Episode 36: Writing on the Wind
Back to Work
5by5
4.7 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 October 2011
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Merlin Mann talks with Dan Benjamin about his dogged obsession with the flexibility of index cards—for propping up tables, giving very small cuts, and getting babies hygienically removed. Then, there is much talk of graphing your focal length against your time and attention.
Links for this episode:
- The Dan Patrick Show | Official Home
- 43f Podcast: John Gruber & Merlin Mann's Blogging Panel at SxSW | 43 Folders
- kickingbear» Blog Archive » About Steve
- Anne Lamott on index cards | 43 Folders
- Richard Stallman Eats Something From His Foot - YouTube
- New Podcast: "Roderick on the Line" - John Roderick and Merlin Mann
- Scared Shitless | 43 Folders
- Geena Davis - The Fly - YouTube
- Introducing the Hipster PDA | 43 Folders
- Mole (unit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- kung fu grippe - Synecdoche, New York - Official Trailer I...
- This explains everything | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
- Armand Van Helden - Hear My Name - YouTube
- gladwell dot com - the social life of paper
- Make Magazine: "Death to Paper! Long Live Paper!"
- Video: Merlin's Macworld '09 Talk, "Toward Patterns for Creativity" - Merlin's Media - Video, Audio, Photos and More - Merlin Mann
- Steve Jobs: a personal remembrance
- Daring Fireball: Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot
- A Strange Sort of Prison, a Strange Sort of Freedom
- Passenger 57 (1992) - IMDb
- Hype Williams videography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Amazon: "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharpe
- [SPONSOR] - Squarespace - Build a Website, Create a Blog (coupon code: "`MerlinLovesUs`")
- [SPONSOR] - Byword • A Simple Text Editor for Mac
- [SPONSOR] - Byword on the Mac App Store
- Stallman: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died."
- [SPONSOR] - Adding an Audio Podcast | Squarespace Help & Support
- 5by5 | 5by5 Specials #2: Thank You, Steve Jobs
- Joe Mande - R.I.P. The Andy Rooney Game
- My Neighbor, Steve Jobs - Palo Alto, CA Patch
- What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? - NYTimes.com
- Focal length - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Should I Email Marco Arment? — Please don't email me.
- 43 Folders: Thanks, Steve
- No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome | 43 Folders
- Classic Hype Williams Video: "Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check" by Busta Rhymes
- Marked: MultiMarkdown preview, everywhere
- nvALT 2.1 - Notational Velocity Fork
- Markdown Service Tools - Brett Terpstra
- 5by5 | The Talk Show #60: I Tip Profusely
Sponsored by Sponsor 5by5, Byword, and Squarespace.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode of Back to Work is brought to you by Byward. |
| 0:02.8 | Byward is a fantastic writing app for OS X. It gives you just the tools you need, |
| 0:07.0 | whether you prefer to write in rich text, plain text, or my favorite, mark down. |
| 0:11.5 | Byward helps you get those words down fast and easy with as little friction as possible. |
| 0:16.3 | It is absolutely my go-to writing app. |
| 0:18.8 | You can learn more about Byward by visiting BywardApp.com. |
| 0:22.0 | That's BYW-OR-D-A-P-P-BywardApp.com. |
| 0:26.5 | Thanks to BYW-OR-D for supporting By-By-Five and Back to Work. |
| 0:31.1 | Oh, yeah. How's it going? Good. Good week. |
| 0:36.2 | Big week. Really big week. That's a couple weeks. |
| 0:38.6 | It's been two big, two big, two big. |
| 0:42.4 | Yeah, yeah. We should talk about a little bit of that. |
| 0:45.8 | Yeah, I mean, I think we should. |
| 0:49.2 | And I got other stuff too. I got some cards. I've written a few things down, |
| 0:52.8 | but you know, it's mostly, I think it's going to mostly, we're going to open the phone lines. |
| 0:56.6 | This week. How are we doing that? |
| 1:00.5 | You got that set up, right? Ask Faith. Can you ask Faith to just flip over to the phone line |
| 1:05.2 | acceptor? I do actually have phone lines. They're not on right now, |
| 1:09.4 | but I need to do a lot of questions. How do you do that? Do you do a custom |
| 1:13.2 | holder or a Byway sweatshirt? How do you do that? You do a full sweatshirt? |
| 1:17.4 | It's a custom thing. It's a voice over IP. |
| 1:20.4 | And it's basically you call it. It has like X number of lines that go into a holding queue. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from 5by5, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of 5by5 and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

