Brain Food: Tighter Edits
FS | BRAIN FOOD
May 3rd, 2026 - #679 - read online - Free Version
Welcome to Brain Food, your weekly signal in a world full of noise.
Tiny Thoughts
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People underestimate themselves and overestimate how long things take.
You can do far more than you think, far better, and far faster.
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The people who show up for you when you need them are never the ones you tried to impress.
They're the people you helped when there was nothing in it for you.
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Your body tells you the truth about your life twice a day, at the door each morning and night, by answering a question you didn't ask: Am I excited to go to work? Am I excited to come home?
If you pour yourself into work because home feels empty, you look successful to everyone but those who matter most.
Insights
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Bob Klein, chief engineer of the F-14 program:
"The best way to do something 'lean' is to gather a tight group of people, give them very little money, and very little time."
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Eileen Gu on sportsmanship:
“I showed the world I wasn’t afraid to try. That’s sportsmanship. That’s the Olympic spirit. I think it's representing young women in a way that I would hope to be.That's my contribution.”
***
Poet David Whyte on the right partner:
“One of the more restful achievements of having found the right partner in life is that we suddenly realize how much effort has previously gone into all the searching. Finding a mate takes enormous amounts of physical and emotional energy—dressing, comings and goings, and endless drama—which is why it can be so difficult to look again in midlife if we lose that happiness and must seek anew.”
The Knowledge Project
No episode this week, but here are some recent ones you might have missed:
- Greg Brockman, on the origin story, the race to AGI, why chatbots seem biased, and what's going to happen to your job.
- Mario Harik, CEO of XPO, if you listen to nothing else, listen to the ~10 minutes starting here on running more effective meetings.
- Joe Liemandt, the principal of Alpha School, the top-performing school in North America, on how to 10x kids' learning.
- Never miss an episode: subscribe to the podcast on Apple / Spotify
+ A few of you caught it just by watching/listening, but we have a new producer. Brockman was her first episode, and you can hear the difference a world-class producer makes. Tighter edits. Better pacing. A clear arc to the conversation.
+ Something I'd never noticed until recently: when I was talking to Mario Harik, Brad Jacobs' protégé, I kept feeling like I was talking to Brad. I went back and watched Brad's video to check — same way of thinking, same cadence, same mannerisms. So I wondered about Bruce Flatt and Connor Teskey. Sure enough, same pattern.
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Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.
— Shane Parrish
P.S. If this doesn't make you smile or want to have kids, I don't know what to tell you.
P.P.S. The Great Mental Models Boxed Set makes a great gift for your recent or upcoming grad. Also, Clear Thinking is on an outrageous sale at Amazon. I've never seen it so cheap (Amazon controls pricing, not me!)
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