Liberty's Highlights

My friends Tinkered Thinking (✍️📚 author of White Mirror & The Lucilius Parables ) and Jameson Olsen (🎧 host of Becoming the Main Character ) came back for the ultimate Project Hail Mary conversation: everything we loved, questioned, and overanalyzed about both the book and film . 📙🎬 🚨 If you haven’t read the book or seen the film, bookmark this and come back. Seriously. This one’s worth avoi...

I recruited my friends Tinkered Thinking (✍️📚 author of White Mirror & The Lucilius Parables ) and Jameson Olsen (🎧 host of Becoming the Main Character ) to do a *deep* dive on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's 1998 novella The Hedge Knight . 🚨 If you haven’t seen the show, bookmark this and come back. Seriously. This one’s worth avoiding spoilers and goi...

The annual tradition continues! David Kim (💚💚💚💚💚 🥃) and I look back at the past year, both for Scuttleblurb and for the world of finance & markets. We use David’s excellent ‘ 2025 business update ’ as a foundation for our chat, and I encourage you to read it. We cover a lot of ground. David’s unusually candid look at the business of running a paid newsletter (subscriber churn, the tension be...

This is a massive one! Nearly two hours, but you know what they say: Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! My friend MBI (🇧🇩🇺🇸) and I sat down to do something that sounds simple but turned out to be a seminar. In 2018, Apple  became the first $1T company. Fast forward to now, and we’re living in the era of the Trillion Dollar Club , a small group of companies that collectively represent an a...

You love reading. You’re always looking for great things to read? 📖 📚 Me too! * high five * 🙏 Today, I’m talking with my friends Tinkered Thinking and Dylan O’Sullivan about ‘ White Mirror ’, a book written by the former, edited by the latter, and published by OSV’s Infinite Books ( full disclosure: I was involved in the publication of this book, but we wanted to publish it because it’s great,...

One of my very favorite annual traditions is conducting this interview with my friend David Kim , aka Scuttleblurb (🕵📝). His investment research journal/company deep dives/business explorations were a key inspiration for this 🚢 steamboat. While the format is different, I hope there are similarities in the spirit. And I know that he has influenced and inspired many others — especially the good on...

Mark Nelson is back for Part 2! (If you missed it, here’s part 1 ) Another wide-ranging conversation: We discuss the implications of the new U.S. administration on energy policy , particularly focusing on Chris Wright, the incoming Secretary of Energy . We explore Wright’s background in the oil and gas industry , his connections to the nuclear sector through his board position at Oklo , and what h...

🚨 Note: The first part of the podcast is spoiler-free. The spoilers only start after a warning 🚨 What happens when six film enthusiasts dissect Christopher Nolan's most ambitious and polarizing puzzle box? 🧩 We dive deep into TENET — exploring and deconstructing the film's twisted timeline, inverted action sequences, and reality-bending concepts. 🕰️ 🧠🌀 What worked? What didn’t? Do we love it,...

Mark Nelson is back! ( our first conversation is here ) We discussed how AI's massive power needs are reshaping energy policy in unexpected ways. For years, Big Tech claimed to run on '100% renewable energy' while quietly relying on nuclear and fossil fuels. But now, as companies race to build massive AI computing centers requiring gigawatts of reliable 24/7 power, that pretense is crumbling. Star...

I’m excited to share with you one of my favorite podcasts that I’ve recorded ! 🎧🥇 I hope you enjoy it and will ➡️ subscribe to ‘Cost of Glory ’ ⬅️ (listen on: Spotify or Apple Podcast ) and follow Alex’s explorations of the greatest stories from Roman and Greek antiquity. It’s like a time machine for the mind , and might inspire you to read some of the great books we recommend near the end of th...

On his eighth appearance on the podcast, MBI (🇧🇩🇺🇸) joins me to discuss one of humanity’s most impressive achievements: The semiconductor industry. Of course, we can’t talk about everything, and this isn’t meant to be a structured primer (for that, see below). It’s just a mostly unstructured conversation among friends, discussing whatever we find interesting in the space. We focus mostly on TSMC a...

Here’s something a little different. A fun — but dark! — one. I’m a big fan of Denis Villeneuve, and I was due for a re-watch of ‘ Sicario ’ (2015, written by Taylor Sheridan). It was the perfect opportunity to nerd out about the film, so I recruited my OSV colleagues Ed William (🇬🇧) and Dylan O’Sullivan (🇮🇪) for that task. ( You should follow them on Twitter, and while you’re at it, sign up for t...

Today, I’m joined by my friend Trung Phan ! He’s multi-talented, funny and smart, a great writer, podcaster, and just overall good dude 👍 In this conversation, we cover a lot of things from the Trung Expanded Universe, from the network effect at companies like Twitter/X and Facebook to Chernobyl and partying in Vietnam , we talk about creating online and how he got so good at solving the Twitter...

On his sixth appearance on the pod, MBI joins me to discuss the most polarizing of the Big Tech companies: Meta Platforms (the artist formerly known as Facebook). Of course, it’s impossible to talk about it without talking about Mark Zuckerberg, so we try to better understand how he thinks about the company that he founded when he was 19, and how he compares to other founders. There was a lot to c...

I’m excited to share with you another fun conversation with my good friend MBI (💎🐕). This marks his sixth appearance on the podcast, putting him in the lead ahead of David Senra with four (not that anyone’s counting!). Our starting point is his Deep Dive on Microsoft, which I strongly recommend: * 📄 Microsoft: The Quintessential Technology Company (sub. required) It’s an excellent primer and ev...

Over the years, I have gotten to know Jim through one-on-one conversations and by listening to Infinite Loops and other podcasts where he was a guest. My goal with this podcast is to help you get to know Jim better , from his origin story to his early career in finance and quantitative investing, the writing of his influential book, all the way to the seeds of the idea that became O’Shaughnessy Ve...

I had the great pleasure of talking with someone I admire a lot: Kevin Kelly ! He not only influenced my life directly through his works & ideas but he’s also cited as an inspiration and influence by many of the people that I admire, so I’m sure there’s an indirect influence too! Among other things, we discuss his new book ( order your copy today !), creativity, the impact of AI, how to create fam...

🚨 SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 🚨 If you haven’t seen the show, bookmark this and come back after you’ve seen it. It’s a show worth seeing without spoilers! I’m very pleased that my friends Matt Reustle (🎧🎙️) and Tinkered Thinking (✍️📚) joined me to discuss what may very well turn out to be my favorite TV shows of the year. Above is one of my fave shots. I’m mad that I forgot to mention it in the...

I’m very happy to share with you this conversation with my two very good friends, Jimmy Soni (📚✍️) and David Senra (🎙📚). We discuss Jimmy’s excellent book The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley , while taking 57 different tangents and detours into things that we find interesting or that are indirectly connected to the main story . I hope you enjoy this...

What could be more exciting than carefully reading through Big Tech proxy statements to look at management incentives, comparing them across companies to see what’s similar and different, what we like and don’t like, and how they rank from best to worst ..? If this is not your bag, you’re in luck! MBI did this work for you and shared his findings in a post . But that’s just a starting point: In to...

David Kim is the author of Scuttleblurb (now also on Substack ! More on that new development in the podcast). This is the third time I have interviewed David — he’s that interesting! For more context, you can find the previous two interviews linked below. In this one, David shares his journey as an investor, talks about how Scuttleblurb started and how it’s doing these days, and who inspired him t...

Let’s go deep into season 1 of Severance (2022, Apple TV+), a thriller with science fiction elements created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. It was nominated for 14 Emmys! 🤫 🚨NOTE ON SPOILERS 🚨🤐 This podcast has a SPOILER-FREE INTRO . The spoilers only start after the “spoiler horn” about 11 minutes into it (you can’t miss it 📢) . So even if you haven’t seen the...

First, something to keep in mind: This is a conversation about these companies not an interview of MBI. We both talk about equally and ask each other questions. I want to mention it upfront just so you don’t expect a different format going in. I had a great time discussing these two very interesting companies with my friend MBI (💎🐕). When I saw on his 2022 deep dive calendar that he was going to...

I’m very happy to share with you this conversation I had with my two very good friends, Jimmy Soni (✍️) and David Senra (🎙📚). We got together for a very special occasion. To talk about this man: Claude Shannon was both a genius and a very authentic human being , and I think more people should learn from him — understanding his masterwork, Information Theory , helps to understand the digital world...

🤬 First a warning: This podcast includes a few swear words. It’s impossible — or at least not as fun — to talk about Deadwood without them. It is what it is. 🤬 The main topic is Deadwood (HBO, 2004-2006) and what can be learned from the show, but of course, this being David & I, we also talk about: * founders, * entrepreneurs, * obsessive creators, * the power of focus, * the power of strategy,...