Ep. 363: Escaping the Digital Doldrums

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does Walt Disney’s malaise in the 1940s have to do with our current struggles with our screens? In this episode, Cal uses a little-known story from Disney’s midlife to identify an effective strategy for escaping the nerve-deadening, dull state created by spending more and more of your professional and personal life on screens. He then answers listener questions (with an unusual level of spiciness), tries to calm himself with a reprise of the SLOW PRODUCTIVITY CORNER theme music, and concludes with a discussion of a recent essay he wrote about how no one really knows anything about AI.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.
0:21.9	So this is the last episode.
0:24.4	I'm recording up north in my undisclosed location.
0:28.4	I am joined by my producer, Jesse, at the Deep Work HQ.
0:32.9	Jesse, there's a lot I'm going to miss about being up here.
0:36.6	The one thing I am looking forward to is getting back to the HQ.
0:41.1	I need to record podcast.
0:43.5	Yeah.
0:45.4	I've spent too much time recording podcast on dresser drawers and in front of windows with too much light.
0:53.5	Without my good mic and without my camera,
0:56.2	I do look forward to the HQ.
0:58.9	We do have to put in like a giant stuffed black bear, though,
1:01.9	so I don't miss Vermont too much.
1:04.3	Oh, I revealed where I was.
1:05.5	Uh-oh.
1:09.7	Okay.
1:10.3	Somehow the paparazzi have not found me. Anyways, up north or not, we've got a good show. We've got a deep dive. We could have unexpected connection between something I was reading and something we talk a lot about on this show. We got good questions. We got a cool case study. And our final segment,
1:29.1	instead of what I'm reading like we normally do, I'm going to do what I'm writing. I actually
1:33.3	want to talk about a recent newsletter article that I thought was worth sharing because it elaborated
1:39.7	on some ideas that we had mentioned earlier this month. All right. So that's the game plan, Jesse.
1:45.0	I think we should get right into it and get started with the deep dive.
1:50.8	All right.
	...

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