Let's Know Things

This week we talk about kidnappings, ransoms, and bitcoin. We also discuss crypto wealth, robberies, and memecoins. Recommended Book: The Status Game by Will Storr Transcript In 2008, a white paper published by someone writing under the pen name Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a method for making a decentralized asset class called a cryptocurrency that led to the creation of bitcoin, which was implement...

This week we talk about the NHTSA, CAFE standards, and energy efficiency. We also discuss incentive programs, waste heat, and the EPA. Recommended Book: Africa Is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin Transcript In the United States, fuel-efficiency laws for vehicles sold on the US market are set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. They set the Corporate Average Fuel Economy,...

This week we talk about the Marshall Plan, standardization, and USB. We also discuss artificial intelligence, Anthropic, and protocols. Recommended Book: Fuzz by Mary Roach Transcript In the wake of WWII, the US government implemented the European Recovery Program, more commonly known as the Marshall Plan, to help Western Europe recover from a conflict that had devastated the afflicted countries’...

This week we talk about British India, Kashmir, and water treaties. We also discuss the global order, sovereignty, and tit-for-tat escalation. Recommended Book: Power Metal by Vince Beiser Transcript When then British India was partitioned by the British in 1947, the country carved up by its colonialist rulers into two new countries, one Hindu majority, the Union of India, and one Muslim majority,...

This week we talk about AI chatbots, virtual avatars, and romance novels. We also discuss Inkitt, Galatea, and LLM grooming. Recommended Book: New Cold Wars by David E. Sanger Transcript There’s evidence that the US Trump administration used AI tools, possibly ChatGPT, possibly another, similar model or models, to generate the numbers they used to justify a recent wave of new tariffs on the countr...

This week we talk about smishing, Huione, and scams. We also discuss money laundering, the Cambodian government, and Tether. Recommended Book: The Longevity Imperative by Andrew J. Scott Transcript The portmanteau ‘smishing’ combines SMS and phishing to refer to the practice of using text messages to trick the recipients of said messages into revealing information that allows scammers to access th...

This week we talk about taxes, reciprocity, and recession. We also discuss falling indices, stagflation, and theories of operation. Recommended Book: The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer Transcript Stagflation, which is a portmanteau of stagnation and inflation, is exactly what it sounds like: a combination of those two elements, usually with high levels of unemployment, as well, that can cause...

This week we talk about Studio Ghibli, Andrej Karpathy, and OpenAI. We also discuss code abstraction, economic repercussions, and DOGE. Recommended Book: How To Know a Person by David Brooks Transcript In late-November of 2022, OpenAI released a demo version of a product they didn’t think would have much potential, because it was kind of buggy and not very impressive compared to the other things t...

This week we talk about Elon Musk, deportations, and the First Amendment. We also discuss electric vehicles, free speech, and Georgia. Recommended Book: Red Rising by Pierce Brown Transcript Greenpeace is a protest-focused, environmentalist nongovernmental organization that was originally founded in Canada in the early 1970s, but which has since gone on to tackle issues ranging from commercial wha...

This week we talk about tariffs, consumer confidence, and trade wars. We also discuss inflation, GDP, and uncertainty. Recommended Book: A Brief History of Intelligence by Max S. Bennett Transcript On January 20, 2025, mere hours after being sworn into his second term in office as President of the United States, Donald Trump announced new 25% tariffs on most incoming goods from Canada and Mexico,...

This week we talk about Euromaidan, minerals deals, and propaganda. We also discuss European security, NATO, and the western-led world order. Recommended Book: Storm Front by Jim Butcher Transcript In February of 2014, pro-Russian protests racked parts of southeastern Ukraine and Russian soldiers, their uniforms and weapons stripped of flags and other identifying markers, occupied another part of...

This week we talk about Luna 2, soft-landings, and Firefly Aerospace. We also discuss the private space launch industry, lunar landers, and regolith. Recommended Book: The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey Transcript In 1959, Luna 2, a Soviet impactor-style spacecraft, successfully reached the surface of the Moon—the first-ever human-made object to do so. Luna 2 was very of its era; a relatively s...

This week we talk about arabica, robusta, and profit margins. We also discuss colonialism, coffee houses, and religious uppers. Recommended Book: On Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson Transcript Like many foods and beverages that contain body- or mind-altering substances, coffee was originally used, on scale at least, by people of faith, leveraging it as an aid for religious rituals. Suf...

This week we talk about H5N1, fowl plague, and viral reservoirs. We also discuss the CDC, raw milk, and politics. Recommended Book: Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari Transcript In late-January of 2025, staff at the US Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, were told to stop working with the World Health Organization, and data, and some entire pages containing such data, and analysis of it, were removed fr...

This week we talk about DART, extinction events, and asteroid 2024 YR4. We also discuss Bruce Willis, Theia, and the Moon. Recommended Book: Exadelic by Jon Evans Transcript In the 1998 action flick Armageddon, an asteroid the size of Texas is nudged into a collision course with earth by a comet, and NASA only notices it 18 days before impact. The agency recruits a veteran oil driller, played by B...

This week we talk about tax hikes, free trade, and the madman theory of negotiation. We also discuss EVs, Canada, and economic competition. Recommended Book: How Sanctions Work by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez Transcript On January 20, 2025, the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, was inaugurated as the 47th President of the US following a hard-fou...

This week we talk about OpenAI, the Stargate Project, and Meta. We also discuss o1, AGI, and efficiency. Recommended Book: The Shortest History of Economics by Andrew Leigh Transcript One of the bigger news items these past few weeks, in terms of the numbers involved, at least, was an announcement by US tech company OpenAI that it will be starting a new company called the Stargate Project, which w...

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...