EP 202 Neil Howe on the Fourth Turning

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Jim talks with Neil Howe about the ideas in his new book, The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End. They discuss 3 ways humans have understood time, the break with cyclical time, how linear progress gives rise to social cycles, generational change, how phase of life alters the impact of events, coining the term Millennial, generational cycles, the meaning and nature of saecula, the Great Awakenings, Turnings & commonalities between them, imagining Turnings as seasons, supply & demand for order, collective generational personalities, the current strengthening of families & multi-generational living, opposite experiences in the same phase of living, the growing gender divide, stages of a Fourth Turning, the recent primacy of political differences, extreme mobilization of publics, the acquiring of executive authority, the chances that an endogenous cataclysm kills .1 percent of the U.S. population, commonality through difference, why Fourth Turnings are not horrible accidents, Ekpyrosis, what a new spring might look like, why huge reforms are only enacted in times of crisis, and much more.
Neil Howe is the Managing Director of Demography at Hedgeye Risk Management, an independent financial research firm, as well as President of LifeCourse Associates. Howe is a renowned authority on generations and social change in America. An acclaimed bestselling author and speaker, he is the nation’s leading thinker on today’s generations—who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America’s future.

EP 201 Tobias Dengel on the Age of Voice Technology

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Jim talks with Tobias Dengel about the ideas in his book The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology. They discuss the idea that voice tech will be the biggest shift since mobile, the problem of public babble, positives & negatives of current voice tech, changing norms around speaking to devices, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), using LLMs through a voice interface, improving communication cycles for incapacitated people, smart speakers vs smart mics, problems with the voice-to-voice paradigm, multimodal use cases, using voice interfaces for writing, finetuned LLMs in combination with voice tech, using LLMs to check each other, Jim’s method for reducing LLM hallucinations, improving agent performance in customer service, the state of the art in voice-to-text, Baumol’s cost disease, the Jevons paradox, a golden age of innovation, Talon hands-free input, the possibility of a pushback against public babble, coming changes in medicine, privacy issues & the industry’s violation of trust, the uncanny valley, concurrent communication, a new horizon for video games, low-hanging fruit, interfaces between humans and robots, innovations in model testing & training, selecting models, an arms race between models creating content & models curating content, the info agent opportunity, the human capacity for interruptions, defending attention & flow, whether voice tech will make interruptions better or worse, and much more.

Tobias Dengel is president of WillowTree, a TELUS International Company, a global leader in digital product design and development, with 13 offices in North America, South America and Europe, headquartered in Charlottesville VA. The company has been named by Inc. magazine to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies for 11 straight years. WillowTree’s clients include some of the best-known brands in the world, such as T Mobile, Mastercard, Capital One, HBO, Fox, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Regal Cinemas, Charles Schwab, Johnson & Johnson, Lidl, Wyndham Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Holiday Inn, Canadian Broadcasting Corp, Synchrony Bank, Edward Jones Investments, and National Geographic. These industry leaders trust WillowTree to design and develop their websites, apps, internal systems and voice interfaces.

EP 200 Brian Chau on AI Pluralism

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Jim talks with Brian Chau about recent advancements in AI and viewing AI’s relationship to society and politics through a pluralistic lens. They discuss fixed frames on AI, the horseless carriage fallacy, AI as a million dumb people, how LLMs invert the film archetype, Jim’s ScriptHelper project, intuitive recombination, creating a fake political party, why AI threatens the legacy press, the significance of house style, incentivizing pluralism, why AI could power the periphery, the information agent concept, billboard measures in music, AI voice covers, the stultification of consensus, liquid democracy, applying statistical ML to prompt engineering, the need for on-the-ground testing of LLM applications, the problem of nanny rails, corrections in AI regulation, and much more.

Brian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.

EP 199 Yascha Mounk on the Identity Trap

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Jim talks with Yascha Mounk about the ideas in his new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power. They discuss tribalism among progressives, universalism, the story of Kila Posey, how over-emphasizing ethnic identity fosters zero-sum racial conflicts, how identitarianism led to excess Covid deaths, Foucault’s rejection of grand narratives, Edward Said’s post-colonialism, Gayatri Spivak’s strategic essentialism, being blind to race vs being blind to racism, critical race theory, Derrick Bell’s idea of the permanence of racism, how the rejection of universalism escaped college campuses, why progressive organizations are tearing themselves apart, the logic of collective action, how progressive activists have passed off their ideas as those of all non-white people, statistics on police violence, Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July speech, cultural appropriation, retaining trust in persuasion, fighting for liberalism, personal & political aspects of the identity trap, and much more.

Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Mounk received his BA in history from Trinity College Cambridge, and his PhD in government from Harvard University. He is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, the founder of the digital magazine Persuasion, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, host of the podcast “The Good Fight,” a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Great Experiment and The Identity Trap.

EP 198 Cory Doctorow on Seizing the Means of Computation

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Jim talks with Cory Doctorow about the ideas in his new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. They discuss Cory‘s long affiliation with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, destroying Big Tech instead of “fixing” it, why tech lords are not evil geniuses, how Big Tech consolidated, antitrust law, the felony contempt of business model, interoperability, the high-speed shell game of digital, the kill zone, the case of Diapers.com, the falling fortunes of tech workers, defining IP, Grokster, “polite competition,” automated notice and takedown, Jim’s proposal for content moderation, the flexibility of fair use, Interoperable Facebook, prioritizing individual choice, and much more.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual; Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

EP 197 Susan Neiman on Why Left Is Not Woke

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Jim talks with Susan Neiman about the ideas in her latest book, Left Is Not Woke. They discuss the history & meaning of wokeness, the underlying reactionary assumptions of wokeness, making leftism & socialism acceptable terms, how the New Left of the Sixties set leftism back for a generation, disentangling left & woke, the right & tribalism, progressivism as a child of the Enlightenment, normative vs descriptive claims, refuting the idea of reason as an instrument of violence, why Hume doesn’t belong to the Enlightenment, the danger of sheer subjectivity, data & empiricism, rates of police killings by race, liberal universal humanism, the term liberalism, identitarianism, the blacklisting of Paul Robeson, the idea that altruism is simply power politics, the appeal to the Stone Age brain, hope vs optimism, and much more.

Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer. She has written extensively on the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics. Her work shows that philosophy is a living force for contemporary thinking and action.

EP 196 Pamela Denise Long on Affirmative Action for Freedmen

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Jim talks with Pamela Denise Long about the ideas in an open letter from the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen to college presidents, responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on race-based affirmative action. They discuss the organizational developmental consultancy Youthcentrix, the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen, the meaning of the freedmen moniker, the different types of manumission, the use of the term Negro, the four points of the Coalition’s press release, certification of lineage, the ratio of affirmative action beneficiaries who are freedmen, lineage-specific structuring, merit & restitution, the mismatch issue in higher education, developmental support of students, the left’s excoriation of Justice Clarence Thomas, Lincoln Republicanism, the impact of immigration on multi-generational Black Americans, skepticism of a Black-Brown Coalition, the blending of Black and LGBTQIA+ agendas, Denise’s view on the Republican presidential primaries, why Republicans should be leading reparations, cash vs institutional reparations, and much more.

Pamela Denise Long is a 7th+ generation American, principal consultant of Youthcentrix®, award winning business consultant for implementing trauma-informed diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism, a contributor at Newsweek and political commentator featured on FOX News, Hill TV, Real Clear Politics, The Grio Politics, Breitbart, and more. Denise is National Coordinator for the Coalition of Concerned Freedmen™, the issuer of a recent news release to college presidents regarding lineage based affirmative action.

EP 195 Michael R.J. Bonner on Civilization, Collapse, and Renewal

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Jim talks with Michael R.J. Bonner about the ideas in his book In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present. They discuss the meaning of civilization, Gobekli Tepe, why technological change didn’t bring about civilization, how civilization produces clarity, beauty, and order, why civilization is preferable to the alternatives, the limits of cities, the dynamics of collapse, Francis Fukuyama’s end of history idea, revivals, how interconnectivity leads to fragility, the Bronze Age collapse, the collapse of Rome, cultural pluralism & academic freedom in the 9th century, the paradoxical outcome of the Renaissance, the rediscovery of Aristotle, combining Enlightenment clarity with medieval expansiveness, the evils of postmodernism, the dark side of Romanticism, the basis of religious belief, public ritual vs religious belief, futurism, the limits of skepticism, wokism as a religion, the need for grand narratives, a common humanity, and much more.

Dr Michael Bonner is a Canadian communications and public-policy expert with more than a decade of service in federal and provincial government. He is a historian of ancient Iran, holds a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford, and is a contributing editor to The Dorchester Review. His new book In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present was published by the Sutherland House in April of 2023.

EP 194 Bob Reid on User-Owned Identity

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Jim talks with Bob Reid about identity verification and the financial stack behind his global financial platform Everest. They discuss decentralized user-owned identity, identity as a trillion-dollar opportunity, competing with customers, Know Your Customer, types of identity, the breakout fraud, biometric systems, building societal trust, India’s Aadhar system, Justin Trudeau’s freeze on protesters’ bank accounts, preventing governmental choke points, how to use Everest, the application stack, Facebook’s missed opportunity to build identity, the coming fake-identity AI tsunami, real names vs anonymity, levels of verification, preventing exploits, the likelihood of social revolution in Europe, the accuracy of biometrics, the difference between a social graph & identity, paying a contractor with crypto, understanding Automated Clearing House & Single Euro Payments Area, tokenizing securities, why the user needs to control digital identity, and much more.

Bob Reid is the CEO and co-founder of Everest, a licensed crypto custodian with its own high-speed blockchain, and the world’s first global, programmable stablecoin.

EP 193 Aydan Connor on Rethinking Food Systems

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Jim talks with Aydan Connor about improving American food systems and reducing waste. They discuss Aydan’s experience in the craft brewing industry, extremification of beer styles, wastefulness in beer production, how Aydan became interested in food systems, the obsession with consumer choice, how the current system prices in waste, food waste ratios in different countries, where in the chain food waste occurs, the requirement of processed food, unintentional communities, maximizing communal freedom of choice, CSAs as a non-solution, creating tighter networks, decentralized processing systems, America’s low food expenditure, needed infrastructure & coordination, a network of networks, the scale advantage, the squeeze on wages, diversifying work tasks, tips for reducing domestic food waste, making a plan before you buy food, on-site food safety testing, bulk freezers with nitrogen flushing, and much more.
Aydan Connor has worked as a professional craft beer brewer in the Midwest for eight years, and has participated in the buildout of multiple brewery startups. At the beginning of his career, he was brewing batches as small as 10 gallons. Over the years, he worked directly with packaging equipment of various types, even leading as an operator of a mobile canning line to package onsite for other breweries. Currently, he works as a beer brewer at a regional craft brewery, brewing batches as large as 8,000 gallons. Employing direct knowledge of food processing, he has a vision for intelligent food systems which synthesize basic equipment and facilities technologies in combination with block chain inventory management towards decreasing food waste and increasing quality on any parameter. He believes these systems could act as a generative ground for building communities more awake and aware of the environments in which we can thrive.