Follow Your Side Quests: Errol King on Living with Infinite Purpose

In today’s episode, I sit down with a bona-fide modern Renaissance man: Errol King—ex-Google creative technologist, game designer, Tai Chi devotee, and co-founder of the world-building studio Innergalactic.xyz.

We explore:

* how growing up the son of a Bronx corrections officer turned him into an “extreme hobbyist” who’s determined to get paid to do what he loves, even as that love keeps changing

* why he treats purpose like a series of side-quests instead of a single grand mission

* the spiritual precepts that keep him grounded while he prototypes with AI, and why anything built for healing can just as easily be weaponized

* “altar-building,” basketball-sore knees, ten years of secret haiku, and other practices that tether him to joy

* his vision for tech-enabled myth-making: using storytelling, comics, and collaborative design to seed new, less dystopian futures

Timestamps

00:00 Claiming identities before they’re “real”

03:01 Understanding and reinvention

06:01 Getting paid to do what you love

09:02 Wanting to move and make a change

12:01 Early bosses and proving yourself

15:01 First pivots and experiments

18:02 Dinner conversations that spark game ideas

21:04 Practices and playful prototypes

24:02 When your ideas start to cost you

27:01 Enjoying regular creative practice

30:02 Writing and rewriting the “rules of the game”

33:02 Staying open and trying new things

36:00 Curiosity about new tools and mediums

39:04 Short interjection / reaction

42:01 Counterweights to fear and risk

45:02 AI, Tai Chi training and Zen practice

48:02 Becoming more cautious with new tech

51:07 Cracking the “code” in creative work

54:02 Following nudges and subtle signals

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