Crisp conversations with critical thinkers at the leading edge of science, technology, politics, and social systems.
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EP 259 Toufi Saliba on a Peer-to-Peer Network for AI Agents
1:17:06
1:17:06
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1:17:06
Jim talks with Toufi Saliba about the Toda/IP protocol and HyperCycle, a decentralized network for AI-to-AI communication. They discuss the high-level view of Toda/IP & HyperCycle, enabling communication of value, what Toda adds on top of UDP, time & cost constraints, cryptographic proof in the first handshake, how Toda transfers value in very smal…
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EP 258 Stephen Webb on Where Are the Aliens?
1:52:35
1:52:35
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1:52:35
Jim talks with Stephen Webb about his book If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens... Where Is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. They discuss Jim's obsession with the Fermi paradox, the meaning of the Fermi paradox, the Drake equation, discounting claims about UFOs, a question that ever…
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EP 257 Malcolm and Simone Collins on Fertility Rates and Pronatalism
1:34:12
1:34:12
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1:34:12
Jim talks with Malcolm and Simone Collins about declining worldwide fertility rates and pronatalism. They discuss when fertility started declining, the pre-World-War-I fertility catastrophe, the countries entering fertility freefall, a population-based pyramid scheme, different cultural frameworks' resistances to fertility collapse, the urban monoc…
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EP 256 Glenn Loury on Confessions of a Black Conservative
1:55:05
1:55:05
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1:55:05
Jim talks with Glenn Loury about his recent memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. They discuss the problem of self-regard, Glenn's mentorship under Thomas Schelling, his upbringing in the South Side of Chicago, his matriarch aunt Eloise, his best friend Woody, the one-drop rule, the social construction of race, the influence…
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EP 255 Is God Real? (with Jordan Hall)
2:10:24
2:10:24
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2:10:24
Jordan Hall tries to convince Jim that the reality of the Christian God is logically necessary. They discuss points of agreement & resonance between their views, relational ontology vs substance ontology, belief as mental operation vs existential commitment, a hierarchical stack of concepts, the complexity lens, the conceptual level on which relati…
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EP 254 John Robb on What Went Wrong with America
46:19
46:19
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46:19
Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent Substack essay, "What Went Wrong With America?" They discuss why there's a need to address what went wrong, tribal conspiracy theories following the Trump assassination, a breakdown in collective sense-making, cohesion, coherence, legitimacy, OODA loops, the importance of orientation, reorienti…
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EP 253 Alexander Bard Part 3: Process and Event
1:50:58
1:50:58
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1:50:58
Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the last of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist’s recent book Process and Event. They discuss the barred absolute as that which is hidden to us in the world, the barred subject, the mamilla in Lacan, barred absolutes vs the Barred Absolute, dissolving nihilism, accepting death as absolute, trans-determi…
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EP 252 Alexander Bard Part 2: Process and Event
1:51:39
1:51:39
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1:51:39
Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the second of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss eventological monotheism vs nomadological iconology, dualism vs monism, substance dualism, Spinoza's monism, graded relationality, emergence vector theory, Syntheism & its concepts, God as the ultimate dream,…
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EP 251 Pamela Denise Long on Kamala Harris and Blackness in America
37:41
37:41
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37:41
Jim talks with Pamela Denise Long about the nomination of Kamala Harris and what it might mean for American Freedmen. They discuss the meaning & value of the term "Freedmen," what it means to be Black & why it matters, misallocated affirmative action, Barack Obama's ethnicity, the history of Bantu & Nilotic Africans, Kamala Harris as a metaphor, pa…
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EP 250 Alexander Bard Part 1: Process and Event
1:56:30
1:56:30
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1:56:30
Jim talks with Alexander Bard for the first in a series of conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss Jim's process for reading the book, metaphysics, narratology, the sociont, dividuals vs individuals, a biochemical definition of individuality, eventology, Alexander's conversion to Zoroastrianism, noma…
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EP 249 Seth Lloyd on Measuring Complexity
1:04:45
1:04:45
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Jim talks with Seth Lloyd about the many ways of measuring complexity. They discuss the difficulty of measuring complexity, the metabolism of bacteria, Kolmogorov complexity, Shannon entropy, Charles Bennett's logical depth, cellular automata, effective complexity & its discovery, the effective complexity of a bacterium, coarse graining, fractal di…
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EP 248 Timothy Clancy on the Israel-Hamas War
1:06:35
1:06:35
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1:06:35
Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about the Israel-Hamas War following Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. They discuss the sorting-out period that follows the end of an empire, Jerusalem as a perpetual battleground, 3 questions for understanding conflict, a missed opportunity for Jordan to take back the West Bank, what happened on October 7, recoverin…
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EP 247 Sergey Kuprienko on Drone Warfare in Ukraine
51:48
51:48
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51:48
Jim talks with Sergey Kuprienko, CEO and co-founder of Swarmer, about drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War. They discuss the parallels between drones in Ukraine & the advance in aviation during World War I, the history of drone warfare in the conflict, Russia's electronic countermeasures, the niche Swarmer occupies, autonomy for coordinated rob…
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EP 246 A.M. Hickman on Hitchhiking in America
1:12:39
1:12:39
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1:12:39
Jim and A.M. Hickman trade stories about the pleasures and tribulations of hitchhiking. They discuss Andy & his wife's recent hitchhiking honeymoon, how he started hitchhiking as a teenager, growing up in Utica, New York, the Adirondacks, multi-generational itchy-foot syndrome, "hobo college," Jim's earliest hitchhiking experience, hitchhiking on t…
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EP 245 Bob Levy on the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court
1:16:20
1:16:20
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1:16:20
Jim talks with Bob Levy about the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, in the Supreme Court. They discuss Bob's late-career move to law, never being too old to reinvent yourself, how Bob got involved in a pivotal Supreme Court case in establishing the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment, the text of the Second Amendment, Dis…
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EP 244 Samo Burja on Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War
1:27:03
1:27:03
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1:27:03
Jim talks with Samo Burja about lessons military strategists should take from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far. They discuss why military stockpiles are less useful than previously assumed, the scaling up of drone production, the impossibility of envisioning what tech will be needed, 4 factors that caused Russian miscalculation, offensive vs defensiv…
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EP 243 Yaroslav Trofimov on Ukraine’s War of Independence
1:13:28
1:13:28
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1:13:28
Jim talks with Yaroslav Trofimov about his new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence. They discuss the reporting that went into the book, Yaroslav's connection to Ukraine, a brief history of Ukraine, the Golden Horde's conquering of modern-day Ukraine, Russia's inheritance of the Tatar-Mongol state, Uk…
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