Ramble on me

If you were trying to gain access to someone’s thoughts – to really get “inside their mind” – how would you do it? What questions would you ask?

I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a new theory. My theory is that the best way to do this is not to ask a question or set of questions, but to instruct them to do something: Tell them to please talk without interruption for 20 minutes about whatever comes to their mind. In other words, tell them to ramble.

Rambling is too often treated as something to be avoided, and is dismissed as boring or incoherent or random. I’ll grant the last two, but not the first. Rambling is so not boring if you just realize that you are getting access to someone’s mind as purely as they can give it to you.

A lot of people whose minds I respect the most, who write the greatest stuff, I would actually prefer to hear them ramble than to read the words that they have so carefully pieced together in writing.

Here are some people I would pay to hear ramble, just off the top of my head. Some of these people you might know, others you will definitely know, others you will only know if you read the comments on this blog, and some you just aren't gonna know. Sorry.

Scott Adams
Werner Herzog
Tyler Cowen
Bill Geist
Zach Galifianakis
Bobby Knight
Charlie Rose
Conan O’Brien
David Letterman
Warren Buffett
Steve Martin
Garrison Keillor
Bill Murray
Jonah Lehrer
Oliver Sacks
Robin Hanson
Seth Roberts
Mark Hurst
Jason Kottke
Dan Ariely
Ben Casnocha
Colin Marshall
Oliver Burkeman
Marty Nemko
Bob Grabhorn
Xan Vongsathorn
Mark Larson
Anna Pougas
Robert Johnson
Hugh Hollowell
Mark Granville
Stephen Margolis
Merlin Mann
Michael Lewis
Brian Eno
Steve Jobs
Sarah Silverman
Mark Kingwell
Daniel Tammet
Alain de Botton
Steven Levitt
Chris Berman
Bill Simmons
Paul Graham
Kevin Kelly
Steven Berlin Johnson
Robert Krulwich


We need at least one ground rule if this is going to work. And that rule is this: No Storytelling. Storytelling is for show. This isn’t The Moth. At least my mind doesn’t make up stories when nobody’s looking.

It seems that a good way of measuring how interesting someone’s mind is – or more accurately, how interesting we perceive someone’s mind to be – would be to see how much people would be willing to pay to hear them ramble.

I wish there were a TED, or a Big Think, or a The Moth, or at least a frickin’ YouTube channel for unedited, unprompted rambling by interesting people.

Am I alone in this?

If others buy this, then I think it adds weight to my contention that we expend far too much energy pursuing coherence and eloquence.