Snapshot · SOLVED with Mark Manson
Mark Manson has not written a new book since co-writing Will Smith's book in 2021, but says he is starting to feel excited about writing again and plans to start a new book in 2026.
Where this was said
At 1:00:50 · chapter starts 59:55
This section zips through three audience questions with characteristic efficiency. On stopping porn: imagine you're the parent of a 10-year-old who can't stop — download the safeguard apps, set the filters, restrict the phone access. We all have that 10-year-old inside us who makes terrible decisions, and sometimes we need to parent ourselves accordingly. On Voyager 1: the whole Golden Disc idea was naive recency bias (1970s scientists assuming Chuck Berry was peak human culture) and worse, it's game-theoretically dangerous — any alien civilisation capable of decoding it doesn't need it to locate us, and if they didn't know we existed, we may have just sent out a flare to a potential predator. Mark's answer: don't send the probe. On creative doubt: it never goes away, every author he knows ships despite feeling their work is terrible, and the asymmetry is decisive — the worst-case outcome of posting something bad is that nobody sees it, while the upside of posting something great can change your life.
The music conservatory Mark Manson attended had a dropout rate of approximately 87–90%, illustrating how few people reach the 'religious' stage of commitment to a creative calling.
A novel called 'Call Me, I'll Hide the Body' triggered a 14-publisher bidding war and sold for $2.4 million before critics alleged it was predominantly written by AI.
John Mulaney cold-texted Robby Hoffman out of nowhere to offer to produce her Netflix special, which became Wake Up.
Robby Hoffman posed as a courier to hand-deliver her spec script directly to the president of HBO Canada early in her career.
Robby and Mulaney filmed two shows in one night for the Netflix special; after the first they knew they had it, so the second was a victory lap.
Jimmy Carr performs up to 300 shows a year, often doing two shows per night, which he says reduces nerves rather than increasing them.
Jimmy Carr says that speaking at roughly 92 beats per minute is the optimal cadence for comedy and public speaking, including political speeches like Obama's.
The oldest recorded joke appears in a Roman book called 'The Lover of Laughter' and is still funny — a barber asking how a man wants his haircut, who replies 'in silence'.
Jimmy Carr argues that comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Dave Chappelle have permanently expanded the conversational Overton window on sex, politics, and taboo topics.
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