Some changes, starting this week

I’m making a few changes to my newsletter, starting this week. I want to tell you what's shifting and why.

The free Research Roundup isn't going anywhere. That's the part of the newsletter I most enjoy writing since I already read research for fun! The response I get from you all tells me it lands. Same cadence, same format, no changes there.

What's changing is the paid edition.

The first, starting this week, is the “Director's Cut” of Robot-Proof. The manuscript I submitted to my publisher was 200,000 words. The book that came out is 73,000. The cuts weren't all bad calls—some of them genuinely tightened the argument—but a lot of what got cut was the experimental, weirder, more theoretical material that I most wanted to keep. I'm going to serialize it here, weekly. Many of you signed up for exactly this material; this is me finally delivering it. They’ll start arriving next Sunday.

The second is a monthly live AMA for paid subscribers only. I will answer whatever you want to ask in the format I'm actually best in: extemporaneously, in real time, without a script. Past AMAs will be archived for paid subscribers who can't make the live session. They will be the first week of each month, starting June 2nd at 11am-1pm Pacific Time. Subscribers can show up whenever they want during the session for however long the wish.

The third is occasional special issues to share preprints of research articles and director's-cut versions of op-eds I publish elsewhere. The submitted version of my recent WSJ piece, for instance, was longer than what ran. Paid subscribers get those in their inbox the week of publication. Free subscribers get them a week later. I’ll aim to push these out on Thursdays.

Net effect: the paid edition becomes what it should have been from the start: the chapters my publisher cut, direct conversation with me, and the parts of my published work that didn't fit the word count. The free edition stays exactly what it is, plus drafts of published pieces.

The real reason to subscribe to the paid version of Socos Academy is because you believe in the research and philanthropic projects I do at Socos Labs and The Human Trust. The newsletter itself is informative and fun (for me), but it’s really the NPR tote bag in this transaction.

Director's Cut Chapter 1 hits paid inboxes Sunday, May 3. Free Research Roundup as usual this Tuesday. With the preprint version of the WSJ article coming out on Thursday April 30 for paid and May 7 for free.