Field Notes
Field notes explore the art of conversation through moments that linger—tensions worth examining, questions that resist easy answers. Each essay follows one thread from dialogue into something larger: how we listen, what we miss, why connection sometimes happens in the gaps between words.
The Resonance Test
Someone reconnected with Mary Chan after a long silence—not to catch up, just to ask a favor. The problem isn’t asking. The problem is that asking reveals what was never there. The relationships worth having are the ones where the conversation never really stops. Everything else is just networking—mutual extraction with better manners. More →
Generosity Without The Ledger
Robin Waite helped direct six hundred lost people at an event—dumped his coat and started helping, though he wasn’t staff. This led to opportunities worth hundreds of thousands. But he’s clear: “The moment I make it about me and my mortgage, it’s gone.” People sense when you’re keeping a ledger. You can’t strategize your way… More →
When Control Kills the Conversation
Jeff Revilla runs a podcast theater and has noticed a pattern: the most prepared hosts struggle. They’ve written monologues and scripted jokes—and it bombs. They’re not in the moment. Control optimizes against the spontaneity that makes conversation alive. The audience can sense when someone is genuinely responding versus executing a plan. Structure helps, but scripting… More →
Foundation before freedom
Tracy Hazzard learned at RISD that you need foundation before you earn the right to break rules. Innovation comes from understanding deeply how something works, then figuring out a new way around it. This applies to conversation: someone who hasn’t internalized fundamentals like listening or allowing silence looks chaotic when attempting spontaneity. Foundation doesn’t constrain… More →
The invitation of doubt
Cassian Bellino started her podcast from not knowing—wanting to believe but unable to through blind acceptance. She discovered God invites questions, not just tolerates them. Her doubt wasn’t an obstacle to connection but the connection itself. When she approached scholars with genuine uncertainty, they responded with openness. Certainty closes things down. Doubt creates space where… More →
The real foundation
Tim Winders has published weekly for over six years despite the work being financially negative. The real foundation? The conversations nourish his soul. This is counterintuitive—we think good dialogue means disappearing into attentiveness for others. But being fed by the conversation yourself makes genuine dialogue sustainable. When we’re genuinely nourished, we’re not performing generosity but… More →
Worth doing badly
David Wilson describes himself as a recovering perfectionist who realized that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly and playfully. Wilson calls it addiction to competence—we become so identified with being capable that we lose the ability to try things we might be bad at. What if the willingness to converse… More →
The open question
Stany Foucher’s training sessions always ended with open questions from his teacher—not answers or corrections, but questions like “why were you in that state of mind?” that resisted easy resolution. The open question doesn’t close the training but extends it. The question travels with you, working on you long after. What if the best conversations… More →
When effort gets in the way
Nima King demonstrates something counterintuitive at his seminars: when he releases tension in his outstretched arm, the movement becomes not weaker but stronger—effortless yet difficult to stop. This suggests effort itself can become the obstacle. Applied to conversation, subtraction might mean letting go of the need to sound smart, fill every silence, or extract particular… More →
The audience of one
Connection doesn’t scale through abstraction—it scales through specificity. When Lindsay McMahon thinks about one isolated listener struggling with language, she’s not limiting her reach but sharpening it. Making that listener concrete instead of abstract makes the connection more transferable. Thousands in different situations recognize themselves in that portrait precisely because it’s drawn with enough detail… More →