On The Trail Of Genghis Khan - Tim Cope (Book)

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Previous guests on the podcast similar to this!

Jack Weatherford - Genghis Khan & The Making Of The Modern World

Robyn Davidson - Australian Living Legend. Documenter Of Nomads.

Jon Lee Anderson - New Yorker Staff Writer, A Life Of Adventure.

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Tim Cope underwent a three year journey traversing the entire Eurasian steppe, starting in Karakorum, the old Mongolian capital, westwards through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and finally Hungary until he reached the Danube river. 

The journey took him three years to complete and 4 horses. He picked up a dog along the way, and his journey saw him robbed, threatened, welcomed and exposed to murderous heat and cold.

I first wrote to Tim 4 years ago… so we’ve maintained a very spotty correspondence in anticipation for today. 

Tim Cope is is an Australian adventurer, author, filmmaker, photographer, expedition guide - a fluent Russian speaker - a bloody good writer and someone generous enough to offer me their time and invite me into their home here in rural Victoria. 

Timestamps.

00:00 - Tim Cope
02:50 - The Magic Of The Steppe
10:10 - Tim's Coma & Writing
13:15 - Tim's Backstory
24:50 - On The Trail Of Genghis Khan
33:01 - The Eurasian Steppe
37:41 - The Decline Of Nomadic Cultures
46:27 - Entering Into Kazakhstan & Finding A Dog
1:02:55 - Tim's Growing Reputation On The Steppe
1:10:50 - Alcoholism On The Steppe
1:19:12 - Abandoned Goldmine For The Winter
1:38:45 - Prostitution 
1:50:00 - Tim's Father Passing Away
2:05:46 - Hungary
2:12:30 - The Problem Of Fitting Back In
2:24:50 - Success & Book Publishing
2:31:00 - How Mongolia Has Changed
2:44:10 - Tim's Evolving Thoughts On Both Russia & Ukraine

The Men Who Killed The News (Book)

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Eric Beecher is a veteran journalist, editor and entrepreneur whose experienced first hand the dramatic evolution of the previous 40 years of media. 

From broadsheet’s to TV to the internet to facebook, podcasts, now AI. Eric has been across all these, both an employee and employer as the business models were repeatedly shaken and recast. 

And he asks, what is the cumulative damage when owners of journalism place profits and power over civic responsibility and decency. 

That book is called, ‘The Men Who Killed The News’ and series a history of media moguldom, the perennial story of power and influence chipping away ever so gradually, the role good journalism esteems in helping us make sense of the world. It’s not nostalgia for the good old days, but rather an attempt to understand how we got here, and whether there is anything that can be done about it.

Eric was formerly the youngest editor at the Sydney Morning Herald before being recruited by Murdoch himself to run at the time, his latest media acquisition, before resigning sighting ethical differences. 

Eric runs today alongside his colleagues, Crikey, The Mandarin and SmartCompany. Eric is a major architect of modern Australian independent media, and it is my pleasure to welcome him to the podcast. 

Gareth Gore | Unveiling The Conspiracy Of Opus Dei (his first appearance)

Gareth Gore - Opus (Amazon)

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This is Gareth’s second appearance on the podcast. 

It is the political fallout from everything covered in our first episode where he told the story for how he serendipitously uncovered Opus Dei’s hidden power and financial manipulation while investigating the ruins of the Spanish bank, Banco Popular. 

It began as a routine story but evolved into the discovery of a global network of manipulation, coercive recruitment, psychological abuse, and enormous financial flows routed through myriad opaque foundations. Gareth spoke about how Opus Dei maintains a polished, benign public image, but secretly operates an inner core of numeraries—members bound by vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty—who are tightly controlled, isolated, and monitored.

It’s systematic practices include corporal mortification, constant surveillance, abuse, both emotional and physical and the exploitation of vulnerable young women tantamount to human trafficking. Opus Dei used Banco Popular as a piggy bank for decades, funnelling money through shell foundations and offshore channels to fund their impressive global expansion.

This is a Direct quote from Gareth’s first appearance… “This is an organisation that seeks to re-Christianize of the entire world… Opus Dei is informed by a warped, distorted, conservative, radical reading of the Bible. It embeds itself in key institutions, especially in the United States. and Despite its Vatican legitimacy, Opus Dei uses secrecy and corporate structures to evade accountability. 

A probe into Gideon Haigh's worldview, someone I've anticipated interviewing ever since this podcast began. 

Some highlights from the podcast.

• On cricket: “Cricket marches backwards into the future — always haunted by its past.”
• On Warne: “He had perfect superficiality and the gift of putting everyone at ease.”
• On journalism: “Legacy media has become mindlessly negative. If they can’t own it, they destroy it.”
• On new media: “It’s amazingly empowering to write something and press publish — no intermediaries, no gatekeepers.”
• On India: “India has become the gravitational centre of world cricket — a nation full of gods, and some of them play cricket.”
• On memory: “Memory is a slippery thing — journalists are constantly trying to pin it down, trusting it when it suits us, interrogating it when it doesn’t.”

Gideon is a veteran journalist, author and the most eclectic cricket writer alive today. He has prolific output. He’s published more than 50 books and thousands of articles scoping a gamut of topics. Work, bureaucracy, the office, Australian crime, banks, business, scandals, cricket, cricket history, cricket politics, media, journalism, biography, memoir, and too many more to rattle off. 

Check out the video of this one (Spotify or Youtube). The decor is a very on the nose projection for Gideon's aforementioned interests. Lining opposite walls are two imposing floor to ceiling bookshelves eyeing each down for Gideons attention. Behind him a shrine to cricket and across from him a shrine to the rest. 

Gideon is also the co-host, alongside Peter Lalor, the wonderful Substack and podcast - Cricket Et Al. 

If you like Cricket than you’ll love Cricket Et Al.

... a few quotes from Gideon in the interview to leave you with.

• "I've always thought journalism was a great vehicle for curiosity"
• “Contemporaneous documentation — that which was created at the time — is the closest thing we have to truth.”
• “Part of the romance of archives is finding them — going to see the thing that no one else has looked at.”
• “We are too easily satisfied with low-hanging fruit. I believe strongly in delayed gratification.”
• “An inquest is like a lightning flash — it illuminates everything in its surroundings for a moment before vanishing.”
• “If the record spoke for itself, it wouldn’t need interpretation.”
• “A good historian has humility. They know they can’t tell the whole thing, but they do their best.”
• “It’s not imagination that’s rare, it’s perseverance.”
• “I’m interested in delighting readers, not just informing them.”
• “The minute I stop getting better, I’ll stop doing it.”
• “Journalism should be a vehicle for curiosity, not defensiveness.”
• “I’ve always thought the best journalism comes from knowing who really pulls the strings.”
• “The site, the Substack — it’s a hungry beast. It requires constant replenishment.”
• “I’m not just writing to be read. I’m writing to find out what I think.”
• “I dislike the term ‘non-fiction’ — defining something by what it’s not.”
• “Legacy media is in long-term decline. They can’t own new ideas — so they’d rather destroy them.”
• “The barriers to entry have never been lower. The barriers to making a living have never been higher.”
• “Cricket is a game that marches backward into the future — every feat echoes those that came before.”
• “Test cricket is romantic love; T20 is carnal love.”

I've anticipated this interview for 6 years. 

Robyn Davidson has lived one of the most mythologised lives in Australian memory.

She famously and unintentionally burst onto the scene with Tracks in 1988, which was a 2,700km camel trek across the Simpson desert. She'd never intended to write a book or document anything of it's kind from the journey, but was desperate for some money to gather supplies for the impending trip. She figured $1000 would do, and serendipitously met the National Geographic photographer who put her on the map whilst cleaning windows as a part time gig in Alice Springs. 

He said that if she wrote to National Geographic telling them about the journey, then she might get what she needed.

They paid her $4,000 which Robyn comments 'was a fortune', and from there, the rest is history.

Robyn has since lived between India, London and Australia but travelled most elsewhere on the map. She was with Salman Rushdie while he wrote the 'Satanic Verses', has published a series of books and articles documenting the lives of nomads, lived an 'aristocratic life' with her partner Narendra Singh Bhati in the high Himalayas and most recently published an autobiography titled 'Unfinished Woman'. Robyn say's to me that 'memoir is the slipperiest genre'.

I have waited 6 years to do this interview with Robyn. She has a dream guest of mine since before the podcast began. We recorded earlier this year in rural Victoria. 

The interview is Robyn's life. What led up to tracks, and what happened after. 

Robyn reflects on her lifelong resistance to labels. Not a “writer,” not a “traveller,” not a “feminist icon,” but simply, as she says, “a person.” We speak about memoir, the slipperiness of memory “in retrospect, memory is imagination”.

She speaks candidly about solitude, beauty, and depression, her family, fame, about the distortion of the famous photographs “Rick made me look like a Vogue model, that wasn’t me”, and her uneasy relationship with literary celebrity in London alongside Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis and more.

In this podcast you can expect the following discussion. 

The Performed Self & Identity

• “Whenever you use the first-person pronoun, you are necessarily creating a character.”

The Narrative Fallacy

• “We invent neat, linear, emotionally satisfying stories to explain what happened… but the world is messy, chaotic and driven by chance.”

Freedom, Nomadism & Refusal to Be Fixed

• Freedom and movement — literal and intellectual — define her resistance to labels like “travel writer” or “author.”

Chance, Fate & Serendipity

• “On the tiniest turning point you can head off in a billion directions.”

Depression, Nihilism & Meaning

• “It’s a terrible pain that hovers somewhere between the physical body and the mental body.”
• “To learn how to deal with a profoundly nihilistic view and to counter that view — that’s been the most formative moment of my life.”

Beauty, Objectification & Subjecthood

• “If that journey was about anything, it was about being the subject of my own life, not an object.”

Feminism, Rebellion & the 1968 Generation

• The spirit of the late-’60s counterculture — radical freedom, equality, and experimentation — shaped her worldview.

Authenticity vs. Fame

• “What I was interested in was knowledge and whether people were genuine or

“I deserved whatever the opposite of a Pulitzer is.”

Phil Elwood is the author of All the Worst Humans, a confessional memoir from the dubious world of public relations.

As a PR operative. He helped Qatar win the 2022 World Cup. He spun the release of the Lockerbie bomber into a “positive headline.” Had the Gaddafi family, the Assad regime and plenty more among his clients. 

Phil speaks with humility and incredible clarity about what he learned from that world. The moral grey zones, the craft behind the spin, and how media manipulation really works in practice.

It’s a rare, honest window into an industry that prefers the shadows.

• How propaganda and PR actually get executed behind closed doors
• The mechanics of “first ink,” astroturfing, and reputation laundering
• The moral compromises behind Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid
• Sportswashing, Liv Golf, and the new global game of influence
• Whether the media is more easily manipulated than ever?
• Whether AI and independent creators can break the old PR machinery

00:00 — Who is Phil Elwood?
04:57 — Lockerbie bomber: how he manufactured “positive press” for Libya.
11:14 — “Opposite of a Pulitzer” treating the news like a solvable game.
12:30 — What a PR operative really does; “infect a newsroom.”
18:28 — First Ink masterclass: Antigua vs USA
27:44 — Qatar 2022: going negative on the US bid
40:15 — Is Sportswashing PR? Is it all bad?
49:57 — “Buy the printing press”: oligarch media ownership.
55:01 — News collapse, AI replacing reporters, and why that’s dangerous.
57:21 — Andrew Callaghan. Do gatekeepers still matter?
01:05:53 — “Digital fentanyl”; treat content as a public-health issue.
01:10:27 — Rebranding Zuckerberg; persona as PR product.
01:22:44 — Bots: PR firms pitching bot farms
01:34:30 — Practical playbook & media-literacy plus a nice close.

“In the next 25 years, the world will need more copper than in all of human history.”

Amendment - I said 3.2 billion kg of copper in opening question, I should have said 320 million kg. 

In this episode, journalist and author Vince Beiser returns to the podcast to discuss his book Power Metal, a sobering look at the metals that make modern civilization possible — and the extraordinary cost of extracting them.

We cover the story of copper — the wire of empire. Beiser reveals why humanity will need more copper in the next 25 years than we’ve used in all of history, and how that quest is reshaping geopolitics, the environment, and our very ideas of progress. From Chile’s drought-stricken Atacama mines to the e-waste yards of Lagos, Nigeria, we follow the real people and places behind our “clean-energy” future — and the dirty truths that power it.

We also unpack the rise of deep-sea mining, the billionaires behind it, and the tensions between state power, corporate ambition, and the planet’s limits. Along the way we meet Robert Friedland, Gerard Barron, Dan Gertler, and a cast of characters who prove that the world still runs on digging — and that the future will too.

If you liked The World in a Grain or stories about how our material world shapes our moral one, this conversation will hit home.

Topics: Resource wars, clean-tech paradox, deep-sea mining, copper shortage, China’s industrial strategy, EV economics, and how to reduce demand without going backwards.
Guest: Vince Beiser - author of Power Metal and The World in a Grain
Subscribe to his newsletter Power Metal Substack

The World In A Grain (Vince's First Appearance on The Curious Worldview in 2021) - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7rf8QskOPtzvp2g8tm3lMk?si=zxA1ycpKRViBFt5S3XTCLg

Timestamps.

00:00 – Intro: Vince Beiser & Power Metal
02:00 – Chile’s Copper Boom & the Atacama Water Crisis
07:00 – Congo’s Cobalt, U.S. Retreat, and Copper Geography
10:00 – The No-Free-Lunch of the Green Transition
12:30 – Lagos E-Waste Recyclers & the Hidden Cost of Recycling
19:10 – Deep-Sea Mining and the Billionaires Behind It
23:00 – The UN vs Trump: Who Owns the Ocean Floor?
33:00 – Robert Friedland, Steve Jobs & Congo’s Mining Empire
41:00 – Corruption, Crony Capitalism & Dan Gertler
47:00 – Commodity Volatility and State Intervention
52:00 – China’s Industrial Patience vs Western Myopia
55:00 – Rethinking Cars, Cities & Demand Reduction
58:00 – The Future of Resources — and Civilization Itself

Theoretical physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss (A Universe from Nothing, The Known Unknowns) explores the biggest questions we can ask:
How did the universe begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? And what will remain when every star has burned out?

Krauss moves seamlessly from the hard science of the Big Bang and dark energy to existential philosophy, arguing that our cosmic insignificance is precisely what makes life meaningful.

 Along the way he shares personal stories—mentorship from Nobel laureates, serendipitous discoveries, his friendship with Christopher Hitchens—and explains how curiosity and rigorous science drive human progress.

🪐 What We Cover

• 0:00 Intro & Lawrence Krauss’s background
• 1:40 Why cosmic insignificance makes life precious
• 5:45 Serendipity, creativity & the joy of discovery
• 13:00 Australia stories & reflections on public science
• 16:20 Science as culture & the power of the scientific method
• 24:30 Evidence for the Big Bang and the age of the universe (~13.8B years)
• 29:15 How astronomers measure cosmic acceleration & dark energy
• 36:00 The universe’s fate: heat death, black holes & ultimate nothingness
• 40:45 Consciousness and the mystery of self-aware stardust
• 44:40 Memories of Christopher Hitchens and Hitch’s final quip

💡 Key Ideas & Quotes

• “We make our own meaning. The universe doesn’t care—and that’s liberating.”
• “Science is not just results; it’s the process of questioning and testing.”
• “Rare things happen all the time in a big, old universe.”
• Christopher Hitchens on existence: “Why is there something rather than nothing? Just wait... it won’t be for long.”

📚 A Selection Of Books by Lawrence Krauss

• A Universe from Nothing
• The Known Unknowns
• The Physics of Star Trek
  
  

Subscribe to Chris Arnade's Substack - https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/

Who is Chris Arnade!

He started as a physicist, earning a PHD from Johns Hopkins and then took to Wall St spending two decades on an elite trading desk at CitiGroup before disillusioning his well dressed allies to engage in the photography, walking and writing of the great and forgotten cities of this world. 

He is a best selling author, but as well… a best subscribed substacker!

'Chris Arnade Walks The World' is the publications name…

And in it, Chris lives up to the title. 

Japan, Europe, China, Australia, The Faroe Islands, Canada, the expansive US of A, Turkey, Korea, Indonesia even Uzbekistan (which gets a special mention in this podcast). Cities within all of these great nations and many more, Chris has trod and documented. 

His format is slow and empathetic. Chris will embark on several 20-30km journeys at his location, take photos and then report on his walk. 

I can’t remember how long I’ve been subscribed, although it feels like years, but the other day I woke up to an email which detailed Chris’s initial impressions of Sydney! I replied to the email right away, and just a few hours later was guiding him along the Malabar to Bondi trail. Steve and I - guiding Chris from the area I grew up to the most iconic beach in Australia. 

That was a special serendipity which came out of no-where and furthermore, led to this podcast today...

• 00:00 Introduction to Chris Arnade — physicist, Wall Street trader, turned global walker/writer.
• 02:00 First impressions of Sydney — “child of LA and London,” with beaches, pubs, suburbs, and good living.

Sydney Observations

• 03:40 Sydney’s trains: efficient, sprawling, but designed to avoid beaches.
• 06:00 Sydney friendliness vs. UK cynicism — “Australians are like puppy dogs, eager to please.”
• 09:30 Suburbs as “democratized manors,” good life for the average person, housing affordability issues.
• 13:00 Housing supply constraints, coastline beauty, and why Sydney isn’t as bad as people think.

Walking & Method

• 16:30 From physics & Wall Street to walking: walks as stress relief, learning, meditation.
• 20:30 Spreadsheet brain → toy models → refining worldview through walking.
• 22:30 Cities that defied expectations: Tashkent & Jakarta.

Global Perspectives

• 25:30 Africa’s challenges: Nigeria & Dakar as examples of dysfunction despite resources.
• 29:00 Australia’s weak ties with Indonesia, lack of Indonesians in Sydney, food culture, overlapping economic models.
• 33:30 Chinese-Indonesian business dominance — parallels to Jews, Lebanese, minorities elsewhere.
• 36:00 High-trust vs. low-trust societies: Japan as the archetype.

Culture & Writing

• 41:30 Why he avoids fame, prefers anonymity, but respects subscribers deeply.
• 44:00 Pressure to deliver as a Substack writer — treating it like a job.
• 47:00 Writing inspiration, uninspired cities (Bangkok), and the challenges of always producing.
• 53:00 Strong opinions drive traffic

Dignity & Underclass

• 55:00 “Dignity” project in the US — underclass and addiction.

Personal Life

• 56:20 Family and frugality
• 58:50 Why he doesn’t read other travel writers

Philosophy & Serendipity

• 01:04:50 Serendipity? “I don’t believe in coincidence.” 
• 01:07:00  Country he’s most bullish on
• 01:09:00 Next destinations

Subscribe to Nicholas Gruen's Substack - https://nicholasgruen.substack.com/

I joined the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen recently in his Melbourne home to host his first 'long-form' podcast (although I'm not sure at what hour it goes from short to long)

At the core of Gruen's worldview is the “un-seriousness” he levels at Australian politics, the media landscape, institutions and in a word... bureaucracies.

From his creation of the HALE Index to his decades inside Australia’s public institutions, Nicholas continuously challenges orthodox thinking.

The podcast covers the (in my opinion) radical yet (Nicholas's opinion) ancient idea of citizens’ juries as a second pillar of representation, the reasons bold policy rarely survives bureaucratic reality, and how lessons from the Toyota production system could help governments actually listen to people at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Along the way, Gruen takes us from Australia’s superannuation system to pokies, from the mental health crisis to the subtle erosion of public-spiritedness inside organisations. 

To be specific, these are all the topics covered in this chat.

• The HALE Index of Well-being – Why GDP misses the mark, how HALE works, and what it reveals about Australia’s progress.
• Measuring What Matters – The limits of subjective well-being metrics, correlations between indicators, and why faux indexes mislead policymakers.
• Indigenous Policy Contradictions – The tension between material “gap closing” and self-determination, and why policy rarely confronts it.
• Citizens’ Juries & Political Reform – Introducing random selection into governance and how it could act as a check on elected officials.
• Goodhart’s Law in Action – How turning measures into targets corrupts them, and the problem of gaming metrics in education and beyond.
• Internal vs External Goods – Alasdair MacIntyre’s framework and its relevance to public service, corporate culture, and motivation.
• Institutional Stagnation – Why promising initiatives stall, and how bottom-up programs could scale without being crushed by bureaucracy.
• Toyota Production System Lessons – Building respect for frontline workers into systems and how it transforms performance.
• Australia’s Superannuation System – Strengths, inefficiencies, unfair taxation, and misaligned regulation of self-managed super funds.
• Compulsory Voting & Preferential Systems – How they shape Australia’s political centre and guard against extreme populism.
• Universities Today – The shift from idea-driven discourse to metric-chasing careerism, especially in economics.
• Trade-offs vs Synergies – Why economics often overemphasises trade-offs, and examples of where quality and cost improve together.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Nicholas Gruen
05:41 The Limitations of GDP as a Measure
11:08 Inequality and Its Impact on Well-being
16:45 The Role of Metrics in Policy Making
22:10 The Importance of Community Engagement
41:48 Connecting Education to the Real World
47:24 Learning from Toyota's Success
56:52 The Flaws in Superannuation System
01:02:55 Reforming Auditing Practices
01:11:39 The Shift in University Education
01:20:59 Divergent Perspectives in Economics
01:32:49 Rethinking Representation in Democracy
01:48:25 The Role of Elite Consensus in Political Change
02:07:58 Understanding Domestic Violence in Indigenous Communities
02:21:55 The Role of New Media in Political Discourse
02:26:38 The Impact of Gambling on Australian Society
02:36:08 The Nature of Optimism and Serendipity in Life