Nick Simmons is Cofounder and member of Octu Ventures, a member-driven venture DAO investing in teams building on Urbit. Urbit comprises a decentralized network of personal servers, a unique digital ID system, and a decentralized peer-to-peer networking protocol. Altogether, these constitute load-bearing pillars of a truly digital civilization. We …

Alexander Pacheco is the founder of social media platform, 150. Based on Dunbar’s Limit, 150’s innovative social network leverages insights from network science to create a small-town feel that elides many of the downsides that come with incumbent social media giants. Alexander walks us through using anthropology and human nature to shape the netwo…

I’m joined by cofounder and organizer of the 2023 Natal Conference in Austin, TX, Kevin Dolan. We talk about the conception of a conference to promote having more babies, the various religious and techno-optimist factions of the Natalist Movement, environmental detriments to fertility, how we’re radically undervaluing motherhood, thought-terminatin…

I am joined by Charles Rosenbauer and Olli Payne of Possibilia Magazine. Possibilia is an ambitious literary magazine showcasing realistic, optimistic science fiction. They’re bringing positive visions of the future in digital and in print—replete with short stories, nonfiction companion pieces, and illustration. We talk about the constraints of ke…

I speak with father of the Passage Prize and Keeper of the Passage Press, Lomez. Passage Prize started as an open call for literary and artistic submissions to find untapped talent from the Twitter anon sphere. It quickly exceeded its initial ambitions, drawing artists both obscure and famous to claim their spot in the coveted limited run print edi…

On Ayn Rand, Objectivism, the resonance of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, the development and spread of Individualism, high Romanticism, Rand's polarizing characters, the relationship between altruism and selfishness in her works and philosophy, Ayn Rand's large influence on entrepreneurs, and the intellectual subculture of Randian academics.…

For part 2 of the Cofnas-Macdonald debate I interview evolutionary psychologist Kevin Macdonald. We go over his response to Nathan Cofnas' objections to the Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy laid out in "The Culture of Critique" series, his explanations for outstanding Jewish influence, conscientiousness, emotional intensity, and affect intensity …

Nathan Cofnas is Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, working in philosophy of biology and ethics. We discuss his paper “Still No Evidence for a Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy” in the context of his ongoing debate with Kevin MacDonald and "The Culture of Critique” series. We cover explanations for outstanding and disproportiona…

I speak with sci-fi horrorist Zero HP Lovecraft on his Six Components of Religious Experience, a functionalist approach to religion, the concept of God becoming increasingly abstract and far away (divine distance), how Christianity can benefit from Nietzsche’s bitter medicine, Christianity’s struggle with modern sexual mores, pathological altruism,…

Luca Cacciatore joins me to discuss Christianity in America, the decline of religiosity, the Second Great Awakening, how technology mediates religiosity, faith and fertility, religion grappling with science, the Evangelical Revolution, and the dearth of compelling Christian narratives for young men.By Alex Murshak

I am joined by Kino Corner to discuss movie making, film as a medium for capturing the zeitgeist of different eras, shooting on digital, film, and hybrid, the economics of why mid-budget movies have disappeared, crowdfunding movies, The Killer (Fincher, 2023), Asteroid City (Anderson, 2023), drifting from the binge model of TV series', and the Kino…

Michael Millerman joins me to discuss starting a philosophy school, why tech and startups are seeking wisdom, whether Western philosophy is still a living tradition, objections to the usefulness of philosophy, leading students to the eternal questions, the intimate pleasure of communing with old friends, Martin Heidegger's influence on Alexander Du…

I sit down with Bitcoin Gandalf for a deep dive on Satoshi's immaculate coinception. Gandalf is a large influencer in the Bitcoin space and works in Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin is one of the most innovative technologies of the last century from a governance and coordination perspective. I believe it has the potential to be a vehicle for civilization-le…

DeepNews is using LLMs to aggregate and summarize the latest news across the internet, seeking to change the way we digest news. Nikolai Yakovenko is an ex-Twitter, Google, and Nvidia machine-learning engineer who initially forayed into Web3 with his venture 'DeepNFTValue,' which uses machine learning to estimate the value of NFTs; before also goin…

In this conversation, I speak with Will (@latinxputler) about Anthrochauvinism, an alternative to e/acc & decel ideologies. We cover his experiences in the early days witnessing the formulation of e/acc (Effective Accelerationism) in groupchats as a response to Effective Altruism. His reservations about transhumanism and encounters with post-human …

We envision a nuclear Texas. Grant Dever is a research fellow at FREOPP (Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity) who writes about energy policy, with a focus on nuclear power. He earned his degree in economics and business from the University of Rochester. During the pandemic, Grant cultivated community for IndieThinkers.org—an accelerator fo…

Brendon Marotta is a filmmaker, author, and podcaster. We talk about his book, "Children's Justice", which applies critical theory to the controversial topic of infant circumcision. We go through his decision to appropriate the tools and tactics of critical theory in service of this issue, apprehensions around taking circumcision up as a social jus…

Engineer and essayist Stephen Pimentel joins me for a review of the recently released bestselling book in Political Philosophy, Costin Alamariu’s “Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy”. In this discussion we go deep in tracing the argument, point-by-point, of Costin’s thesis concerning the twin emergence of philosophy and tyranny out of t…

Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University, as well as the founder of Genomic Prediction and SuperFocus AI; he also hosts the Manifold podcast, and the Information Processing blog. Steve and I speak about polygenic risk scoring and embryo selection, using AI to predict phenotype from genotype, in-vitro fertilization …

Garrett Dailey is the founder of Aion Enterprises, a business philosophy and design firm. We speak about the meaning of Aion, building a business around philosophy, individuation, the Candy Cane model of reality, and the importance of aesthetics for catalyzing people with a compelling vision of the future. “Any sufficiently complex thought is philo…

Disgraced Propagandist (Isaac Simpson) is the founder of WILL, a dissident marketing agency, and The Carousel Substack and podcast. We speak about how WILL does dissident marketing for a cohort of new natural “wholesome” brands, the marketing industry as the canary in the coal mine for workplaces becoming Longhouses, the power of branding, the mean…

Razib Khan is a population geneticist, has a popular Substack on genetics and history, and is a co-founder of GenRAIT. We speak about his role in the scientific ecosystem, the effect of the computing revolution on ancient genetics and genomics, why he’s most interested in Eurasian steppe populations, how ancient DNA has shed light on theories in ar…

Hannah Frankman is the founder of Rebel Educator, an all-inclusive resource hub for parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs. We discuss her experiences in educational reform and alternative paths to education, Montessori education philosophy, her involvement in the education space, and the launch of Rebel Educator. We also cover criticisms of the educ…

Bo Winegard on life after cancellation, why we should talk about group differences in intelligence, Aporia - a new magazine courting heterodox social science and philosophy, victimhood rhetoric, the tedious relationship of truth to justice, anonymity vs. identity, are we at peak wokeness?, noble lies, epistemic accelerationism, limits to academic d…

Mark Wilcox on 21e8, his information architecture company, computational data markets, why compute is money, Bitcoin’s role in all this, price discovery via compute, how AI is destroying people’s belief in the computer, deleveraging from the U.S. dollar, decision theory, the curse of dimensionality, and moving back to base primitives. “The problem …

I speak with Doomer Optimist cofounder and faculty in the Department of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University, Jason Snyder, about finding the others, using the internet to encourage localism, Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State, homesteading, the value of embodied work, regenerative agriculture, resource independence, and our d…

Jonah Davids' new Substack, Mental Disorder, explores the science and politics of mental health from a data-driven perspective. Jonah is also Communications Director at the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. We spoke about why being a psychologist has no noticeable effect on the efficaciousness of talk therapy, the lack of evidence …

Cody Moser is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences at University of California, Merced. His work focuses primarily on the evolution of human behavior and human institutions. We spoke about his work generating formal network models with agent-based modeling, the life history of organizations, core-periphery dynamics …

Jae Yang and John Bugnacki of Tacen join me to discuss financial sovereignty, the regulatory state of crypto in the United States, the Wyoming stabelcoin, and why you have to go to the frontier for better governance and technology. Tacen is working on a crypto exchange that is fast, non-custodial, and cross-chain. Project TXA is a settlement networ…

Matthew Mehan is Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of Government for Hillsdale College’s Steve and Amy Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington D.C. We spoke about the relationship of poetry to philosophy, the value of a classical liberal arts education, technology and the Tyranny of Velocity, raising children with social media, p…

Robin Hanson and I discuss prediction markets, decision markets, Futarchy, and Demarchy. We cover simple and more elaborate applications of prediction markets, common objections to them and barriers to implementation at the organization level, when a prediction market becomes a decision market, his vision for Futarchy--a proposed system of governme…