Let's Know Things

This week we talk about October 7, the Gaza ceasefire plan, and Netanyahu. We also discuss Hamas, Qatar, and the new US administration. Recommended Book: Witch King by Martha Wells Transcript On October 7, 2023, the militant group Hamas launched a sneak attack from the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip against Israel itself, killing about 1,200 people and taking just over 250 hostages. Israeli forces we...

This week we talk about the Pacific Palisades, Hurricane Katrina, and reinsurance. We also discuss developed property values, arsons, and the cost of disasters. Recommended Book: The Data Detective by Tim Harford Transcript Natural disasters, whether we’re talking about storms or fires or earthquakes, or some combination of those and other often related issues, like flooding, can be incredibly exp...

This week we talk about Luigi Mangione, VAW attacks, and mass shootings. We also discuss stochastic violence, terrorism, and Cybertrucks. Recommended Book: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh Transcript The terms “Lone Wolf,” “Lone Wolf Actor,” and “Lone Wolf Killer” are interchangeably used in many countries—though most commonly and prominently in the United States—to describe someone who commits...

This week we talk about Yoon, martial law, and impeachment. We also discuss the PPP, chaebol, and dictators. Recommended Book: Starter Villain by John Scalzi Transcript In the wake of WWII, Korea—which was previously held by the recently-defeated Japanese Empire—was split into two countries, the north backed by the Soviet Union and the south backed by the United States and its allies. North Korea...

This week we talk about coups, the Arab Spring, and Bashar al-Assad. We also discuss militias, Al Qaeda, and Iran. Recommended Book: The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks Transcript In the early 2010s, a series of uprisings against unpopular, authoritarian governments spread across the Middle East—a wave of action that became known as the Arab Spring. Tunisia was where it started, a man setting himself...

This week we talk about emissions, carbon credits, and climate reparations. We also discuss Baku, COP meetings, and petrostates. Recommended Book: The Struggle for Taiwan by Sulmaan Wasif Khan Transcript In 2016, a group of 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, usually just called the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated the previo...

This week we talk about Mastodon, Threads, and twttr. We also discuss social platform clones, user exoduses, and communication fractures. Recommended Book: Invisible Rulers by Renée DiResta Transcript In 2006, a prototype of a software project called twttr, t-w-t-t-r, was developed by Jack Dorsey and Florian Weber, that name used because the full twitter.com domain, the word with all its vowels, w...

This week we talk about neural networks, AGI, and scaling laws. We also discuss training data, user acquisition, and energy consumption. Recommended Book: Through the Grapevine by Taylor N. Carlson Transcript Depending on whose numbers you use, and which industries and types of investment those numbers include, the global AI industry—that is, the industry focused on producing and selling artificia...

This week we talk about the Double Reduction Policy, gaokao, and Chegg. We also discuss GPTs, cheating, and disruption. Recommended Book: Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum Transcript In July of 2021, the Chinese government implemented a new education rule called the Double Reduction Policy. This Policy was meant, among other things, to reduce the stress students in the country felt related to their...

This week we talk about peat, pig iron, and sulphuric acid. We also discuss the Industrial Revolution, natural gas, and offshore wind turbines. Recommended Book: Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom Transcript This episode is going live on election day here in the US; and this has been quite a remarkable election season for many reasons, among them that there’s been just a boggling amount of money spent on...

This week we talk about Joe Rogan, Call Her Daddy, and podcast monetization. We also discuss Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and double-haters. Recommended Book: You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo Transcript In the world of US politics, double-haters are potential voters who really just don’t like the candidate from either major political party, and thus they decide whether and how to vote based on who they...

This week we talk about DJT, Polymarket, and Kalshi. We also discuss sports betting, gambling, and PredictIt. Recommended Book: Build, Baby, Build by Bryan Caplan Transcript Trump Media & Technology Group, which trades under the stock ticker DJT, has seen some wild swings since it became a publicly tradable business entity in late-March of 2024. The Florida-based holding company for Truth Social,...

This week we talk about the HoloLens, the Apple Vision Pro, and the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. We also discuss augmented reality, virtual reality, and Orion. Recommended Book: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler Transcript Originally released as a development device in 2016—so aimed at folks who make software, primarily, not at the general public—the HoloLens, made by Microsoft, was a fairly in...

This week we talk about the AfD, the Freedom Party, and the Identitarian Movement. We also discuss Martin Sellner, Herbert Kickl, and racialism. Recommended Book: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley Transcript Racialism, sometimes called scientific racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that groups of human beings are inherently, biologically different from each other based on different evolut...

This week we talk about the Fed, interest rates, and inflation. We also discuss cooling economies, the Federal Funds Rate, and the CPI. Recommended Book: Dirty Laundry by Richard Pink and Roxanne Emery Transcript I’ve done a few episodes on this general topic over the past several years, so I won’t get super in-depth about many of the specifics, but the US Federal Reserve has a dual-mandate to kee...

This week we talk about interdiction, the NSA, and Mossad. We also discuss exploding pagers, targeted strikes, and paramilitary organizations. Recommended Book: Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan Transcript In the world of technology, and especially computers—or anything with microchips and thus, some computing capabilities—a “backdoor” is a bit of code or piece of hardware that allows someone...

This week we talk about EREVs, Ford’s CEO, and Hertz. We also discuss the used EV market, plug-in hybrids, and the Tesla Model 3. Recommended Book: Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie Transcript In late-2021, car rental giant Hertz announced that it would purchase 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sedans for its fleet, giving customers the opportunity to drive what had recently, in 2019, become the bes...

This week we talk about Wegovy, Eli Lilly, and HIMS. We also discuss pig pancreases, beneficial side-effects, and shortages. Recommended Book: The Death Café Movement by Jack Fong Transcript In the 1970s, a pair of researchers looking into possible ways to address duodenal ulcer disease were studying the way we secrete different hormones while eating, and that led to an experiment in which they pu...

Friends! It looks like Covid got me (my girlfriend is just getting over her own Covid-y week, and we live together—so despite our best efforts this was maybe unavoidable). In accordance with my policy of aggressively resting when I get sick, I’ll be taking the week off to sleep, feel generally sore and uncomfortable, and consume alarming quantities of ibuprofen. Sorry about the gap in programming,...

This week we talk about the Falcon 9, the Saturn V, and NASA’s bureaucracy. We also discuss Boeing’s mishaps, the Scout system, and the Zenit 2. Recommended Book: What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban Transcript In 1961, the cost to launch a kilogram of something into low Earth orbit—and a kilogram is about 2.2 pounds, and this figure is adjusted for inflation—was about $118,500, using the Scout, or So...

This week we talk about Kursk, asymmetric warfare, and Russian politics. We also discuss HIMARS, supply lines, and Kyiv. Recommended Book: The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han Transcript About two and a half years ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine. This invasion had been forecasted for a while, as Russian forces had at times surreptitiously, at times more over...

This week we talk about Taylor Swift, knife attacks, and immigration politics. We also discuss immigration rationales, riffraff, and terrorist plots. Recommended Book: AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan Transcript American musician, singer, and songwriter Taylor Swift, at age 34, recently became the world's first music industry billionaire who's primary source of income is their music—as oppose...

This week we talk about Chávez, Maduro, and Bolivarianism. We also discuss authoritarianism, Potemkin elections, and the Venezuelan refugee crisis. Recommended Book: Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen Transcript Venezuela, a country with a population of about 30.5 million people, has lost something like 7 to 9 million people, depending on which numbers you use, to a refugee crisis that began about a de...

This week we talk about student protests, curfews, and East Pakistan. We also discuss Sheikh Hasina, Myanmar, and authoritarians. Recommended Book: The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk Transcript Bangladesh is a country of about 170 million people, those people living in an area a little smaller than the US state of Illinois, a hair over 57,000 square miles. It shares a smallish southeastern border w...

This week we talk about assassination attempts, presidential drop-outs, and October Surprises. We also discuss election narratives, the frictions of age, and brief attempts at unity messaging. Recommended Book: The Day the World Stops Shopping by JB MacKinnon Transcript On October 7 of 2016, The Washington Post released a video from 2005 in which Presidential Candidate Donald Trump bragged about h...