So the medical kit was one thing. Other . . . I had a few little — duct tape! — tools that are essential to keeping things going. Some super glue. KELLY: GPS is better. I have a drawer full of fabulous maps that I don’t even take with me anymore — paper maps. Inverting the equation and echoing Maimonedes’s wisdom on repentance and repair, he maps the noblest path to seeking forgiveness when you yourself have erred: KELLY: I don’t know how Christianity itself will change. I think that — the Christian creed is that humans are made in the image of God. Therefore, since God is a creator and made other beings like us, that this could reinforce the idea of demigods and that we are godlike: we’re fulfilling the commandment to be like God by creating other beings. We might have to have some — what’s the word I want — guidance, some principles about “here’s how to be a good god, based on biblical principles.” That’s a possibility. It's harder to think different when we're connected together. And I find that traveling, it being physical, having those hurdles that your body has, and being outside of your head and actually immersed in the world, and using your hands to do things, it ignites different ideas. It ignites ideas that you can't get just by thinking about things.

COWEN: They’ve said it already, right? I don’t believe them, but they already say it if you ask them to. KELLY: Because here’s what it is: the amount of effort required to make clothing by hand is so enormous. The traditional way you make clothing is you make fibers from wool. You spin the threads, then they have to make into a loom. In essence, these pieces of wisdom serve more as reminders than anything else. Often, they echo wisdom we have encountered before, although perhaps not in the same guise. My endeavour has been to express these insights in my own unique language, to stimulate recollection. For most of us, that will take all our lives. It will take all our lives to get to the point where we have a grasp of what it is that we do much better, if not better, than anybody. And there may be some people who are prodigies, who very early in life can see and know themselves well enough that they know what it is that they can do better than anybody else, but most of us, it's going to take a long time.Over time, I'm not sure how I would say it's changed. So maybe, one, is that kind of appreciating the distillation process. It's a piece of advice which I put into the book, which is this idea that all professional writers get to where you have to generate lots of bad stuff, first drafts that you're going to throw away, but know that. And I didn't know that in the beginning. I didn't realize that you would do that. Joanna: Oh, no, I'm excited. And there is indeed a lot of excellent advice in the book. So I've pulled out some particular quotes for writers to explore further. And the first is: “Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think.” Then, thirdly, I think thinking in terms of generations rather than just the immediate next quarter or next year — I think that also would enable us to manage the planet in a better way, because lots of the planetary things that we’re interested in and paying attention to have a longer-range dynamic than just the immediate year or two: the “short now,” we call it. KELLY: I think you’re right. I think that sometimes people are looking for confirmation about things that they’ve already decided. Sometimes they’re actually looking for justification for something they’ve already decided. I think sometimes they are actually looking for attention. But I think there’s a sense of, maybe, confirmation. I’m not sure how much people are actually looking for information from this. KELLY: I’m very happy when I travel. I’m very content. I think I was a little frantic. People didn’t like to travel with me, often, because I really literally was working from morning to night. I wasn’t relaxing, hanging around the pool. Even when I was visiting things, I was on the hunt for these images. I’ve since learned to take a different mode.

I work with writers. So I work with writers who love to write. I don't love to write, I love to have written. And so I'm much more comfortable in that kind of distilling something down and removing words, rather than adding words or making up words.

KELLY: [laughs] Let’s see. Something that I changed my mind about, maybe? I think I advised someone when I was at Wired to accept to do some things that they were not inclined to do. “Do one for the team” kind of a thing. And I felt, in retrospect, that that was maybe dishonest, in the sense that I would not have done that myself. So I was advising somebody to do something that I would not have done. Maybe it was good for them, but I wasn’t certain about that. So I would say that was a bad piece of advice. Joanna: Well, it's interesting, you say subterranean. I mean— Do we even know what it is that is broken in ourselves when we make our art? I believe these distilled pieces of wisdom are more readily recollected, serving as triggers for our memory. Thus, their primary function is to serve as reminders. To the young readers, I hope that they could have encountered these insights earlier in life. And I anticipate that these nuggets of wisdom could be beneficial to young minds experiencing them now. In his latest book, “ Excellent Advice for Living,” Kelly does not shy away from distilling the wisdom he’s amassed over decades of pioneering work into practical, everyday lessons. With an insightful blend of the futuristic and the eternal, he prompts us to reconsider the interplay between technology, personal growth, and overall well-being. This book not only enlightens us with its vivid exploration of the relationship between humanity and progress but also inspires us to carve a fulfilling path in a world that is incessantly evolving. Kelly’s profound wisdom and unique perspective, once again, highlight his place as an indispensable guide in our rapidly changing times.

Because there’s a value — here’s what it is, and that is something related to what I say, is that there’s a tendency to always want to keep moving, but often what I’m looking for is right next to me. I can sometimes miss that ability to go deeper because I’m still traveling. I’m still in that motion mode. I didn't hate it, it wasn't that I was burned out, it was just like, oh, okay, well, can't travel, that's alright, we'll make stuff at home. And so that was something surprising that I did not know about myself, which was that I was going to be happy not traveling. Joanna: Some people in the writing community call them ‘pantsers.' And that is a very American word, obviously, because in England, pants is underwear. So we kind of adopted the word ‘discovery writer,' because you know, that's better than pants. COWEN: Do you ever feel that if you don’t photograph a place, you haven’t really been there? Does it hold a different status? Like you haven’t organized the information; it’s just out on Pluto somewhere?KELLY: Trying to do too much. I’ve learned a little bit better, but I am very ambitious in that, particularly if I’m with other people, like my family. I have to repeatedly try to accomplish too much.