I’ve always had an obsessive curiosity about people’s personal philosophies and what shaped them. There’s so much to learn from studying how another person lives, and everyone has something to teach. Having recently articulated this passion, I started interviewing some of my friends about the way they lived, the things they found interesting and important, and why. It was a phenomenal and invigorating experience, but the project fell by the wayside because I didn’t really know what to do with the interviews after I had them. After spending many hours manually transcribing them, I was disgusted to find that I took no pleasure in reading the raw, unfiltered transcript, and editing each interview into a more palatable form, seemed disingenuous to me. I tabled the project and hadn’t looked at it until a conversation with a friend reminded me that it existed.

We had been talking about the importance of side projects, and the idea suddenly hit me of how to revive and improve the interview project. I’m creating a podcast called The Importance Interviews to explore what people find important in life and why. I’ll aim to do one every other week, and the goal will be to start with people I know, and have those people recommend people I don’t know. I might  do a little write up about each, and I’ll definitely include some show-notes where interested people can find books, tools, websites or other resources we may mention.

The Importance Interviews will premier on November 1st. Stay Tuned!