OtiumFM
Norman Chella
OtiumFM is an upcoming show deep-diving into the world of Tools for Thought, or TFTs! Featuring insights on note-taking, making connections between thoughts, and serendipity, host Norman Chella brings you conversations with individuals in this space so you can better your note-taking experience. Expect guests from various TFT apps, independent researchers, and varying professions who bring with them note-taking insights, from analog to digital and even hypergraphic!
Coming out soon.
In the first two seasons, this show was called RoamFM, the podcast all about Roam Research, for members of the Roaman community. In these two seasons, join us as we dive into the minds of amazing Roam users, taking a peek into how they use Roam to create wonderful connections.
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Top 10 OtiumFM Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best OtiumFM episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to OtiumFM for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite OtiumFM episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
06/18/21 • 87 min
Join our AirrSpace to talk about how Roam could scale! You can find it here
In this episode, we talk with Cato Minor, who is the Duck of Roam, quacking his way into fun, ridiculous experiments with physical controls, crazy CSS, and much more. But behind these experiments, is the intention to explore something deeper.
Coming in from medieval Twitter, Cato Minor focuses on digital humanities studying medieval, Latin, as well as classic Latin. In the midst of trying out many note-taking apps throughout the years, he had stumbled into Roam.
We talked about:
- Knowledge workers of the past and now, what are the differences between them?
- Memory as a process of internalization and digestion, and how outsourcing this to a tool hinders our ability to learn
- Adventures of note-taking: the differences between the many note-taking apps Cato has tried
- How do we make the digital word more physical?
- The interesting physical experiments, from using a train set controller to a TV remote to use Roam!
- The power of medieval diagrams: how can we learn from people who have drawn outlines in the Middle Ages
- How do we create win-win situations for the individual in the PKM space?
- How will Roam scale?
Enjoy!
Timestamps
- 3:48 Where Cato Minor got his name from
- 5:19 Medieval Latin and Cato's fascination with it
- 7:13 In the Middle Ages, all knowledge should serve us in our seeking of God
- 9:20 Memory is what gives us material to transform
- 16:34 Make your notes unique
- 18:59 Roam is a great motivator for experimentation
- 22:47 Physical touch gives us food for thoughts
- 24:21 Everything is a touch screen
- 29:28 Cato's adventure in experiencing other apps
- 41:00 How to make peace in the continent of Note-taking
- 48:39 What you can do now with CSS
- 55:09 How do we foster a tinkerer's community?
- 1:05:00 Roam's growth via the community
- 1:09:18 How will Roam scale?
- 1:16:25 On Featuritis vs. Engelbartian Intelligence
- 1:25:23 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
Links
07/16/20 • 57 min
In this episode, we talk with Michael Ashcroft, a consultant, co-founder and Non-Executive Director of the Carbon Removal Centre, a UK-based non-profit organization whose purpose is to advance sustainable carbon removal.
He is also a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, an awareness-based educational process that helps people live with greater ease and freedom, and a Co-Active coach, working with clients in his spare time.
We talked about:
- How he stumbled into Roam Research from Building A Second Brain
- His workflow when building his second brain
- The Alexander Technique, and using Roam to expand his understanding of it, and applying it to coaching
- How he uses Roam as a self-coaching tool
- #roamcult as a culture, not a cult: The filter for meeting interesting people
Enjoy!
Timestamps
- 02:08 Michael's origin story and meta-realization: Building A Second Brain
- 04:29 Michael's workflow and version of smart notes
- 07:09 Deconstructing how to take book notes
- 8:58 Determine if ideas have their own pages
- 11:14 Letting go of note-taking structure in advance Re: Evernote
- 12:41 If Einstein had a Roam...
- 14:13 Subconsciously building a digital garden
- 16:29 Multi-graph connections, and unique blocks across Roam
- 18:09 Synchronising public and Private Roams
- 19:58 "The onboarding is the #roamcult"
- 20:44 The Aha! Moment and the many possibilities
- 21:53 Exploring emotions in Roam and self-introspection
- 23:53 Co-Active coaching and the Saboteur
- 25:20 How Michael Ashcroft uses Roam to do self-coaching
- 27:33 Projects, Areas, Roam, Archives
- 30:24 Alexander Technique: Undoing habits
- 34:05 Roam to enhance understanding of Alexander Technique
- 35:33 Using the right words that resonate better
- 37:23 Alexander Technique teachers tend to impose jargon on people
- 38:46 Michael Ashcroft's future plans for Alexander Technique
- 40:11 A course as a universal resource
- 41:59 The world is hooked on doing or caring
- 44:02 How can we help?
- 46:00 Caring is interference
- 47:43 Non-doing, and to frame something as a battle is interference
- 49:42 How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn't started using it yet?
- 51:06 What does Roam mean to you? Roam Culture
- 52:28 The secret handshake is #roamcult
- 54:19 PKM meetups are a filter for interesting people
Links
- Michael Ashcroft's Website
- Michael's Twitter
- Thinking Out Loud Newsletter
- How to be Superman (Alexander Technique)
- Building A Second Brain
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
04/10/21 • 97 min
WARNING: This is an explicit episode!
This is for Lydia.
In this episode, we talk with Beau Haan, a trained actor, model, and one of the key pillars of the Roaman community. Leading the Roam Book Club, he's built a space for many participants to share their thoughts with a Roam-specific Zettelkasten method. With up to 300 actives in RBC3, they found the chance to discover more of themselves and their thoughts at block-level.
We talked about:
- Beau's origin stories, from running away from home to entering rehab and telling stories
- The loss of loved ones and the impact that has on one's life
- Discovering Roam Research and how he became a true believer without even trying the app
- What he learned from his personal coaching sessions with [[Sönke Ahrens]]
- How questioning the way you learn is questioning your identity
Enjoy the episode!
Timestamps
- 3:55 How Roam has changed how Beau behaves in the world
- 7:13 "I'm supposed to be dead": Beau's origin story
- 11:35 "I wish they had Roam" losing loved ones to drugs or alcohol
- 13:06 The story of Lydia
- 19:29 Discovering Roam Research for storytelling
- 21:21 Signing up for the Believer's Plan
- 22:25 [[Sönke Ahrens]]' private coaching sessions
- 25:31 Roam granularity and the power of the community
- 27:40 Testing Roam Zettelkasten with Roam Book Club
- 29:16 "You're wrong about Zettelkasten"
- 32:18 The Angel named [[Matt McKinlay]]
- 36:19 Learning who you were in Roam Book Club 3
- 40:29 Preparing for the next wave of Roamans
- 45:35 Questioning the way you learn is questioning your identity
- 50:49 Becoming defensive from questioned identity
- 53:17 Outsourcing our learning methods to others and blaming them for failure
- 55:55 We have the fear of public speaking and thinking as ourselves
- 57:55 [[Sönke Ahrens]]: Forget about the tool and focus on the writing
- 1:03:50 The rush of being at the peak of a mountain
- 1:10:17 Emitting the same energy as the believer's call
- 1:13:59 The friend, and the RBC Workflow
- 1:18:30 The beauty of Roam is the people
- 1:22:07 The Roam Energy, and articulating infinity
- 1:23:58 Protect the Roamans from those only wanting to make profit
- 1:29:52 Join the town and be part of Roam
- 1:31:37 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
- 1:33:22 A Letter to Lydia
Links
03/29/21 • 60 min
In this episode, we talk with Ryan Muller, the author of Fractal Inquiry. Focusing on learning and education at Google For Education, Ryan wrote Fractal Inquiry in pursuit of a system for building knowledge in Roam.
It covers the tools you need, plus six tips and eight use cases in building your knowledge graph through one of my favorite methods of knowledge expansion: questions. How do you develop the right questions to dive further into a field/thought/idea?
We talked about:
- How evergreen and atomic notes are tied together via questions, using fractals as an analogy
- Ryan's origin story, how he dove into note-taking and spaced repetition, from learning languages to other fields
- Fractal inquiry: What is a fractal? How do you shape the right questions? What constitutes a good and bad question? When should you delete them? When should you filter them out?
- Would a public fractal inquiry graph work?
- The education system and how the field as a whole is slow in growth compared to others.
If you're on the journey to cultivate a quality knowledge graph, Look no further. Let's dive into my chat with Ryan Muller, the author of [[Fractal Inquiry]].
Timestamps
- 5:19 Ryan's origin story and obsession with spaced repetition
- 7:11 Discovering [[Stian Håklev (侯爽)]]'s research system
- 9:47 Combining the spaced repetition system with block references
- 12:56 When do you stop inquiring into one atomic idea?
- 15:26 What is a fractal, and how does it help with questions
- 20:38 Can you do fractal inquiry in a public graph? What do you need?
- 23:39 Current focus on macro-economics
- 27:13 Formulating useful questions using spaced repetition
- 31:20 A very small percentage of Ryan's inquiries in his graph are future-oriented
- 34:04 Changes in education, learning with YouTube and Minecraft
- 39:00 Where the US education system may be going and where does Roam fit into that
- 48:32 Excited feature request: more support for incremental reading in Roam
- 51:37 [[How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn't started using it?]]
- 53:35 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
- 56:12 What compelled Ryan to start asking more questions in the first place? + How to do it in Roam
Links
10/07/20 • 76 min
In this episode, we talk with Tracy Winchell, the Founder of Roaman Journals. A teacher of daily journaling practices to others, Tracy is a self introspective person when it comes to facing ourselves in writing. And when introduced to Roam, she has started implementing the tool into journaling.
In this episode, we talked about:
- Life before Roam Research: her time as a journalist, within broadcasting and more
- Her workflow for journaling and introspection in Roam
- Our relationship with the creator/higher power
- The intricacies of daily journaling and how Tracy approaches it
- The three selves, and how we should confront them
There is a part one and part two to this episode, so you might hear a disconnect in the middle of the episode due to technical difficulties. Enjoy!
Timestamps
- 1:36 Artillery and firing guns
- 5:04 Accidentally ending up in front of a microphone: Tracy's origin story
- 8:28 Starting the Reboots Podcast and the moment of clarity
- 10:23 Discovering Roam Research
- 14:58 Combining journaling techniques with Roam
- 19:09 Interviewing Dr. Benjamin Hardy of Personality isn't Permanent
- 21:26 Outsourcing the recall
- 24:04 Tracy's workflow for starting the day: Note to Next Day Self
- 30:03 Checklists and how they stop you from execution
- 33:00 2nd Half, and RoamBrain
- 36:04 The three selves, according to Dr. Benjamin Hardy
- 40:43 Projecting things into the future, and intersecting future emotions and time
- 43:25 Just in time wisdom
- 44:14 Tracy's Reflecting pool, and the Serenity Prayer
- 50:47 Faith and a higher power
- 54:00 Introducing Roam to a journaling audience
- 58:05 Tracy does not want to look at her analog journals
- 1:02:39 The friction finding something of value in previous journals
- 1:05:05 What does victory mean to you?
- 1:10:07 The next trinity of fields Tracy will dive into
- 1:11:57 [[How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn't started using it?]] and [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
Links
08/06/20 • 55 min
In this episode, we're having a conversation with Mark Robertson, who is an instructor of history at several California community colleges, teaching American and World History. He focuses on historical memory, race and racism, US foreign policy, and critical pedagogy. His true joy in life is to assist and empowering the interested to better know themselves as learners and as a part of our larger human community. You can find him on Twitter @calhistorian.
We talked about:
- Struggling to find the perfect tool on the journey to be a history instructor
- Discovering Roam through the Tiago-Conor disagreement
- The influence of the book, The Past as a Foreign Country, on our perception of history
- Live-Roaming: Using Roam to teach students in college
- Why he refuses to lecture, and the use of Socratic Dialogue
Enjoy!
A big thank you to Dave Thackeray for our first review on the show! You can check it out here
Timestamps
- 3:48 Origin story: Almost failing and going to community college
- 6:15 The Tiago-Conor beef
- 8:11 Eternal skeptic, trying tools and avoiding web apps
- 11:09 The meaning of 'The Past is a Foreign Country'
- 15:53 "The perception of our past is skewed in some troublesome ways"
- 19:55 "I refuse to lecture" How Mark does Live-Roaming
- 21:55 Socratic Dialogue and Project-Based Learning
- 23:49 How can I help you answer these questions? Mark Robertson's teaching style
- 28:06 The willingness to say "I don't know"
- 30:51 Avoiding "Why am I here in class if I could just read the textbook?"
- 31:51 Using Roam with a digital whiteboard
- 34:29 The power of DEVONthink
- 40:22 Any student can come to any of his courses
- 44:30 Challenging the notion of "Roam ignores structure"
- 48:33 [[How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn't started using it?]]
- 51:54 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
Links
04/24/21 • 79 min
Warning! This is an explicit episode!
In this episode, we talk with Bardia Pourvakil, AKA @thepericulum. Bardia is a member of the Roam Research team, having started off as a technical writer and dove into the world of Roam.
We talk about:
- Bardia's origin story as a technical writer to discovering Roam Research
- What are the key components for a tool autodidacts use to learn?
- How he joined the Roam team and built up his Clojure skills through contacting Conor
- Roam team's workflow, and Roam pairing sessions
- Bardia's emphasis on community, building things for developers to build upon and the search for fulfillment
Enjoy!
Timestamps
- 4:16 Bardia's origin story as a technical writer
- 10:43 Joining Roam as Support
- 13:26 "You're being really annoying but I like you" - [[Conor White-Sullivan]]
- 15:34 The 3-hour pairing session with the CTO
- 18:48 The power of the Roam Community
- 22:46 Build things for developers to build upon
- 24:57 The search for fulfilment and finding that answer
- 27:50 Never fall in love too much with what you're doing
- 31:21 Bardia never believes in institutions
- 34:08 Learning by Design
- 40:34 Roam Team workflow
- 43:36 Roam Pairing and Roam Games
- 47:37 What Roam is still missing and documentation
- 53:05 What Bardia is excited about: Mobile apps
- 58:10 The wonderful world of Roamania/Roam Manor
- 1:04:10 The cross pollination of ideas and inviting Roamans to Roamania
- 1:08:36 The Roam House Guestbook
- 1:11:28 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
- 1:13:30 Bardia's dstryd.albums and creating art naturally
Links
12/21/20 • 92 min
Welcome to the final episode of Season 1!
In this episode, we talk with Richard Meadows, a finance writer, investor, and journalist. After quitting his full-time job at age 25, he has been pursuing his own hobbies and research interests while traveling around the world. He is also the author of Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World.
Optionality the book lays out the time tested strategy for not only becoming resilient to shocks, but also positioning yourself to profit from an unpredictable world, especially in the world that we are living in right now. I reached out to Richard because I found out something very fascinating about him: he is the first user of Roam Research!
We talked about:
- Richard's origin story: from a business reporter in New Zealand to quitting his full-time job at 25
- Making the big trip to India and meeting Conor, becoming the first beta tester of Roam Research
- How did his workflow improve over time? We look at Richard's writing workflows and hear what is considered a page, what queries are used, nesting decisions and more
- Optionality: What is it? How can we apply it?
- How do we prepare for an ambiguous future and volatile world?
- Why asking yourself 'What's your 10-year plan' is a stupid question
- How can you use Roam to figure out what options are the best for you?
Enjoy!
Links
12/04/20 • 88 min
In this episode, we talk with Lukas Kawerau, aka. Cortex Futura on Twitter! A known Roaman in the personal knowledge management space, Cortex is an educator through the Roam courses Galaxy Brain and Cite to Write, to help you build deeper knowledge and think better.
In the middle of getting a Ph.D. in Political Science, he has done work on governance, cyber security, and data analysis throughout his career. With that comes the itch to make things, connect, to write notes down, and create his own personal workflows until stumbling into Roam. In this episode we talk about:
- The name Cortex Futura: Where does it come from?
- Lukas' origin story and how Roam blew his mind
- The Cortex Ph.D. workflow: Using Google Scholar, Zotero, Synchronous Reading, and more
- The principles of context-dependent insight, and how it differs from progressive summarization
- Algorithms of Thought, how tools of thought will expand and make an impact on existing institutions
- What Naval said on the Tim Ferriss podcast that made Lukas upset, and why
Enjoy!
Links
09/16/20 • 97 min
In this episode, we talk with Ali Abdaal, a Cambridge university medicine graduate, a former doctor in the UK National Health Service and a prolific YouTuber, making videos about life as a medical student, productivity tips, tech, Roam Research, Notion and more.
We talked about:
- Ali's note-taking origin story: From storing notes on close-up magic to seduction, medicine and now book notes
- His information capture workflow, using Evernote, Notion and Roam for specific uses.
- Why Ali thinks he is not a creative person
- Defining creativity from remixing content as opposed to originality
- Pursuing the perfect note-taking app, and the similarities between note-taking apps and marriage
- and content creation, as well as the value that we can provide to others who we are trying to help defining the perfect note taking app. Ali talks to me about the similarities between a note taking app and marriage.
Enjoy!
Timestamps
- +1:09
- 1:09 Life after 9-5
- 3:09 Fulfillment from creative work
- 5:21 Ali Abdaal's note-taking origin story
- 8:09 When Building a Second Brain came into play
- 9:30 "It was as if this guy was speaking to my very soul"
- 10:18 Ali doesn't use PARA at all
- 12:44 What is a project? Ali's use case as a YouTuber
- 14:13 Evernote as a base for long-term memory
- 15:53 Ali Abdaal's fluid information capture workflow
- 17:17 Discovering Roam and the $250,000 missed opportunity
- 19:17 Roam is unsatisfying so far, and the Nibble Framework
- 21:49 How productive does Ali Abdaal want to become?
- 25:00 What is enough? How much money is enough?
- 26:46 "I'm not creative at all. I don't think I have any original ideas"
- 30:46 Creativity does not come from originality
- 33:40 First-brain breakthroughs and how Roam encourages that to happen
- 35:13 We have observed X, therefore we think Y
- 38:20 The flaw behind Roam Research, and Notion vs. Roam
- 39:45 Roam vs. Notion followers on Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel
- 40:23 Drafting a video: The Perfect Note-taking App
- 41:27 There is no such thing as a soulmate
- 43:43 Different people are attracted to different personalities
- 46:43 Getting divorced is messy and expensive
- 48:25 Meaningless sex with lots of people is unfulfilling
- 51:41 Polyamorous note-taking relationships
- 53:34 Why all these note-taking apps aren't competing against each other
- 55:29 Labeling is simplifying and dangerous
- 59:11 What system do I want? How do I know this app fits me?
- 1:02:30 Talking with a creator vs. a consumer
- 1:05:27 How does Ali handle parasocial interactions?
- 1:06:23 Repeated value is value nonetheless
- 1:08:21 Repeated vs. Original vs. Spontaneous value
- 1:10:42 The Table of Contents Notes Game
- 1:12:50 What Ali Abdaal would like to see from Roam
- 1:19:40 Ali doesn't think about Motivation
- 1:21:41 Editing our respective podcasts
- 1:27:35 What Norman does
- 1:29:18 How I explain myself to family
- 1:30:56 [[How would you describe Roam to someone who hasn't started using it?]]
- 1:32:07 [[What does Roam mean to you?]]
Links
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FAQ
How many episodes does OtiumFM have?
OtiumFM currently has 33 episodes available.
What topics does OtiumFM cover?
The podcast is about How To, Podcasts, Self-Improvement and Education.
What is the most popular episode on OtiumFM?
The episode title 'Bardia Pourvakil: Autodidact, Roam Team, and Fulfillment' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on OtiumFM?
The average episode length on OtiumFM is 73 minutes.
How often are episodes of OtiumFM released?
Episodes of OtiumFM are typically released every 7 days, 21 hours.
When was the first episode of OtiumFM?
The first episode of OtiumFM was released on Jul 2, 2020.
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