The Points You Shouldn't Score: A New Year's Resolution
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Pablo Torre
4.7 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everyone complains about cellphones. But there's something bigger and more insidious going on, from football teams and Netflix shows to law schools and Instagram. So philosopher C. Thi Nguyen offers some gamified advice for 2026, to plug the downside of data into the upside of your mind: Metrics help you win at work, but can you free yourself from the algo? Hyper-optimization has changed the NBA, but what about your kitchen? We've handed over complexity for competition, but is there time to steal back our humanity from A.I.? Plus: punk points, art governments, sore losers at Twister, a context-invariant kernel... and The Meat Sack.
• Read "The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game" by C. Thi Nguyen
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. |
| 0:06.9 | I feel like the entire purpose of my life is about to be met, because I think the purpose of my life is to be here talking with you about this question. |
| 0:16.3 | Right after this ad. |
| 0:24.2 | I wrote this article once about how like during pandemic, I fell apart and I realized part |
| 0:28.5 | of why I fell apart was I didn't have a commute anymore. |
| 0:32.3 | This is like my basement office and I would just take care of the kids and then walk down |
| 0:36.8 | here and do work and then be finished with work and there would be a care of the kids and then walk down here and do work |
| 0:37.6 | and then be finished with work and there would be a 20 second buffer to go back upstairs. |
| 0:42.7 | And I realized like during pandemic, I started taking a fake commute walk around for like 10 minutes |
| 0:49.3 | because like I just like it was just not possible. Oh, I relate to that so much just the need to to move the meat |
| 0:56.7 | sack that is my body just to make sure that like the meat sac start flowing again yeah it's real man |
| 1:02.4 | it's real um thank you for doing this by the way i'm so excited your book the score and i'll read |
| 1:09.0 | the subhead how to stop Playing Somebody Else's Game, |
| 1:12.0 | It's One of those books where I pay at the highest compliment. |
| 1:15.5 | It made me stare off into the middle distance a lot. |
| 1:20.7 | That is what I want, man. |
| 1:23.1 | Genuinely. So, Teen Wend, thank you for being the foremost authority and the philosophy of games and |
| 1:28.0 | also metrics as they relate to each other and to ourselves and to my brain and to the thing I can't |
| 1:32.7 | stop thinking about, which is why the fuck I didn't realize this until I read your book? |
| 1:37.2 | Why didn't I see this in the way that you see it so clearly? And I'm excited to figure out why |
| 1:42.5 | I've been an idiot. Can you tell me what the this is? |
| 1:45.0 | I want to know what you mean by this. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Pablo Torre, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Pablo Torre and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.