Outsider Insight

Chase your curiosity all the way to revelation.

By James Buckhouse

A weekly newsletter on creativity, human ingenuity, and how to build what you want to exist in the world.

Who am I:

I got my start working on movies—Shrek, Madagascar, and The Matrix trilogies—that combined futuristic technology with old-fashioned story. Those early CGI films and FX required a special type of creativity to combine technological problem-solving with story, art, and design.

The big idea…

Pull a thread through the long history of human ingenuity and you’ll find that the biggest leaps forward in human inventiveness happen when seemingly unrelated ideas are combined to produce a different, not merely better, way to solve a problem.

I call this Outsider Insight.

Follow along as I research for my book on Outsider Insight. Along the way, I hope to illuminate the hidden structures of creativity, inventiveness, beauty, and story that drive human advancement across disciplines.

Part adventure writing, part love letter to story, art, and design, part meditation on how to experience more moments that are marvelous, profound, fascinating, and sublime.

Some posts are practical, others are adventures. Some are historical, others just happened. I hope you enjoy.

A few sample posts: