Author and friend-of-the-show Jimmy Soni returns to discuss the future of publishing, the changing world of book marketing, the courage of creative risk, and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Jimmy’s website
• Jimmy’s Twitter
• The Great Reshuffle

Show Notes:

• Why Traditional Publishing is in Stasis
• A Case of Broken Incentives
• The Changing World of Book Marketing & the Case for Patience
• Talent Spotting & Creative Risk
• The Challenge of Self-Publishing
• Experiment, Experiment, Experiment
• Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan, and the Courage of Trying Something New
• Don’t Be Trapped by the Opinions of Others
• Jimmy as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• The Founders; by Jimmy Soni
• A Mind at Play; by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman
• What Works on Wall Street; by Jim O'Shaughnessy
• Invest Like The Best; by Jim O'Shaughnessy
• How To Retire Rich; by Jim O'Shaughnessy
• Atomic Habits; by James Clear
• Psychology of Money; by Morgan Housel
• The Obstacle is the Way; by Ryan Holiday
• Trust Me, I'm Lying; by Ryan Holiday
• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; by Daniel James Brown
• You Are a Badass; by Jen Sincero
• 11/22/63; by Stephen King

Arjun Khemani is a 17-year-old writer and podcaster who dropped out of high school to help lead support at Airchat, the social network co-founded by Naval Ravikant.

As the host of the Arjun Khemani podcast, Arjun has spoken to a wide range of guests including David Deutsch, David Perell and Naval Ravikant. His Substack, Progress Good, “serves as a defense against the anti-Enlightenment tradition, exploring progress, rationality, and optimism.”

Arjun joins the show to discuss why education should be voluntary, the moral case for selfishness, the pessimism of ultimacy and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Arjun’s Twitter
• Progress Good (Arjun’s Substack)

Show Notes:

• The Myth of the Good Old Days
• The Citadel of Science
• Generational Warfare
• Why Education Should Be Voluntary
• Misunderstanding Money
• Escaping the Altruism Trap: the Case for Selfishness
• Coercion & Moral Righteousness
• The Pessimism of Ultimacy
• The Hunt for Better Problems
• Arjun’s Leap Into the Unknown
• Reimagining Education
• What’s Next?
• Arjun as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• One Summer: America 1927; by Bill Bryson
• The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson
• The Road to Serfdom; by Friedrich Hayek
• The Lessons of History; by Will & Ariel Durant
• Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour; by David R. Hawkins
• Deschooling Society; by Ivan Illich

Eddy Elfenbein is an OG finance blogger, ETF manager, and FinTwit legend, with over 25 years of experience working in and around Wall Street.

Eddy joins the show to discuss the story behind his longtime blog - Crossing Wall Street (CWS), the origins of his famous Buy List, his ETF journey, his philosophy as an investor, and much more!

Important Links:

• Eddy’s Twitter
• Eddy’s Blog (Crossing Wall Street)
• Eddy’s Substack
• The Myth of 1926

Show Notes:

• Origins of a Wall Street Blogger
• Bypassing the Gatekeepers
• Eddy’s Buy List
• Many Paths to Stock Market Success
• The Last Sustainable Edge in Public Markets
• The Great Truths of Investing
• Stocks Don’t Know You Own Them
• The Market and the Casino
• Debating Academic Finance
• Major League Buy List
• Down with Perma-Bears
• Unpacking ETFs
• The Next Avatar of Market Intelligence
• The Moat of the Stock Picker
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• What Works on Wall Street; by Jim O’Shaughnessy
• THE MISBEHAVIOR OF MARKETS: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence; by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L Hudson
• Stocks for the Long Run; by Jeremy Siegel
• The Myth of 1926: How Much Do We Know About Long-Term Returns on U.S. Stocks?; by Edward F. McQuarrie
• Fama and French Three Factor Model Definition: Formula and Interpretation (Investopedia)

Friend-of-the-show Anna Gát returns to discuss… well… pretty much everything!

On April 13th, O’Shaughnessy Ventures and Interintellect are co-hosting a Future of Publishing event at the beautiful Pratt Mansion in NYC.

We’re bringing together established publishers, online writers, new publishing houses, journalists, technologists, authors and more to rethink and reimagine how ideas are spread in our changing world. Confirmed speakers include Coleman Hughes, Tara Isabella Burton, Tamara Winter, Sahil Lavingia and many more!

Here’s the best part - we want YOU to be there! To buy in-person tickets and for more information on live-streaming, scheduling, speakers, and more, just follow this link.

We hope to see you there!

Important Links:

• Interintellect
• Anna’s Twitter
• Anna’s Website
• Interintellect Substack

Show Notes:

• The Shock of Losing a Parent
• Interintellect & the Post-Tribe Internet
• How to Facilitate Better Conversations
• Surprising Salons
• Faker Spotting & the Temptations of Power
• Avoiding Audience Capture
• The Humanness of Casablanca
• Greatness, Co-Creation & Doing the Work
• Misconceptions About Leadership
• The Personality of Language
• What’s Next for Anna
• Cities as Ideas
• Anna as Empress of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity; by David Graeber and Wengrow
• Adventures of a Bystander; by Peter Drucker
• Mating; by Norman Rush
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York; by Robert A. Caro
• Power vs. Force; by David R. Hawkins
• Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
• The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics; by Stanislas Dehaene
• Embers; by Sándor Márai
• The Hunger Games; by Suzanne Collins

The inimitable Visakan Veerasamy returns for a characteristically wide-ranging discussion…

Important Links:

• Visa's Website
• Visa's Twitter 
• Visa's Youtube
• Visa’s Previous Episode
• Visa’s Post-Episode Thread

Show Notes:

• Life as a Dad
• A Conversation With David Deutsch
• Change, Courage, Curiosity & Creativity
• Possibility Space & the Problem of Wretchedness
• A Good Blog Post Can Change the World
• The Outdated Language of Counterculture
• Colliding Our Reality Tunnels
• Imperfection Breeds Creativity
• We Are Co-Creators
• Status Quo Soldiers
• The Power of Noticing
• Visa as Emperor of the World
• MUCH more!

Books & Articles Mentioned:

• Friendly Ambitious Nerd; by Visakan Veerasamy
• Introspect; by Visakan Veerasamy
• status quo soldiers lose in the long run; by Visakan Veerasamy
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World; by David Deutsch
• The Thinker and The Prover; by Jim O’Shaughnessy
• Leonardo Da Vinci; by Walter Isaacson
• Ninety-five Theses; by Martin Luther
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; by Lewis Carroll
• The News: A User’s Manual; by Alain de Botton
• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; by Marshall McLuhan
• Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour; by David R. Hawkins
• How I Accidentally Started The Sixties; by Howard Bloom
• One Summer: America 1927; by Bill Bryson

Brendan McCord is the founder of Cosmos Institute — a non-profit dedicated to exploring the intersection of AI and philosophy.

Brendan joins the show to discuss Cosmos’ origins, the pursuit of philosophy as a technologist, the different schools of thought in AI, complex adaptive systems and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Brendan McCord’s Reading List
• Cosmos Institute Substack
• Brendan’s Twitter

Show Notes:

• The Genesis of the Cosmos Institute
• Philosophy as a Quixotic Pursuit
• The Man of the System Dilemma
• Existential Risk & Scenario Agnosticism
• The AI Schools of Thought
• The Religious Nature of the E/Acc Movement
• What Tocqueville Can Teach Us About AI
• The Philosophy-to-Code Pipeline
• “Cars ignited the Sexual Revolution” and Other Unexpected Occurrences
• The Best Systems are Adaptive
• Heterogeneity & Resilient Systems
• Open Source and the US-China Situation
• Automation, Augmentation & Open-Ended Generation
• The Underrated Nuance of Russian Realism
• Cinematic Visions of the Future
• Great Talent & the Risk of the Tasmanian Devil
• Brendan as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• Murray Rothbard, “For A New Liberty”
• David R. Hawkins, “Power vs. Force”
• Jung Chang, “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China”
• Jung Chang, “Mao: The Unknown Story”
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”
• Arthur Koestler, “Darkness At Noon”
• Adam Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”
• Lewis Carroll, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
• Lewis Carroll, “What the Tortoise Said To Achilles”
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”
• Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”
• Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”
• 'Pericles's Funeral Oration' quoted in Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”.
• Plato, “Theaetetus”
• Plato, “The Republic”
• Nietzsche, “The Gay Science”
• C.P Snow, “The Two Cultures”
• Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action”
• James M. Buchanan, "Freedom in Constitutional Contract: Perspectives of a Political Economist”
• Iain M. Banks, “Consider Phlebas” (Culture Series #1)
• Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee, “AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future”
• Christopher Buckley, “Thank You for Smoking”
• John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”

Alex Komoroske has spent his career studying, writing about, and working in complex adaptive systems. He has published multiple essays on topics like Schelling points in organizations, why debate should be collaborative, and how to ensure resilient growth in harsh environments. Alex has also worked as a product manager and in corporate strategy at Google and Stripe.

Alex joins the show to discuss how to escape busyness, why heroism is overrated, the different types of magic, and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Alex’s Website
• Alex’s Twitter
• Alex’s LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• The Parable of the Builder & the Gardener
• Against Heroism
• Noise is Good
• Complex Adaptivity All the Way Down
• Information Flow, Context Switching and Luck Surface-Area
• Escaping Busyness
• Paradigm Shifts & the Importance of Uncertainty
• The Self-Transcending Mindset
• The Power of Compression & The Virility of Memes
• Order From Chaos
• The Iterative Adjacent Possible
• Saruman & Radagast Magic
• The Illusion of Certainty
• Alex as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books and Articles Mentioned:

• The Magic of Acorns; by Alex Komoroske
• The Sarumans and The Radagasts; by Alex Komoroske
• The Iterative Adjacent Possible; by Alex Komoroske
• Crossing the Bridge of Nihilism; by Jim O’Shaughnessy
• Adult Development Primer; by Dimitri Glazkov
• The Mower against Gardens; by Andrew Marvell
• Being There; by Jerzy Kosinski
• Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment; by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein
• Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century; by Howard Bloom
• Zorba the Greek; by Nikos Kazantzakis
• Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny; by Robert Wright
• The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction; by Christopher Alexander

Cedric Chin is a writer, researcher and operator whose Commoncog newsletter is dedicated to finding useful, practical ways to accelerate business expertise. He joins us to discuss some of the most potentially transformative concepts he’s uncovered, from the business expertise triad to naturalistic decision making.

Important Links:

• Cedric’s Website (Commoncog)
• Are You Ready for the Great Reshuffle?
• The Naturalistic Decision Making Podcast
• Wisdom Unleashed

Show Notes:

• Commoncog’s Rabbit-Holing Origins
• The Business Expertise Triad
• Quality Engineering & Process Control
• The Effectiveness of Naturalistic Decision Making
• Expectancy, Intuition & Investing
• How to Stay Open-Minded
• Trial & Error, Knowledge Shields & the Power of Reading
• Protocols & Pattern-Matching
• Cedric as Emperor of the World
• MUCH more!

Books and Articles Mentioned:

• The Tricky Thing About Creating Training Programs; by Cedric Chin
• The Business Expertise Series; by Cedric Chin
• The Oxford Handbook of Expertise; edited by Paul Ward, Jaan Maarten Schraagen, Julie Gore and Emile Roth
• Accelerated Expertise; by Robert R. Hoffman, Paul Ward, Paul J. Feltovich, Lia DiBello, Stephen M. Fiore and Dee H. Andrews
• The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success; by Will Thorndike
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon; by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
• Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos; by Donald Wheeler
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World; by David Deutsch
• The Hound of the Baskervilles; by Arthur Conan Doyle
• What Works on Wall Street: The Classic Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time; by Jim O’Shaughnessy

Devon Eriksen always wanted to be a writer. As a child, he was persuaded to abandon his aspirations in favor of a career in software engineering. Two decades later, he retired to finally fulfil his ambition to write imaginative hard-science fiction in the vein of authors like Asimov, Heinlein and Niven. He self-published his first novel, Theft of Fire, last year to an excellent reception.

Devon joins the show to discuss why his book incorporates alien technology, the role of patronage in the digital era, his unusual approach to obtaining feedback, and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Theft of Fire; by Devon Eriksen
• Devon’s Website
• Devon’s Twitter
• Introducing: The Life of David Rhoiney

Show Notes:

• Centralization & Institutional Corruption
• The Evolving Nature of Resource Constraints
• Why Theft of Fire Features Alien Technology
• The Musk Dynasty
• Architects vs Gardeners
• Editing, Feedback & Beta-Readers
• Audience Capture & Disagreeableness
• “Money is a measure of fu*ks given”
• Patronage & Intellectual Property in the Digital Era
• Permissionless Writing
• How to Become a High-Agency Character
• Devon as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books and Articles Mentioned:

• Theft of Fire; by Devon Eriksen
• The Ultimate Resource; by Julian Simon
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Population Bomb; by Paul R. Ehrlich
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; by Robert M. Pirsig
• The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It; by Will Storr

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder of Acumen, a nonprofit impact investment fund “changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas.”

As well as founding Acumen in 2001, Jacqueline is a public speaker and best-selling author. She also sits on multiple philanthropic boards. Her latest book Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, “reveals 12 leadership practices for anyone eager to build a better world.”

Jacqueline joins us to discuss how to create a high-trust society, the difference between moral righteousness and moral leadership, why the opposite of poverty is dignity, and MUCH more.

Important Links:

• Acumen’s Website
• Acumen Academy
• Jacqueline’s Twitter

Show Notes:

• Acumen’s Origins
• A People-First Theory of Change
• Emerging Entrepreneurship in Africa
• Social Return on Investment and the Rise of Microfinance
• How to Create a High Trust Society
• The Blue Sweater
• The Path to Moral Leadership
• Defining Win-Win
• Solar Lights, the Adjacent Possible and the Rejection of Cynicism
• What Jacqueline is Most Excited For
• Jacqueline as Empress of the World
• MORE!

Books Mentioned:

• The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World; by Jacqueline Novogratz
• Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World; by Jacqueline Novogratz

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of 9 books and over 100 scientific papers. A critic of what he sees as the scientific establishment’s dogmatic dedication to materialism, he is perhaps best known for his theory of “morphic resonance,” via which information and activity can be transferred across space and time. Rupert joins the show to discuss being branded a heretic, how to test for telepathy, his advice for young scientists, and MUCH more!

Important Links:

• Rupert’s Website
• Rupert’s Banned TED Talk
• The Science Delusion; by Rupert Sheldrake
• A New Science of Life; by Rupert Sheldrake
• Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals; by Rupert Sheldrake
• Is The Sun Conscious?; by Rupert Sheldrake (Journal of Consciousness Studies)

Show Notes:

• The Apostate of Scientism
• The Origins of Scientism
• How to Achieve a Phase Change in the Sciences
• Testing for Telepathy & Incentivizing Intuition
• Structural Resistance to Panpsychism
• When Science Gets Personal
• Loosening the Grip of Determinism
• Advice for Young Scientists
• Rupert as Emperor of the World
• MORE!

Books & Articles Mentioned:

• The Science Delusion; by Rupert Sheldrake
• New Science of Life; by Rupert Sheldrake
• Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals; by Rupert Sheldrake
• Is The Sun Conscious?; by Rupert Sheldrake
• The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson
• Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters; by Steven Pinker
• The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature; by Steven Pinker
• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures; by Merlin Sheldrake
• The End of Faith; by Sam Harris
• The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a
• What the Tortoise Said to Achilles; by Lewis Carroll
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; by Robert M. Pirsig
• The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward; by Benoit B. Mandelbrot & Richard L. Hudson
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; by Thomas Kuhn