October 27, 2023

#11 - Jamie Wheal: Tackling the Meaning Crisis

1 hour 24 minutes

In today's episode I chat with one of my favourite thinkers and writers: Jamie Wheal. I got to know Jamie through our mutual interest in, well, the hot mess that our civilization seems to be going through, and I knew he'd make a great guest for Win-Win because he's one of those rare folks who can combine both intellectual rigor and a deep love for physicality and nature. So as well as discussing game theory and the meaning crisis and all that good stuff, we also get into his discoveries studying human "flow states" - he's the co-founder of the Flow Genome Project, as well as the author of the bestselling books Stealing Fire and Recapture the Rapture. If you enjoy this episode, I highly recommend you check out his blog linked below.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:30 - Childhood Games

00:03:23 - Flow States

00:18:24 - Flow Genome Project

00:23:27 - The Meaning Crisis

00:32:00 - Moloch

00:36:12 - Seeking Win-Win Games

00:48:51 - AI Concerns and Risks

00:53:24 - Protecting oneself from cynicism

01:12:51 - Fostering Community

01:15:16 - Book Recommendations

01:19:40 - The Goal of the Cosmic Game

Links

♾️ Jamie Wheal’s Substack https://jamiewheal.substack.com/

♾️ Stealing Fire by Jamie Wheal

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/stealing-fire-steven-kotlerjamie-wheal?variant=32121993101346

♾️ Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal

https://www.recapturetherapture.com/

♾️ Flow Genome Project

https://www.flowgenomeproject.com/

♾️ Group Flow

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312318/

♾️ Bob Kegan

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/directory/faculty/robert-kegan

♾️ Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/189989

♾️ Problems with Externalities and Capitalism - Substack

♾️ Bittersweet by Susan Cain

https://susancain.net/book/bittersweet/

♾️ Dawn of Everything by David Graeber

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything

♾️ Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta https://www.harpercollins.com/products/sand-talk-tyson-yunkaporta?variant=32280908103714

♾️ John Lilly Wikipedia Page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.

Credits

Hosted by Liv Boeree

Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei

Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt

...more