5 good podcasts I’m newly subscribed to

I listen to a lot of podcasts (here’s a somewhat up to date list), and I wanted to share a few good ones that I’ve recently subscribed to:

Exponential View with Azeem Azhar [link] – a very global and sharp perspective on the somewhat under-emphasized technological forces that will shape our collective future; his newsletter is great too

DangerTalk with Russell Wilson [link] – one of the league’s best quarterbacks interviews all-stars in their respective fields, like “Tim Ferriss for jocks” lol, of the ones I’ve listened to the Chris Paul episode really stood out

Panic with Friends with Howard Lindzon [link] – Howard is just uniquely entertaining and interesting as he interviews his equally successful friends in business, investing, and tech

New Money Review with Paul Amery [link] – a very thoughtful and balanced look at the edges of global finance and fintech

My Climate Journey with Jason Jacobs [link] – a successful entrepreneur who tries to understand the challenges facing our global environment by interviewing subject matter experts, often through the lens of entrepreneurship and tech

Some more great quotes from Thoreau’s Walden

Source: Walden.org

I’ve been re-reading and wanted to share a few new favorites:

One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with”; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.

Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune.

The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.

Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, “Because it was a part of the original compact—let it stand.”

Here’s an older post with more great quotes.

The New Yorker suggests we take more walks

From this article:

When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain. Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

While reading Daily Rituals, the most common pattern I noticed among successful creative types – outside of their propensity to ingest, uh, “substances” – was their penchant for long walks.

Boiling the fiat frog

From Rothbard’s free book, What Has Government Done to Our Money?:

At first, governments refused to admit that this was a permanent measure. They referred to the “suspension of specie payments,” and it was always understood that eventually, after the war or other “emergency” had ended, the government would again redeem its obligations.

When the Bank of England went off gold at the end of the eighteenth century, it continued in this state for twenty years, but always with the understanding that gold payment would be resumed after the French wars were ended.

Temporary “suspensions,” however, are primrose paths to outright repudiation. The gold standard, after all, is no spigot that can be turned on or off as government whim decrees. Either a gold-receipt is redeemable or it is not; once redemption is suspended the gold standard is itself a mockery.

Another step in the slow extinction of gold money was the establishment of the “gold bullion standard.” Under this system, the currency is no longer redeemable in coins; it can only be redeemed in large, highly valuable, gold bars. This, in effect, limits gold redemption to a handful of specialists in foreign trade. There is no longer a true gold standard, but governments can still proclaim their adherence to gold. The European “gold standards” of the 1920s were pseudo-standards of this type.

Finally, governments went “off gold” officially and completely, in a thunder of abuse against foreigners and “unpatriotic gold hoarders.” Government paper now becomes the fiat standard money.

Very worth reading for a clear, concise, if a bit dated, explanation of a major reason for America’s current economic stagnation, which is closely intertwined with – if not a direct cause of – its social and political problems.

Balaji’s crazed wisdom on Howard Lindzon podcast: “There will be both deflation in wants and inflation in needs”

Balaji appeared on Howard Lindzon’s Panic With Friends recently and I took a bunch of notes and wanted to share them here. As usual Balaji is going 150mph and some of his insights are pretty out there, but clearly the product of deep thought and research. So I need to review what he says multiple times, over an extended period of time, to really let it sink in and do whatever our thoughts do in that squishy computer we have in our skulls.

The notes without attribution are what Balaji said, and I try to note “HL” where I’m sure it was Howard. But there will be mistakes, and they’re solely mine:

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This is America’s first real defeat

Buffett is like the turkey who’s been fattened his whole life and suddenly it’s Thanksgiving

HL: If you own a China stock after Luckin then you’re just lazy. They even cheat coffee, which should be one of the easiest things to sell because it’s an addictive product

Thinks 3 very prescient people: Thiel (US can’t innovate); Gates (actually predicted a pandemic); KaiFu Lee (China can innovate)

“Any sufficiently advanced execution is indistinguishable from magic” re: China ability to build a train station in a day
// a twist on Clarke’s “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

During Yeltsin’s US trip, the moment he seemed to admit defeat was one of the most mundane – when he visited a random Albertson’s

Govts aren’t giving back powers they gained while fighting coronavirus
To fight this, you will need encryption and crypto

The two extremes of coronavirus world is “total state” (China, SKorea) or “market anarchy” (parts of US, Sweden)

Expects UBI, will be both deflation in wants and inflation in needs

Everything physical becomes expensive, all digital versions – travel, games, courts, education – will dominate and in this world digital currency is very important

Internet turned everyone into publishers, crypto turns everyone into investors

Buffett seemed tired – just realizing how hard it is, things have changed, can’t blame the guy for being lost, their fearful leader (speaking of the Buffett investing acolytes) is not a tech person

HL: “We’ve gone from an extrovert world to an introvert world”