The Padverb Podcast with KMO

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Ben Blatt is a former staff writer for Slate and the Harvard Lampoon. Ben is a numbers guy who has taken his fun approach to data journalism to topics such as Seinfeld, map-making, the Beatles, and Jeopardy.

This conversation centers around Ben's book "Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve" (2017). It's a book about what we can learn about writing and authors based not on what they say, or what impressions we get from reading their books, but on something that results from applying rigorous data analysis to their actual texts. Specifically, KMO and Ben discuss:

00:25 – Moneyball and its influence on Ben
02:12 – The attraction of baseball for analytical people
04:25 – Ben's interest in numbers and writing
06:40 – Patterns, correlations, and writing advice
10:00 – -LY adverbs
12:00 – British vs American English
14:40 – Bloke, blimey and the Harry Potter Effect
16:00 – Loud vs quiet verbs
19:08 – Pronoun and characters stats
20:00 – Comparing authors' noise levels
23:00 – Gender differences in literature
27:50 – Professionals and amateurs: the statistical differences
30:25 – Reading fan fiction
32:50 – Restraining style choices to foster creativity
34:50 – Revising one's novels
36:00 – Fame and success affecting one's writing style
38:00 – Data tools
40:15 – Vonnegut
42:10 – The validity of "write what you know"
43:10 – Digital Humanities and Franco Moretti's "Atlas of the European Novel"
47:15 – Ben's advice for aspiring writers
50:15 – Creating writing and progress in AI
52:05 – Ben's next project

Ben (The Guest):

Twitter: @BenBlatt

KMO (The Host):

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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George Zarkadakis is the author of both fiction and non-fiction books, who describes himself as a science communicator, an artificial intelligence engineer, a futurist, and a digital innovation professional. His most recent book is called "Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines" (MIT Press, 2021).

In this conversation, KMO and George discuss:

06:05 – Why democracy needs to be reinvented
06:50 – Incorporating technologies into democracies
18:10 – Animal labor's role in creating inequality and its implications
25:40 – The psychological dimension and transforming spectators into actors
32:40 – Financial time machine
37:30 – Running out of units of measurement
41:30 – Obviating the need for trust with the blockchain
46:00 – Precarious creative gigs and AI's progress with artistic tools
57:20 – Blockchain technology in search of problems to solve
65:05 – The current web's dysfunctional nature
01:07:50 – George's book

George (The Guest):

Twitter: @zarkadakis
georgezarkadakis.com

KMO (The Host):

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Francis Nimmo is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research specialty is understanding the structure and evolution of rocky and icy planets.

KMO and Francis discuss:

02:30 – The importance of the James Webb and other telescopes
03:40 – NASA probes, the AI connection, and technical challenges
08:30 – The possibility of finding life and the radiation factor
09:45 – Europa and Enceladus
10:42 – Breaking molecules at fly-by speeds
11:50 – Technology limitations and ambiguity in our search for life
14:40 – The question of independent emergence of life
16:05 – Subsurface oceans
18:40 – Moons
23:25 – Saturn's rings
26:05 – The Kuiper belt and beyond
28:00 – Autonomy and hibernation
29:25 – Gas giants vs ice giants
31:25 – Pluto
35:50 – Mission re-assignment
40:10 – Canned apes and getting to Mars
42:30 – Sci-Fi future we were promised
44:15 – Venus
49:40 – Mercury
53:45 – Comets
56:05 – The Earth
57:40 – Deep Time

Francis (The Guest):

websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~fnimmo/
Francis Nimmo @ Wikipedia

KMO (The Host):

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Lauren Aguirre is an award-winning science journalist who has produced documentaries, short-form video series, podcasts, interactive games and blogs for the PBS series "Nova." She has covered everything from asteroids to human origins to art restoration, but is particularly fascinated by the brain. "The Memory Thief" is Lauren's first book.

In this conversation, Lauren and KMO discuss:

02:03 – Lauren's memory incident
06:42 – Waking up and not knowing where you are
08:28 – Retrograde and anterograde amnesia
13:10 – The fentanyl connection
20:53 – Experimental brain surgery
24:18 – Amnesia sufferers' self-worth
29:13 – Faking anterograde amnesia
31:18 – Science communication
33:38 – Disappointment in science
34:53 – The Memory Thief's target audience
36:28 – Multilayer narratives
39:13 – Our shared experience of forgetting
43:08 – Remembering our remembering of events
44:38 – The trauma connection
47:35 – Optogenetics
49:08 – The scientific process and the pursuit of truth

Lauren Aguirre (The Guest):

laurenaguirre.com
@lsaguirre

KMO (The Host):

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Carla Diana is a designer, author, and educator who explores the impact of future technologies through hands-on experiments in product design and tangible interaction. Her latest book, "My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human," published by Harvard Business Review Press, came out in March 2021. Carla and KMO discuss: 02:20 – Carla's book's title 02:30 – What 4D design is 04:40 – Robot friends 13:05 – What a robot is 21:10 – What "entities" are 28:55 – Robots' association with labor 33:28 – Robots interacting with the environment 37:15 – Robots, faces, and shared attention 44:45 – Whether humanoid robots a good idea at all 48:50 – Science fiction affecting robot design and key concepts from Carla Carla (The Guest): carladiana.com KMO (The Host): Twitter: @Kayemmo en.padverb.com/kmo Padverb: The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast Featured quote “Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.” ― Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

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Michael J. Spivey is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California Merced. He earned his BA in Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz and his PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. After 12 years as a psychology professor at Cornell University, Michael moved to UC Merced to help build a department of cognitive and information sciences. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters on the embodiment of cognition and interactions between language, vision, memory, syntax, semantics, and motor movement. His most recent book, published in 2020, is "Who You Are: The Science of Connectedness." (MIT Press)

In this conversation, KMO and Michael discuss:

03:20 – The book's title and table of contents; externalism and egregore
07:30 – The role of the prefrontal cortex in our conception of self
11:30 – Non-scientific view of interactions between brain parts
12:50 – Mental representations of the world and the tricks they can play on us
15:35 – Letting go of oneself
17:25 – The value of familiar environments
18:45 – The futility of widely used time-management tricks
19:40 – Extending our mind past our skin
25:20 – The skipped question of emergent group intentions and desires
26:15 – Connecting to other bodies and life forms; emergence, again
28:25 – Murmurations and being in charge of a flock
28:45 – Boundaries between objects
35:20 – Perceiving objects as extensions of ourselves
37:02 – Virtual reality and tracking the direction of gaze
43:15 – AI and dogs
44:55 – Computer-generated imagery; deep fakes and their antidotes
49:35 – Extending your sense of self to the planetary scale
53:55 – Apocalyptic predictions, prepping, and the future of civilization
55:47 – Going beyond our planet and contacting life elsewhere
58:20 – Anti-natalism, suffering, and feeling one with the universe
1:02:28 – Michael's closing points; practical advice in the book

Michael (The Guest):

Michael's page at ucmerced.edu
Who You Are at MIT Press

KMO (The Host):

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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James Fodor is a science podcaster, an essayist, and currently, a PhD candidate in computational neuroscience and computational linguistics at the University of Melbourne (Australia). His intellectual and research interests cover such diverse areas as cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, theology, and economics.

In this conversation, KMO and James discuss:

02:07 – A brief history of "The Science of Everything"
10:08 – How neural networks learn vs how humans learn
12:52 – The uncomfortable question of back-propagation
16:00 – Acquiring language and concepts
19:52 – Why and when machines' way of learning is important
23:22 – Illogical language models and the Internet lurking behind
25:52 – Conversation starters and GPT's talking to one another
27:45 – Modeling the mind vs the "just a neural network" cop-out
33:08 – A space of possible minds and complementing human intelligence
36:50 – Idiot chat bots and fearing AI
38:15 – The near-term future of AI
41:38 – Predicting the prosperity of nations

James Fodor:

The Science of Everything Podcast : fods12.podbean.com
The Godless Theist Blog: thegodlesstheist.com
James on YouTube: youtube.com/c/JamesFodor/

KMO:

Twitter: @Kayemmo
en.padverb.com/kmo

Padverb:

The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Dr Jean-Marie Volland is a scientist at the Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems and an affiliate scientist at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. He is also the lead author on a recent research paper that announced the discovery of something that most people, including biologists, had scarcely thought possible: a gigantic bacterium which is thousands of times larger than its fellow microbes – so large, in fact, that it can be seen with the naked eye.

In this conversation, KMO and Jean-Marie discuss:

01:50 – Thiomargarita Magnifica and its discovery
05:05 – Geography refresher
06:25 – JM's stumbling into biology
10:20 – Etymological remarks
10:55 – Sulfur-eating lifeforms and KMO's mammalian privilege
13:15 – Bug size competition
13:55 – The three-domain classification (Eukarya, Archaea, Bacteria)
16:45 – Taxonomy of the living forms
18:38 – Reproduction and evolution
22:13 – T. magnifica's unusual structure (with a brief mention of Anton Petrov's YouTube videos)
26:20 – Evolutionary advantages of being large
30:00 – Cooperation and competition in the natural world and beyond (way beyond, including the economy); ramifications of this dichotomy; symbiosis, parasitism, and commensalism; why is symbiosis so abiding when its game-theoretical disadvantages are also evident?
44:40 – JM's two closing take-home messages

Host and Guests:

KMO: @Kayemmo | en.padverb.com/kmo
Jean-Marie Volland (LRC Systems)

Links and Resources:

Thiomargarita magnifica (Wikipedia)

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Dr. Batja Mesquita is a social psychologist, an affective scientist, and a pioneer of cultural psychology. She is the author of "Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions." In this episode's first interview, KMO and Batja discuss:

03:10 – Batja's background and story
04:26 – What's WEIRD about Western countries
05:46 – US vs Netherlands: cultural differences
10:30 – Translating emotions between cultures
32:48 – Batja's take on the KMO's interview with Rich Firth-Godbehere
36:08 – The nature-culture dichotomy

Our second guest, Simon Ager, is the founder, developer, and proprietor of Omniglot.com, an online encyclopedia of languages and writing systems. In this episode's second interview, KMO and Simon discuss:

47:40 - Learning Japanese writing
51:58 – Change in language learning methodologies
52:33 – Writing scripts on Omniglot
53:16 – Tolkien's invented languages
54:32 - Sonja Lang's Toki Pona
55:48 – Emojis
57:20 – Making random changes to the Klingon grammar official
58:18 – Languages, pidgins, creoles, and dialects
59:18 - Mastering accents as adult learners
1:01:37 – Watching foreign media and acquiring fake accents
1:06:23 – Omniglot's unusual pedigree as a one-man linguistic orchestra

Host and Guests:

KMO: @Kayemmo | en.padverb.com/kmo
Dr. Batja Mesquita: @batjamesquita | www.batjamesquita.com | Wikipedia
Simon Ager omniglot.com/aboutme.htm | @Omniglossia

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Dr Paul Thagard is a Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher of mind. He is the author of many interdisciplinary books, including, most recently, "Balance: How it Works and What it Means." In this conversation, KMO and Paul discuss:

03:32 – Balance, Paul's book of two parts
04:47 – The inner ear and its role in balance
06:50 – Comparing balance and scales
08:40 – Using metaphors, Scott Adams, and Sam Harris
15:52 – Toxic metaphors and AI monitoring live conversations
20:00 – How prevalent misinformation is
22:52 – Opinions on vaccination
23:28 – The notion of consensus reality
25:40 – The no-longer binary (strong/weak) nature of AI
30:48 – The vacuously eloquent linguistic models
34:32 – Panpsychism and its relation to neuroscience
37:38 – Neural representation of meaning
41:08 – Whether larger brains means more intelligence
45:22 – Cats vs Boston Dynamics robots and the generality of human skill
47:26 - AI ethics
50:20 - Our future moral duties to suffering-capable AI entities

Host and guest:

KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo
Dr Paul Thagard: paulthagard.com

Links and references:

Overpopulation on Mars - quoteinvestigator.com/2020/10/04/mars/
Eliezer Yudkowsky – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky

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Dr. Brooks is an evolutionary biologist, the author of two books ("Sex, Genes & Rock ‘n’ Roll" and "Artificial Intimacy"), and the founder of the Evolutionary Ecology of Sexual Reproduction Research Group at the UNSW, which group's research focuses on the big questions surrounding human sexuality. In this longer-than-usual conversation, KMO and Rob touch on a number of sensitive questions, such as: Is an excess male population a danger to society and its rulers? Was monogamy a stabilizing force allowing to channel free (and often destructive) male energy toward something positive? Are today’s incels correct in pointing out the inherent inequity of the sexual market? Is income inequality one of the drivers of involuntary celibacy? If so, might we be better served by addressing the root cause or providing accessible, if only crudely imitative, substitutes… that might still be better than nothing? 03:35 – Incels and the supply and demand problem of the mating market 09:47 – Young males taking risks, for good or ill 13:15 – Evolutionary psychology and its fans and skeptics on both ends of the ideological spectrum 18:10 – Christopher Ryan’s "Sex at Dawn" and the advent of monogamy 20:10 – "Chads," "betas," and the "Genghis Khans" 23:06 – Monogamy stabilizing society 27:45 – Incel language and the connection with economic inequality 30:20 – Aibo by SONY 32:10 – KMO reciting a scene from Steven Spielberg's “A.I.” 37:25 – Getting a family dog, and how dogs have changed humanity 40:00 – Whether machines can really do intimacy 41:40 – The symbiotic relationship between humans and dogs and the transactional properties of sex 45:30 – William S. Burroughs's “Words Of Advice For Young People” and a less-than-rosy view of the good old times 47:45 – How the world has changed since KMO's and Rob’s teenage years 49:52 – Enter the algorithms: making dating apps addictive 58:35 – Sex robots and how they are no way close to human 1:04:15 – Virtual reality sex giving sexbots a run for their money 1:07:50 – “Futurama” character dating a robot and the attendant motivational traps 1:09:26 – Dismissive views of artificial substitutes for sex and intimacy and why they might still be better than nothing Links: Robert Brooks: www.robbrooks.net | @Brooks_Rob KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Sacha Altay is a cognitive scientist and researcher at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. His research is focused on misinformation and (mis)trust. In this not-to-be-missed conversation, Sacha and KMO discuss:

03:20 – The difference between dis- and misinformation
06:40 – The varying levels of trust in science and media
07:40 – Bias, introspection, and brainwashing (with sporadic references to US elections)
11:35 – The era of minimal effects, confirmation bias, and reputation management
17:30 – AI detecting misinformation
18:45 – Watching “Behind the Curve” and KMO’s unexpected connection with a "flat earth"-believing street performer
21:40 – Examples of deprecating language to describe people and their beliefs
22:25 – Flat Earth Theory and its attractiveness
24:30 – Joe Rogan's dalliance with "horse medicine" (according to CNN, that is); his mainstream media haters
28:45 – Whether people should trust the mainstream new media
30:40 – Having a strong opinion on media personas you don’t follow
35:00 – Whether trust is tribal: whether we form derivative opinions
36:50 – Ayn Rand's hatred for Immanuel Kant and trusting one's network
40:10 – Misconceptions about misinformation
44:10 – Skeptics, news avoiders, and egocentric discounting (valuing one's own beliefs too much)
47:10 – KMO's media diet
51:00 – Reasons for the lack of studies on television news
51:55 – Limitations for use of ML/AI in media studies
54:00 – Needing more access
54:35 – Reprise: the difference between dis- and misinformation
55:10 – Misleading with truthful statements leading to false conclusions
56:20 – Filter bubbles created by social media algorithms and being exposed to diverging opinions
60:00 – Sacha’s concluding statement about valuing each other's opinions

Links:

Sacha: @Sacha_Altay | sites.google.com/view/sacha-altay/ | en.padverb.com/sacha.altay
KMO: @Kayemmo | en.padverb.com/kmo
The Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Dr Adam Izdebski is a paleo-scientist and historian. He leads a multi-disciplinary research group at the Max Planck Institute which explores climate change, historical epidemics and their causes, the economy of past European societies, early attempts at regional integration and their traces in today's landscape, and many other things. In this conversation, Adam and KMO dig very dip and unearth a bucketful of topics, including:

07:20 – Multidisciplinary studies, "Consilience" by E. O. Wilson, and non-overlapping magisteria, and unifying diverse positions
11:10 – Adam’s team's research scope and specialization
14:45 – The early globalization in the Mediterranean
15:55 – Bronze Age collapse and the multi-causal nature thereof
17:57 – Popularizing science
19:55 – Kyle Harper's “The Fate of Rome”
25:40 – Plagues in the Roman Empire, ancient DNA studies, and using the Black Death as a model for other pandemics
30:34 – How pathogens may spread and cause pandemics
34:20 – Intermission (KMO's solo riff)
41:15 – The geological epochs chart
47:45 – John Michael Greer's critique of the notion of the Anthropocene
52:10 – Humanity's role throughout the (geologically, very recent portion of the) history of our planet
59:35 – Three practical uses of the research work's results
01:02:40 – Engaging in public outreach
01:03:35 – The misanthropic aspect of humanity and staying optimistic

Participants:

Adam: shh.mpg.de| en.padverb.com/adamizdebski
KMO: @Kayemmo | en.padverb.com/kmo

Books and Articles Discussed:

"The Fate of Rome" by Kyle Harper press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166834/the-fate-of-rome
"Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" by E.O.Wilson en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)
"The Myth of the Anthropocene" by J.M.Greer resilience.org/stories/2016-10-06/the-myth-of-the-anthropocene/
Geological eras and epochs (visual aid): i.imgur.com/TAeY5yw.jpg

Don't forget to join Padverb's Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Stefania Barbaglio (Steffy B, @stefixy) is an international businesswoman, a podcast host, a keynote speaker, and a former fashion model. She also runs an award-winning PR-IR agency which has helped many a blockchain application-focused company. In this conversation, Steffy helps KMO go somewhere he has never ventured before as a host, subject-wise: the world of fashion. They discuss:

02:05 – Steffy's path from fashion to finance
05:00 – Becoming a podcast host interviewing crypto thought leaders
06:15 – The Cardano blockchain and the role of digital identities
09:05 – Charles Hoskinson (co-founder of the Cardano blockchain)
10:55 – Government, decentralization, and DAOs
13:40 – Blockchain applications outside the world of finance
15:20 – Fast fashion, overproduction, and buying second hand
19:25 – Environmental aspects of crypto mining
21:15 – Checking product authenticity with NFTs
23:55 – Blockchain platforms' UI and the Metaverse
28:25 – Learning from Zoomers in a changing world

Links:

Steffy B: steffyb.io | @stefixy
KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo
Padverb Telegram Channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Jesse Berger is a media and technology entrepreneur and also, a movie producer whose six films, combined, have generated over $850 million worldwide.

In this eclectic conversation, KMO and Jesse discuss:

01:20 – Studying film and getting into the biz
03:30 – What a film producer does and what the "executive" label means
06:20 – 'Oblivion' (2013) and why a graphic novel may be turned into a movie before getting published
13:20 – Why some movies credit dozens of producers
16:00 – The 2008 crisis, Bitcoin, and the dawn of the iPhone era
19:05 – Fast-forward to 2017: smart contracts and using the blockchain to increase transparency in the film industry
28:05 – Going "lower in the stack" and the genesis of the PKT network
33:15 – Decyphering the eclectic lingo: waterfall payments; IoT
34:25 – True proof-of-work vs premining
40:40 – Fostering an on-chain reward mechanism for sending and receiving data
43:20 – Smart contracts, the code-as-law paradigm, and the possible future of the legal profession
48:00 – Linking media production and distribution; evading the gatekeepers
51:25 - How the PKT network would work
54:05 – Similarities with other providers and the zero-base-price philosophy of the project
55:50 – Why speed issues are endemic in the industry
1:00:05 – Building the gig economy of internet sharing
1:09:05 – The real-world utility value of the blockchain

Links:

Jesse Berger: www.linkedin.com/in/jesseberger00 | instagram.com/jesse_berger

KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo

Comments? Join our Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Richard Firth-Godbehere is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, and science of emotions. He is also a witty, entertaining, charismatic, and "occasionally funny" man.

This conversation goes "all over the place" with stops at:

01:50 – Feelings throughout history and the changing vocabulary to describe them
04:15 – Narrating one's own book
07:15 – Convergent evolution in different religions' stance on desires
11:33 – Ashoka the Great and Buddha "the fat guy"
16:45 – Abiding neurotransmitters and their role in emotions
19:05 – Defining love
21:07 – Reading Marcus Aurelius vs laughing at proto-scientific papers on evolution
22:05 – Scientists moving things forward (despite lacking in eloquence)
25:20 – Desire-led need to know things and the scientific revolution
26:44 – Emotions in decision making and the archetype of Mr. Spock
33:30 – Chipping away at jobs, task by task; paying humans to observe their emotions
35:35 – Emotions being the hardest nut to crack in creating genuine "General AI"; needing bigger "roomfuls of computers"
38:25 – Solipsism 2.0 and the future of emotions
39:05 – Passing the Turing test vs being sentient
43:50 – Digital communications and the wielding of one's "offendedness level" as an argument
47:05 – Getting freaked out by new information technology, on a global and historical level
48:25 – Changing culture of letter-writing and interpersonal communication (and the oxytocin connection)
51:45 – Pursuing copycat happiness and letting Instagram and TikTok be our guide doing it
54:30 – Modern art, filters, attention, and social media apps
57:15 – TikTok being better than YouTube at guessing the user's interests
61:20 – Computers telling us what we really want

Links:

Richard Firth-Godbehere: @DrRichFG
KMO: @Kayemmo | padverb.com/kmo

Comments? Join our Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Filip Dousek is the Prague-based founder of a recently acquired AI-augmented analytics startup, a connoisseur of the "illusions that create our world," and the author of "Flock Without Birds," a book which actually seeded his startup idea… and took him more than a decade to write.

The conversation focuses mostly on Filip's literary output and touches on:

05:26 – His multi-dimensional two-part novel, in which the protagonist, himself a data analyst, turns "big data" into a source of theological inquiry
12:20 – Truth, complex systems, and predictive utility
17:18 – Exploring rationality, consciousness, and subjectivity
20:16 – The importance of keeping different perspectives
23:52 – The perennial question of the existence (and the nature) of God
31:36 – Looking for God in data
38:00 – Cultural detour: “Pi” and other films by Darren Aronofsky
39:05 – Finding fractal patterns and similarities
40:32 – AI and the Gartner hype cycle
49:12 – Brief story of Filip’s start-up; its product and vision
53:28 – The book's structure and Filip's translation methodology
57:41 – Prague's literary milieu and building a network in the larger English-speaking world

Links:

Filip Dousek: www.dousek.com | Twitter: @fdousek
KMO: en.padverb.com/kmo | Twitter: @Kayemmo

Comments? Join our Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Max Osbon is a mathematician, an athlete, and the founding partner at Osbon Capital Management.

This conversation covers:

02:10 – State of the crypto market (and KMO's alt-coin portfolio)
05:00 – Tokenizing real assets and the significance of USTC
06:45 – Lack of safe havens and inflation hedges
10:50 – Linking stagflation and complex systems theory
12:45 – Impact of geopolitics on the global economy
16:30 – Need for leadership, libertarian ideals, Stanley McChrystal's "Team of teams," and George Friedman's “The Storm before the Calm”
22:30 – (De-)globalisation, COVID-19, ASML, TSMC and why it's not so easy to re-localize semiconductor manufacturing
24:15 – Risks of an off-shored high-tech industry
29:40 – Zeke Hausfather's view of climate science and the doomsayers' secret desire for collapse
33:55 – Putting worrisome things in perspective
35:25 – Whether we've already experienced the bulk of the tech revolution
38:10 – The promise of tokenization with NFTs
41:10 – Regulating crypto and why regulation is needed for wider adoption
43:25 – Securities vs commodities
45:10 – James's question re: fighting corruption with the blockchain
46:30 – Balaji Srinivasan's upcoming book and why the bitcoin and the dollar are opposites
49:15 – Swallowing the pill and sticking around cities
50:40 – What Web3 really means
58:00 – Permissionless Swift alternatives
60:10 – Decentralization vs fragmentation on the blockchain
63:10 – Some men just wanting to watch the world burn and the promise of globalization

Links:

Max: mobile.twitter.com/maxosbon
Osbon Capital Management: osboncapital.com
KMO: mobile.twitter.com/Kayemmo | en.padverb.com/kmo

Comments? Join the Padverb Podcast Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

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Conversation with Douglas Lain on:

01:45 Good old times
04:55 Doug's podcasting and publishing career
09:54 Producing a personal interview podcast under a corporate brand
11:40 The challenges of transitioning to a different brand
14:49 Hedging one's bets in the age of cancel culture
20:26 Listener engagement on YouTube vs in audio podcasts
23:00 Losing one's motivation for podcasting and how to avoid it
26:29 Putting in some unpaid labor to get the paying audience
28:40 Not having talked since over a year ago
32:56 Ted Kaczynski and the delusions of the right and the left
36:40 Sublation Media's take on the left's crisis and the opportunities it may afford
41:00 Oppressed media elites
44:40 Decentralizing the increasingly irrelevant media
50:05 Unpacking independence in 2 minutes or less

Douglas Lain: @douglain

Sublation Media: https://www.sublationmedia.com https://twitter.com/sublationmedia

KMO: padverb.com/kmo | @Kayemmo

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In this episode of the podcast, we are going to take a look at the concept of the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

You will first (02:30) hear from Jimmy D, who is part of a group called the Uplift. The Uplift is an online world. It is a place where people gather together and build and it uses the game Minecraft as a game engine, but there's more going on here than just a multi-player Minecraft game. In fact, the Uplift is now governed as a decentralized autonomous organization. I won't steal any of Jimmy's thunder and explain why the Uplift chose to govern themselves as a DAO, but as you'll hear, his reasoning is very different from that of the second guest (46:30), Hannah Kirby, whose project, Indaod.io, is using a decentralized autonomous organization to manage vacation rental properties. Now, a DAO is not a magic wand. It doesn't eliminate all the problems that come from governing a large organization or a business, but DAOs do have some distinct advantages that we will hear about, starting my first guest, Jimmy D.

Jimmy D: https://twitter.com/kansai_krypto https://theuplift.world Hanna Kirby: https://twitter.com/HannahK78096405 https://indaod.io KMO: https://twitter.com/Kayemmo https://en.padverb.com/kmo

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A conversation with Gordon Eriksen on:

02:15 Gordon’s film pedigree 07:45 Making films with iPhones 09:15 Podcasting explosion 11:00 Selling film rights and living to regret it 12:05 The changing nature of movie-going 13:45 Making food movies 17:30 Martial arts films 19:45 Curing Instagram Attention Disorder 24:45 Crashing Chelsea gallery opening parties while being neither young nor a millionaire 28:15 Shooting movies in New York 34:15 Recognizing others in highly Instagrammable locations 36:00 Instagram and Twitter (the host and guest trade their tips and tricks) 38:45 Predicting the future of media 42:00 Interface lessons from the era of newspapers and magazines

Gordon's web site: http://gordoneriksen.com/ KMO's profile: https://en.padverb.com/kmo

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Vishnu Seesahai is a systems architect, mathematician, and former indie film actor. In addition to that, he is a martial artist and he served as a fight choreographer in several films.

01:33 – “Zombie Strippers” and film production 04:00 – Getting into bitcoin mining 10:37 – Decentralized finance 17:15 – Cyber attacks, the energy marketplace, and quantum money 22:38 – Mining costs 30:00 – Why proof-of-work is better than proof-of-stake 35:45 – Decentralized vs centralized authority 41:20 – What is the Fediverse? 42:18 – Elon Musk, space exploration, AI, and workplace racism 47:05 – Technological unemployment (aka robots that will steal our jobs) 49:48 – UBI, Central Bank Digital Currency, and moving money 54:16 – The future we got is not the one we were promised

Follow Vishnu's podcast appearances: https://en.padverb.com/vishnuseesahai KMO: https://en.padverb.com/kmo

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