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Building a 50-year passion project: Vanishing Asia, with Kevin Kelly.

If you enjoy this episode, consider buying me a coffee to show your support! ☕️ We currently make a loss on the show and your support means the world!


Today on the podcast we have Kevin Kelly - the founding editor of Wired Magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first 7 years. He's also:

-Written a New York Times bestseller on technology and written books on the economy and on decentralization.

- Been the publisher and editor of Whole earth Catalogue - an American counterculture magazine.

- Founded the popular Cool Tools website in 2003, which has published a cool tool every day for past 18 years.

- Co-chair of the Long Now Foundation - which aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster/cheaper" mindset and to promote "slower/better" thinking.


Kevin Kelly also has another side project - spanning over the past 50 years - where he has travelled to 35 Asian countries photographing the disappearing cultural traditions - and recently he put his curated works in a book called ‘Vanishing Asia’.


Today we talk about everything from how and why he writes (and why he’s different from Neil Stephenson, the author of Snowcrash, who has to write every day). We also talk about why he’s interested in crypto and projects that don’t make sense, why he believes the centre of gravity of culture will move to Asia, why becoming too big as a company or too good at a skill holds you back, and why he wants to be a youtube star. I hope you enjoy!


Buy Vanishing Asia here or check out Kevin Kelly's site.


Or, sign up to the Out of Hours newsletter here, or email hello [at] outofhours.org.

More Episodes

3/2/2023

Allbirds: Building a sustainable shoe brand, with Tim Brown.

Season 4, Ep. 5
If you enjoy this episode, please buy me a coffee to show your support! ☕️Today on the podcast we have Tim Brown, co-founder of Allbirds.  Today Allbirds is a public company, with an IPO in 2021, and almost one thousand employees. But it didn’t start that way. In fact for many years, Allbirds was just an idea, a side project for Tim Brown - who was a professional footballer for the first part of his career, even playing in the world cup. Tim was bored of the branded shoes he had to wear as a footballer, and started to wonder if a better shoe could be made. For years, he experimented. Tim is a New Zealander, which is the home of merino wool, and he started experimenting with creating a new shoe material with his homegrown merino wool. After he had a prototype shoe, he launched a kickstarter - which proved the idea was popular with others. In 2016 - Tim officially co-founded Allbirds with his cofounder Joey Zwillinger - who helped shape the sustainability focus for the company. They are now a carbon neutral company, and were termed the ‘world’s most comfortable shoe’ by time magazine.We talk about tall poppy syndrome, why he thinks a sense of humour matters in entrepreneurship, and why he thinks the 85% rule of effort is so important. I hope you enjoy.  Join the Out of Hours newsletter here! If you enjoy this episode, consider buying me a coffee to show your support! ☕️ Your support shows me it's worth continuing!