I&#x27;d like to emphasize that I have absolutely nothing against gear.<p>But I&#x27;m a little surprised that people continue to insist that no, one <i>really needs lots of stuff</i>.<p>It&#x27;s just not true that you need a huge variety of stuff for over $1,000 to bake bread. Think about it. The history of bread goes back <i>thirty thousand years</i>. You don&#x27;t need a cupcake tray. You don&#x27;t even need a baguette pan to make decent baguettes. I&#x27;m not making this up: I baked bread nearly every day for months using nothing special.<p>With podcasts, I again resist the idea that to go beyond &quot;superficial&quot; you need anything except a phone. I&#x27;ve recorded audio on my iPhone lots of times. In a quiet room, it works fine. There are plenty of very serious podcasts with people who participate by phone, and that&#x27;s just fine.<p>Again with running. Nope, you don&#x27;t need that stuff. How did people run a hundred thousand years ago? It&#x27;s a fundamental bodily function. I have a pair of Merrell Trail Gloves that I also use as walking shoes in the summer, and they&#x27;re just fine for running, and no other equipment is necessary at all.<p>I program just fine with just a laptop.<p>Again—it&#x27;s all just preference and availability. But you can&#x27;t say that <i>everyone needs this stuff</i>, because they don&#x27;t. And I resist the notion because I think it can prevent people from getting started with the stuff they actually have.