How to pursue excellence … in noodles (unlocked bonus)
Search Engine
PJ Vogt
4.8 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The world right now, seems tilted towards the good enough. The AI-written wedding toast, the half-assed attempt. Despite this, a handmade noodle shop is trying to make perfect noodles. Trying so hard that they have signs admonishing their customers to ONLY EAT THEIR SPICY NOODLES THE CORRECT WAY, DO NOT TAKE THEM TO-GO, THE EXPERIENCE WILL BE RUINED.
Why do some people still want to do small things perfectly, even at the expense of profits? An interview with Jason Wang, of Xi'an Famous Foods.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello. It is July at Search Engine, which means our team is out of office. For me personally, |
| 0:06.9 | that means a month where I refuse to make any plan that was formed more than 24 hours in advance. |
| 0:13.2 | My happiest space. We'll be back in August with news stories for you. In the meantime, |
| 0:17.9 | we are airing some episodes that our free listeners have never heard, |
| 0:21.2 | including this one. It first aired on incognito mode, our paid premium feed, where we publish |
| 0:26.7 | without ads and also publish extra episodes. Like this one, which I think about a lot, |
| 0:32.2 | it's about the pursuit of excellence in domains that other people might overlook. And if you |
| 0:36.8 | enjoy it, there are a bunch |
| 0:38.1 | more episodes you've never heard. You just have to click the link to sign up in our show notes. |
| 0:42.1 | It's $50 a mentor who said something to me once that really stuck. |
| 1:17.6 | He was teaching me how to make podcasts. |
| 1:19.6 | Something had gone wrong. |
| 1:20.5 | I was beating myself up for it. |
| 1:22.3 | And he said to me, everything wants to suck. |
| 1:25.7 | Like the natural orientation of everything is for it to be bad. |
| 1:28.9 | And if you're trying to make something good, you're just fighting against that the whole time. |
| 1:32.6 | I thought that was true. |
| 1:33.7 | It stuck with me. |
| 1:35.2 | And now, if I'm anywhere where something is excellent, I start to get curious. |
| 1:39.3 | Like, who is making this excellent? |
| 1:41.7 | It wants to suck. |
| 1:43.2 | Who is the person, and what are the choices they're making to fight the natural orientation |
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