Celine Nguyensays intellectual discovery is our birthright:

“reading and writing are the most dignified and worthy activities that anyone can do—and, in fact, are activities that everyone should do.”

I talked to Celine about changing your life by writing online, expanding the market for what you love, and starting somewhere, even if it requires pure impulse.

Celine writes personal canon, a newsletter focused on taking your intellectual development seriously as someone outside of academia or school. This includes literary criticism and many more interdisciplinary thoughts across art, culture, design, and technology. She doubles as a product designer in her professional life.

We discuss:

• leisurely research and creating a curriculum for your growth long after you graduate: “who do I want to be at the end of the season?”

• why literary classics can be thrilling rather than dutiful, how you can expand the market for what you love, and why you should read Proust

• using parasociality to psyop people into doing things that are good for them

• how studying historical contexts makes us smarter about the present, and how to root yourself in epistemic humility about the now

• why note taking systems must be a means to an end, and how her best “systems” are inefficient handwritten journals and actual published work

• becoming the “Venkatesh Rao for tumblr girls”

• how learning makes you live “longer”

• that many will wait a lifetime for someone to give them permission to do what they’ve always hoped to do

Dialectic 42: Celine Nguyen - Nurturing Your Mind in Public is available below and on all platforms.