#84: The Intellectual Wild South – Eric Weinstein

Show notes

Selected links

• The Good Cause Co.’s recommended charities for the Australian bushfires
• Follow Eric: Twitter
• The Portal, Eric’s podcast
• Duty to Warn
• Zero to One, by Peter Thiel
• The Tyranny of Distance, by Geoffrey Blainey
• The Lucky Country, by Donald Horne
• ‘Anthropic Capitalism And The New Gimmick Economy’, Eric’s edge.org article by Eric Weinstein
• The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon
• The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris

Topics discussed

• What did Eric learn from his grandfather Harry Rubin? 12:05
• How did Eric struggle with maths at school but go on to complete a Ph.D. in mathematical physics at Harvard University? 18:05
• Eric’s adventures in finance. 21:16
• What did Eric learn from the Global Financial Crisis? #holdthegold 30:25
• What is Nassim Taleb’s Twitter strategy? 32:25
• The time Eric met Jeffrey Epstein. 35:23
• Lessons in physics and a taxonomy of theories of everything. 47:01
• How the String Theory community “fucked up”. 59:43
• When Eric presented his theory of everything, Geometric Unity, at Oxford University. 1:06:27
• What’s it like working for and with Peter Thiel? 1:18:28
• Why did Thiel support Donald Trump for President? 1:23:30
• Eric’s work at Thiel Capital. 1:32:25
• Australia and building The Intellectual Wild South. 1:38:22
• Why has Western productivity growth stagnated? 2:10:10
• How does the global economy keep growing sustainably? 2:23:55
• Understanding ISIS execution videos. 2:30:25
• What does Eric think of Sam Harris’s thesis in The Moral Landscape? 2:32:49
• Has Eric learned anything new from his The Portal guests?
• How to raise children. 2:39:39
• Standing up to the mob. 2:42:02
• Rewards that await courageous contrarians. 2:48:31