the sense that, you could have put it on your t-shirt and people wouldn't have realized."
On Overcoming Historical Bias and Recognizing Talent:
"And obviously historically, very often that was to do with if you were a woman, if you were a person of color people just aren't going to, people literally aren't going to take that seriously. But that, to me, is interesting, it's an interesting demonstration of the fact that, you can be very confident that you know how to find talent, and that you know who's a good chap and who would be good at this job, and be completely blind to what is right in front of you."
I’ve enjoyed Lisa Barrett Feldman on neuroscience. Here is some new material (4th in a lecture series) where she suggests: "relational realism," suggesting that reality itself is relational and perspective-dependent, shaped by the interactions of signals within and across entities. This view argues against the notion of a fixed, objective reality, proposing instead that reality is an emergent property of interactions, not just a backdrop against which events unfold. YT link here.
Notable that Daniel Dennett has died. He has done much work on consciousness and the like. I think these questions will remain unresolved but the likes of Dennett have found new ways of engaging with the questions. If you’d like to go down the neuroscience rabbit hole both are worth thinking about. (May not help you with many real world problems though!). David Eagleman, who I mentioned last week, also has a very accessible podcast series which covers consciousness and reality among other things.
Dwarkesh Patel has carved out a podcast audience based on deep interview knowledge leaning tech, AI with some philosophy and economics. His reach into tech leaders is quite notable, for instance Patrick Collinson (Stripe) and more recently Mark Zuckerberg who gives some insight both into how he thinks about managing Meta, and companies in general as well as his thinking on AI. If you want to go one level deeper on the thinking behind one of the leading companies (by amount spent at least) on AI then worth checking out. Link here.
You only see a small glimpse of companies from the outside. They also often contain a rich and complex history. This 3 hour discussion of Novo Nordisk its history in insulin and now GLP-1 (obesity) gives a glimpse of how much we don’t really know is going on! Second part on one of key scientists behind GLP-1. Based on this book by Kurt Jacobsen. (H/T Saloni who has an excellent Substack and Twitter/X mostly on science and data.)
Daniel Bessemer talks about the Hollywood scriptwriting process today (and to some extent plays) for Harpers.
“The industry is in a deep and existential crisis,” the head of a midsize studio told me in early August.*We were in the lounge of the Soho House in West Hollywood. “It is probably the deepest and most existential crisis it’s ever been in. The writers are losing out. The middle layer of craftsmen are losing out. The top end of the talent are making more money than they ever have, but the nuts-and-bolts people who make the industry go round are losing out dramatically.” Hollywood had become a winner-takes-all economy.
“The truth was that the forces that had opened doors for Smith were the same ones that had made her individual work seem not to matter. They were the same forces that had been degrading writers’ working lives… they were cannibalizing the business…”
I don’t know exactly how true but a couple of writers have suggested to me the broad strokes are correct. Also, for creative art this also leans into indie, “global cinema” over Hollywood; and I guess if possible not worrying about the money.
Thanks for reading.