Dialectic

Ken Sakata (Instagram, Substack) is the founder and designer of his fashion brand, Front Office. Ken was a surgeon in Australia until a fake football club he invented during COVID turned into merch and woke up a lifelong dream to be a designer. His short video essays on the history and craft behind everyday clothing made him one of the internet’s best explainers of fashion, and this year he moved to Tokyo to take his work to the next level. I wrote about Ken in 2024 and have been following his journey since. We talk about leaving medicine, whether creative work is selfish, and clothing’s mix of utility, status, and art. We discuss getting good quickly, what makes a garment meaningful, why fashion keeps looking backward, and Ken’s worry that he may be destined to be the Anthony Bourdain of fashion rather than a great designer. I hope you are inspired to pull loose threads, take dormant dreams seriously, and find out what you’re capable of. Full transcript and links: dialectic.fm/ken-sakata --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life’s work and the place that holds your context as you work with AI. Notion’s new auto model router picks the right model for each task, Notion agents can now use a browser and a computer and work for up to 24 hours, and Notion’s MCP lets the AI tools you already use work from the same context. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. This episode is supported by Google. Genie 4 is Google DeepMind’s latest interactive world model: a live simulation that responds to where you move and look, your prompts, and your voice. Genie 4 is in research preview. Learn more: https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-4-a-new-generation-of-world-simulation/ --- Timestamps (0:00) Intro: Ken Sakata (3:54) Start: Optimism and the Impractical Dream (8:04) Leaving Medicine and Whether Creative Work Is Selfish (17:16) Design as Problem-Solving: Utility, Status, and Art (32:36) Finding Your Weapon as a Designer (39:43) Mistakes, an Unlikely Path, and Iterating (51:25) Designing Meaningful Things and Cultivating a Point of View (1:00:03) Focus and Pulling the Thread (1:14:18) Front Office, Jil Sander, and Clothes for Walking Around a Museum (1:25:18) Why Fashion Keeps Looking Backward (1:37:20) What It Would Mean to Be Great, Busking on Instagram, and Bob Ross (1:45:37) The Anthony Bourdain of Fashion (2:01:20) Japan, Craft, and Curation (2:16:08) Books, Editing, and Generous Mentors (2:24:49) Advice on Clothes & Closing Questions

Quinten Farmer (X, LinkedIn) is a co-founder and the CEO of Tolan, which makes voice-first AI characters designed to be a friend and guide. He previously co-founded Even, a fintech company for workers with unpredictable paychecks, which was acquired in 2022. Quinten believes that we all deserve someone who believes in us unconditionally. Tolan is his attempt to give everyone that. We discuss technology that helps us be rather than do, building for people close to him, the early design decisions that shaped Tolan, and helping people grow in small, iterative ways. Then: morally opinionated technology and the sacred, why superintelligence became "the easy part," and Quinten’s dual life, splitting his weeks between San Francisco and a much slower life on an island in Washington State. I hope you’re inspired to show up for people, believe in them a little irrationally, and build things that stand for something. Full transcript & links: https://dialectic.fm/quinten-farmer --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life’s work and a context system for everything you and your team use to work with each other and with AI. New models are available in Notion the day they launch, and you can work with agents you build in Notion or any other agents and tools you already use. Notion keeps every collaborator and agent on the same page. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps (0:00) Intro to Quinten (3:04) Start: Why Everyone Needs Someone Who Believes in Them (17:36) Do vs. Be: What We Should Ask of Technology (24:01) Quinten's First Company, Even, and Building for People Close to You (31:07) Clarence, Quinten's Tolan (37:48) Early Design Decisions: Non-human, Lore, Voice, and Presence (49:47) Therapist vs. Supportive Friend & Growth One Small Step at a Time (56:04) Bringing People Closer, Memory, and Why Tolans Forget (1:03:24) Why You Can't Edit Your Tolan: Personality, Healthy Behavior, and a Point of View (1:12:26) Morally Opinionated Technology, Religion, and the Sacred (1:20:51) Personal Superintelligence and Why Everybody Needs a Cute Little Guy (1:27:50) Kindness to Machines, Digital Spaces, and Naming Tolan (1:35:01) New Characters and Demographics (1:43:36) Pricing, Trust, and Avoiding Dark Patterns (1:48:17) The Team at Tolan (1:52:49) His Dual Life Between The Island and SF (1:59:17) Spaces that Create Belonging (2:03:25) Closing Questions

Josh Miller (X, LinkedIn) is co-founder and CEO of The Browser Company, makers of Dia and Arc. The Browser Company was acquired by Atlassian last year. Before The Browser Company, Josh was an investor at Thrive Capital, Director of Product in the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, and co-founder of Branch, which was acquired by Facebook. He studied sociology and has always been thoughtful about environments: institutions, companies, and digital and physical spaces. We talk about his effort to improve the space many of us spend our days in: the browser. We discuss the tension between Josh’s creative and commercial instincts, optimizing for feelings, and hiring unlikely stars. Josh reflects on much of the journey with Arc and Dia and why he’s still betting on the browser in the AI era, now as part of Atlassian. I hope you are inspired to believe in people and leave your fingerprints on what you create. Full transcript & links: https://dialectic.fm/josh-miller --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life’s work and a hub for all the context you and your team use to work with each other and with AI. New models are available in Notion the day they launch, and you can work with agents you build in Notion or any other agents and tools you already use. As tools change, Notion is the Switzerland in the middle that keeps your context consistent across all of them. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro: Josh Miller (1:55) Start: Not Commercial Enough & Optimizing for Feelings (9:14) Sociology, the Obama White House, Thrive, and the 5% Favicon (15:38) Bowling Alone, James Turrell, and Roden Crater (22:12) Betting on People, Leaving Thrive, and Where Computing Goes (34:54) “Assume You Don’t Know” and What Was Sacred at The Browser Company (41:58) Intuition, Road Trips, and Leaving Fingerprints on Things (53:57) Building in Public, Pulling Back, and the Road to Atlassian (1:03:23) The Internet Computer in the AI Era: Codex, Cloud Browsers, and Why Everything Is Converging (1:13:30) How Dia Wins (1:17:07) Agents, Muse, and the Red Giraffe (1:22:43) Software Is Becoming Art (1:32:13) Believing in People, Leaving Facebook for the White House, and What’s Next (1:47:17) Closing Questions Subscribe at newsletter.dialectic.fm for email updates.

Patrick Hsu (X, Website, Arc lab) is co-founder and core investigator of Arc Institute, assistant professor of pathology at Stanford, and venture partner at Thrive Capital. Patrick has always been precocious: he began college as a young teenager and contributed to early CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing breakthroughs as part of Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Today, the Hsu Lab at Arc works where genome engineering meets AI, from bridge recombinases that can rearrange up to a million bases of DNA at once to Arc's Evo biological foundation models. We discuss Patrick’s pace and ambition, infinite games, and why he was drawn to biology. Then, we traverse power laws in biotech and the reach of GLP-1s, research taste and success, Arc’s multidisciplinary model, data limits in AI-enabled bio, and cell and bio foundation models. We also discuss how AI and new science will help us solve diseases, design life, and push the boundaries of sci-fi when it comes to human health. I hope you are inspired to raise your bar, commit to reinvention, and hold a lightness that makes the long and challenging journey fun. --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. Notion is a collaborative workspace for your life's work, and it works with whatever AI you use. New models are typically available in Notion the day they launch, you can tag agents from inside Notion, and you can tag Notion from your other AI tools. As the tools around you change, Notion stays the one place that holds your context. Notion is also hiring across product, engineering, design, storytelling, and more. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- This episode is supported by Google. Gemini 4 Argon recently launched and is built for long-horizon work. I used it inside Antigravity and gave it all 60 Dialectic transcripts: more than a million words. Instead of summarizing episodes one by one, Argon synthesized across them, tracing how ideas from early conversations connect to later ones. Together we made The Dialectic Compendium, an interactive book of the themes that run across the show, with a dossier on every episode and a 3D version you can page through on the web. Gemini 4 Argon is available in the Gemini app, Antigravity, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini API. Compendium: https://jacksondahl.com/dialectic/compendium --- Timestamps (0:00) Opening Highlights (1:39) Intro: Patrick Hsu (4:29) Start: Boldness, Infinite Games, & Ambition (12:54) GLP-1s and Power Laws in Biotechnology (20:17) Expelled at 13 and Falling for Biology (25:51) What Makes a Good Biologist, Research Taste, and Biology’s Data Challenges (37:58) The Arc Model: Full-Stack Science (52:01) Betting on People, Style, & Learning to Simplify (57:22) Perturbation, World Models, and Evo (1:03:27) Virtual Cell Models (1:09:56) Designing Life: From Stem Cells to Genome Writing (1:18:39) Testing, Bro Science, and Human Data (1:24:26) Can It Exist vs. Will It Exist: Science Meets Markets (1:29:59) Biofuturism: Interoception, Peptides, Muscle Modulation, Sleep, and New Forms of Life (1:43:47) Fun, Obsolescence, Going Slow, and the Future (1:54:27) Outro

Joe Gebbia (Website, X, LinkedIn, Wikipedia) is the first U.S. Chief Design Officer, leading the National Design Studio. He is also the co-founder of Airbnb and Samara. The NDS and this role were created by executive order of President Trump in August 2025. I met Joe Washington, D.C, to reflect on the past year and talk about bringing the care and ambition of great product design to the digital services that every American uses. Joe & NDS just launched America.gov, their flagship project of the last year: the central entry point for how Americans get what they need from the government. Joe believes that design is how you respect and value the people who use a product or service. At Airbnb, that meant helping strangers feel comfortable in each other’s homes. In government, it means refusing to accept a low bar for the websites and processes that Americans use to interact with the government. We begin with CritBuns, Joe’s RISD project that taught him that design is as much about storytelling as it is about product. Then, we discuss what he learned about designing for trust at Airbnb and his initial work at DOGE, streamlining and digitizing the federal retirement process. Joe walks me through America.gov, a single, AI-powered front door to government services. We discuss the challenges of scale and designing for people who are skeptical of both government and AI, including what it means to pass the “grandma test.” We wrap up with why ambitious technologists should aspire to work in government and his collaboration with Airbnb co-founders Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk. I hope this conversation raises your expectations for the things we’ve learned to tolerate, and inspires you to think about how you might serve your community or your country. Full transcript & links at dialectic.fm/joe-gebbia --- Dialectic is presented by Notion. As new models and agents arrive constantly, Notion acts as a context and consolidation layer for all the ways you and your team work with AI: a command center or simply a resilience layer, so your context comes with you even if you switch models or agents. You can also work with agents right inside Notion and share skills with your team through the Skills API. Learn more at notion.com/dialectic. --- Timestamps: 0:00 Opening Highlights 1:26 Intro: Joe Gebbia 4:12 CritBuns & Why Design is Half Story 15:24 Airbnb, The Feeling of Belonging, & Designing for Trust 28:29 Public Service & Fixing Federal Retirement 42:16 Speed, Craft, and Respect 48:43 ND Studio Projects: TrumpRx, Trump Accounts, and Realfood.gov 56:18 America.gov: A New Front Door to Government 1:05:35 Trust, Privacy, and Government AI 1:15:30 America.gov’s Roadmap 1:19:54 Recruiting for ND Studio and Public Service 1:23:41 Reflecting on Year One & Passing the Grandma Test 1:31:05 A Ticking Clock Toward 2028 & Building Beyond One Administration 1:35:44 AI & Product Development 1:38:36 Closing Questions: Charles & Ray Eames, AirBnB Co-Founders, & Trust in People