By Ryan Faulkner
A collection of the world's most adventurous authors and best investigative journalists.
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The podcast currently has 190 episodes available.
Nat Eliason is an absolute legend.
I’ve been subscribed to his newsletter, following his tweets, and listening to his interviews for what feels like years now.
He’s a prolific online writer who recently published his debut book, a memoir of a crypto side quest he spiralled deep down into which is serves as revelatory for the sheer insanity that is crypto. It’s meme coins, making loads of money, losing it, secret discord servers, exit liquidity and all the rest that foreshadows the same stuff happening now.
Crypto is back in the news, and therefore so is Nat’s book - Crypto Confidential - which is a must read if you want to get a sense for, or contribute to, the mania.
However, writing is Nat’s circulatory system, so we ended up speaking half about books and half about crypto. When you check out the episode, navigate the timestamps if you wanna skip the writing stuff and go straight to crypto.
Before I leave you with Nat, he’s got this tremendous call to action on his Substack that I wanted to share here…
“Among my strongest life goals is to write something worthy of outliving me”
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Nat Eliason Substack
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00:00 - Who Is Nat Eliason?
01:08 - Serendipitous Anecdote
02:58 - CRYPTO: Crypto Mania
12:23 - Writing
18:05 - AI Helping Writers (Great Metaphor)
24:48 - Great Story Telling Less Great Writing
34:08 - Taleb's Influence
41:08 - Book Publishing Market (VC Metaphor)
1:00:33 - CRYPTO: Crypto From All Sides. Crazy Stories. Current Market, Ideological? The Future.
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Levison Wood is an author, journalist, tv star, photographer, film producer, script writer, fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and as well to top it all off… former Officer in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment.
If you’ve never heard of Levison Wood, he’s written books that have taken us all across the world. He was propelled into fame with his debut 'Walking The Nile' back in 2015 which serendipitously parlayed into a documentary, and then the momentum took and he’s never looked back.
Lev is for me the archetypal guest that I look for with this podcast. That delicate combination of writer and adventurer. The discipline to take a big risk, and then return with clean prose.
I’d group this interview right alongside my high watermark for the show which was #169 with Jon Lee Anderson, #66 with Tim Butcher way back and any of the Tim Marshall appearances as well.
Youtube - https://youtu.be/jP2HR443Pb0
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Levison Wood Website
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00:00 - Levison Wood
01:040 - Jocko Willink
04:25 - All Explorers Seem British?
06:08 - Luck & Serendipity
21:43 - The Surprise Success & Big Decade
33:00 - Rough Times For Lev
38:08 - Opportunity Cost: Family Vs Career
44:40 - Lev's Mount Rushmore Of GOAT Explorers
55:40 - Romanticising Indiana Jones & Thoughts On Graham Hancock
59:20 - Rory Stewart
1:02:23 - Great Current Explorers
1:10:30 - Lev Having An Incredible Decade
1:14:10 - Thinking About Risk
1:22:55 - Milling - Wild Hazing In Parachute Regiment
1:30:10 - How Has The Nature Of Travel Changed?
1:43:25 - What Great Expedition From History Would Lev Join?
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David De Jong First Appearance On The Pod - Nazi Billionaires, #127 - Apple
David De Jong First Appearance On The Pod - Nazi Billionaires, #127 - Spotify
David De Jong is a Dutch historian and investigative journalist.
Early in his career, he found himself in New York reporting for Bloomberg on hidden fortunes and the power of family offices all across the world - it was during this job he discovered a nondescript €18,000,000,000 German family office…
David eventually pulled that thread all the way back to the upper echelons of the Nazi party
This led him to move to Berlin and embark down a 4 year investigation into the dark and dusty vaults of Germanys corporate pst.
What he uncovered was Nazi wealth that has endured to this day which has its tentacles wrapped around many companies that you and I consume or interact with on a daily basis.
Today, we recorded a brief addendum to the story, David published in Vanity Fair recently a story of Kuehne + Nagel, one of the worlds largest freight forwarding companies, that is listed on the Swiss exchange, but a very German company indeed.
The podcast is about the central role Kuehne + Nagel played in the Third Reich. The politics of memory in Germany and the son of Kuehne + Nagel founder, Klaus-Michael Kuehne who is germanys richest man, the largest shareholder of Kuehne + Nagel and until today, still denying the companies dark origins.
Link To Nazi Billionaires Book
Link To Vanity Fair Article
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https://atlasgeographica.com/patrick-watts/
The following is with Patrick Watts who is one hell of an interesting fella and in this podcast we discuss the various outcomes and implications of the 2024 US election contra Trump & Harris.
The End Of The American Empire – UK Amazon
The End Of The American Empire – US Amazon
Stephanie Baker is a journalist whose been writing between the intersection of business and politics for almost 30 years with Bloomberg.
Stephanie's just published her first book and it is just amazing and the consequence of covering these topics for a lifetime. The network, the knowledge, the weird language of sanctions of financial opacity.
It’s a book about the global economic war with Russia post Ukrainian invasion. The fallout of the sanctions, why it has and hasn’t crippled the Russian economy as intended, and everything in and around Russian capital flight, Russian sanctions and the global economic war underwriting Russia's physical threat.
We start with Stephanies experience covering Russia from Moscow in the 90s, her stumbling across a murder scene and then between that and the book, Stephanie working as Christopher Hitchens fact checker at The Nation, the details behind putting a book like this together then the details about western businesses who withdrew substantial Russian operations, the oil markets chicanery to skirt sanctions, Oligarchs, Minigarchs, Euroclear and frozen Russian capital, what the sanctions did where they've been effective and where they haven’t and a whole lot more.
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Stephanie Baker - Punishing Putin
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00:00 - Who Is Stephanie Baker
03:21 - Moscow In The 90s & Fact Checking Christopher Hitchens
09:01 - How Oligarchs Were Created
17:07 - Hermitage Capital & Bill Browder
19:00 - Debut Book After 30 Years Of Journalism
27:46 - Economic Chaos From Sanctions
31:21 - Commodity Markets & Oil Chicanery
36:26 - Cannibalising Goods For Repurposing As Weapons
38:45 - McDonalds, Renault & Unilever Huge Russian Operations
54:50 - Euroclear's Role
1:00:11 - Capital Flight, Offshore Plumbing & Financial Opacity
1:20:16 - Liquid wealth of Putin
1:21:36 - The Role Of Serendipity In Stephanies Life
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Opus Dei are a predatory catholic cult that started in Spain in the early 20th century and grew and grew over the years into a global organisation that set out with the singular vision to re-christianise the entire world.
Gareth Gore stumbled into this story when researching and writing the collapse of one of Spains largest financial institutions, Banco Popular, which turns out was the bottomless kitty financing Opus Dei’s international ambitions. It’s a story of money laundering, fraud and financial opacity that made possible the scale of one of if not the most influential and pernicious and influential catholic organisations int he world. But it’s not just a benign organisation that creates a welcoming community for catholics the world over, it is an organisation which has been accused of 100’s if not thousands of incidents of human trafficking, sexual abuse and drug abuse and are attempting to influence their worldview through the rewriting of legal systems. A worldview that reflects the most conservative and man made fundamentalist interpretations of the bible.
This book by Gareth Gore is an immense achievement that proves an otherwise held conspiracy, of financial fraud at the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars, political corruption and a secret society exerting their influence on the halls of power that you and I are subject to.
Youtube - https://youtu.be/C5DBS-vr3OU
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Gareth Gore - OPUS (Amazon)
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00:00 - What Is Opus Dei?
02:30 - How Did This Story Get On Gareth's Radar?
09:30 - What Is Opus Dei In Gareth's Words
24:47 - Josemaria Escriva... The Founder Of Opus Dei
33:40 - 1000's Of Victims Of Human Trafficking, Sexual Abuse & Drug Abuse.
46:15 - The Structure Of Opus
59:05 - Banco Popular
1:16:10 - Secret Societies
1:18:10 - Peter Thiel & Michael Sugrue
1:22:35 - Counter Messaging Campaign From Opus Dei
1:27:00 - How Co-Operative Were Opus Dei?
1:31:10 - Physical Threats?
1:32:30 - Have We Seen The Height Of Opus?
1:37:25 - Changing Media Landscape Over Next 25 Years?
1:42:12 - Serendipity In Gareth's Life
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Youtube - https://youtu.be/iCNiZfMASNs
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Johan Norberg is a prolific author and academic, he’s one of the most notable members of the Cato Institute and as well someone who has recently bronzed in the blinding spotlight of both Javier Milei and Elon Musk.
Johan is a staunch defender of globalisation and author of‘ The Capitalist Manifesto’ which was boosted into the stratosphere earlier this year with an overwhelming endorsement by Elon Musk when he wrote that the book is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right.
00:00 - Johan Norberg
01:35 - Johan's Worldview Influences
09:07 - Johan's Rand-ian Fictional Tale
10:35 - Johan Know Being A Role Model To Others
14:35 - The Elon Musk Effect
19:05 - Serendipity
24:05 - Will AI Destroy The Labour Market?
41:50 - Capitalism Failure To Price In Negative Externality
1:02:45 - Globalisation Homogenising Culture
1:15:40 - Anxious Generation
1:23:55 - Nassim Taleb Influence
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Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode
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Just how cancerous and pernicious to culture, politics and a globalised world is offshore finance and financial opacity?
Few if any people in the world are better suited to answer this question than John Christensen, who co-founded the Tax Justice Network and is a prolific author, journalist and documentary producer, probably best known for producing ‘the spiders web’ which millions and millions of views later looks into the weird and devastating influence of the City Of London (of which we expand deeply in the podcast)
I recorded this in person with John earlier this year and props to Jim Henry, who was an early guest on this pod who introduced us. This is by far the most in depth podcast interview John Christensen has ever participated in.
This is an extensive interview which flows up the sides, but never spills out of the river which is the downstream and disastrous effects of offshore finance. There is lots of attention paid to the UK, the lawyers, tax havens, culture, real estate, kleptocrats, foreign aid and a hell of a lot more as well.
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Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode
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Out Of The Slave Fields - Bruce Ladebu (Book)
The Children's Rescue Initiative (Donate)
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At this very moment there are over 40,000,000 people around the world trapped in slavery. This is a number larger than at any point before in history… and perniciously, a figure that grows everyday.
Millions among them are children. And then millions of those are living in the most devastating conditions imaginable.
Bruce Ladebu runs an initiative called Children's Rescue where he and his team identify and then extract those very children living in the most destitute environments.
To date, the Children's Rescue initiative have rescued over 2,400 children.
Share this podcast with someone. The better informed we are about this reality, at the very least, the more discerning we can be in our consumption that feeds this industry.
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Never Split The Difference Book Review (Things To Know If You Do Sales)
Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode
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* Chris Voss 'The Edge' Newsletter *
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Never Split The Difference deserves its place as one of the best selling negotiation books of all time.
It’s co-authored by the brilliant writer Tahl Raz, who turned Chris Voss’s life and lessons into the most readable and actionable prescription for good communication.
I’m stoked today to get to feature Chris Voss on this podcast, the force behind ‘Never Split The Difference’ which is a series of highest stakes negotiations broken down into their parts for examination. Chris was the FBI’s lead negotiator.
Hostage negotiation in Haiti? Terrorism in the Philippines? Egos, money and conflicting interests in a boardroom? Even walking a bank robber from the ledge. What are the phrases and psychology Chris uses in his communication to get the outcome he wants? And where could it be relevant to you?
The podcast here touches on Nassim Taleb and Khaneman’s influence on Chris’s worldview. The line between manipulation and persuasion, serendipity, traits of good communicators and a hell of a lot more.
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