About me

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“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters–don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.”

– EPICTETUS, ENCHIDRION, 13a 

I’ve always been bad at conversation. If I have to keep one going with someone I’m not completely comfortable with, I’m in Strugglesville.

But I’ve always loved asking questions.

In late 2004, I was about to fly up from Melbourne to Sydney to interview Les Murray (the Soccer guy) for an article, and at the last minute, my girlfriend at the time gave me some advice: ‘Don’t ask any stupid questions. You do that a lot…’. In a split second, my confidence about the interview was shot (I did actually ask stupid questions though, and I think still do).

Looking back now though, I take that as a compliment.

Some people I admire are John Safran, Louis Theroux, David Foster Wallace, Anthony Bourdain, Andy Kaufman and Socrates. And it’s because these guys ask or address (or asked or addressed) apparent ‘stupid’ questions or preconceptions. And their questions come from true curiosity. The obvious questions that you want answers to, but you’re afraid to ask, for fear of looking like an ‘idiot’.

In Ryan Holiday‘s book, The Daily Stoic, he says, ‘One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 media world is say: “I don’t know”.’

Guys like Safran, Theroux etc. acknowledge they don’t know something, so they ask about it. Simple as that. Without worrying whether people will think they’re dumb. That doesn’t happen enough.

If you ask someone a question that starts with ‘what…?’ (e.g. What do you do? What is that? What does it do?’ etc.), most of the time you get a pre-programmed response, straight off auto-pilot. You can leave things there, sure, but if you then genuinely ask them ‘Why?’, most of the time you get a real response from within them, about their real motivations, reasons and beliefs about that thing. And even if you don’t get it first time, asking again (and even again) will eventually get you to the truth, where you learn something real about them, it can help them learn something about themselves, and in turn it may even help you learn more about yourself. All because of one simple, stupid question.

That can be annoying, but it works. And really digging deep and thinking about why we actually do what we do is what helps you constantly become an even better version of yourself and live a better life.

In 2019, I moved from Australia to Barcelona with 3 bags, my ice skates and my dog Chunky and now work as a strategist, around creativity, technology, AI, sport and entertainment.

I also make FAFO: conversations, workflow experiments and a daily show around sport, music, culture and the business around them. FAFO started in January 2026 as a series of experimental live sports and culture hangouts and in a lot of ways, it’s just another version of the same thing I was interested in back in 2004: asking questions, following curiosity and seeing where it goes.

So this site is dedicated to the “Why?”, the “Huh?”, and the “Fuck it, why not, let’s give it a go and see what happens.”

And to the stupid, annoying and uncomfortable questions that get to the heart of why we do what we do.

Yours in stupidity,

Dave

Want to get involved with FAFO?

Shout out: davemartinau at gmail.com

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This was the About page from an earlier version of the site. I’ve kept it here because, despite everything changing around it, almost 10 years later, the basic vibe still feels pretty much the same: