Listening Post

This week we go back to the first ever interview we recorded for Talking Politics, when David talked to Yuval Noah Harari in 2016 about his book Homo Deus. That conversation touched on many of the themes that we've kept coming back to in the four years since: the power of the big technology companies; the vulnerability of democracy; the deep uncertainty we all feel about the future. David reflects on what difference those four years have made to how we think about these questions now.

Talking Points:

In Homo Deus, Harari distinguishes between intelligence and consciousness.

• Intelligence is the ability to solve problems; consciousness is the ability to feel things.
• Humans use their feelings to solve problems; our intelligence is to a large extent emotional intelligence. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
• Computers have advanced in terms of intelligence but not consciousness.
• What is more important: consciousness or intelligence? This is becoming a practical, not theoretical question.

Artificial intelligence could create a new class—the useless class.

• Institutions or mechanisms might become obsolete.
• In humanist politics, the feelings of individuals are the highest authority; could algorithms know your feelings better than you do?

The idea of the individual is that you have an indivisible inner core and your task as an individual is to get away from outside forces and get in touch with your true, authentic self.

• According to Harari, this is 18th century mythology.
• Humans are dividuals: a collection of biochemical mechanisms. There is nothing beyond these mechanisms.
• In the 20th century, no one could understand these mechanisms. 
• We haven’t abandoned humanism—the rhetoric is still there—but it is under pressure.

In a long-tail world, everyone has a little bit—there’s lots of tailored, personal politics—but there’s also a huge concentration of power and wealth.

• Think of Google or Facebook: they are basically monopolies.
• Technology is not deterministic: it could still go in different ways.
• There is human pushback. 
• Voters may be right in sensing that power is shifting, but are they right about where it is going? 

In the four years since this interview, machine intelligence hasn’t hugely advanced.

• Machines are more a part of our lives, but they aren’t necessarily smarter.
• Are we becoming less intelligent as we adapt to a world increasingly dominated by machines?
• Human agency is not just under threat from machines. It’s also under threat from corporate power. Amazon is much more powerful than it was four years ago. 

Mentioned in this Episode: 

• Homo Deus
• ‘Inside Out’
• David’s review of Homo Deus
• Our episode with Brett Frischmann
• Dominic Cummings’s blog

Further Learning: 

• The Talking Politics Guide to… Facebook
• On...
  
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The internationally bestselling author of over 35 novels, Jeffery Deaver, took a few minutes to discuss his advice on how to write emotionally engaging fiction, the merits of plotters vs. pantsers, and a 5-step process for writing your novel.

"Rejection is just a speed bump ... it's not a brick wall. Keep at it." – Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery is a former journalist, musician, and attorney best known for his Lincoln Rhyme series – now a hit NBC TV show – and the novel, The Bone Collector, adapted for the big screen starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

The "master of suspense" has been nominated for seven Edgar Awards and gone on to sell 50 million books worldwide, translated into 35 languages.

His latest thriller is a sequel to The Never Game – The Goodbye Man (A Colter Shaw Novel Book 2) – and once again features Colter Shaw, a rugged survivalist and "reward-seeker."

One of Bookpage's "Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers" of 2020, Publishers Weekly said of the book, “Deaver balances suspense and plausibility perfectly ... This is a perfect jumping-on point for readers new to one of today’s top contemporary thriller writers.”

Stay calm and write on ...

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In this file Jeffery Deaver and I discussed:

Show Notes:

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"I'm not really a business author; I just happen to have used companies as the method to study human systems because there's great data." — Jim Collins

My guest for this episode is the incredible (and somewhat reclusive) Jim Collins.

This was a rare treat, as Jim rarely does any media or interviews. I’ve wanted to speak with him for more than a decade, and it was worth the wait. This conversation overdelivered on every level. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

So, who is Jim Collins?

Jim Collins (jimcollins.com) is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. He has authored or coauthored eight books that have together sold 10+ million copies worldwide, including Good to Great, Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, Great by Choice, and his newest work, Turning the Flywheel.

Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

In 2017, Forbes selected Jim as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.

Jim is also an avid rock climber and has completed single-day ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.

Enjoy!

Click here for the show notes for this episode.

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you've ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don't have a direct referral from someone you trust, you're left to use job boards that don't offer any real-world networking approach.

LinkedIn, as the world's largest professional network -- used by more than 70 percent of the US workforce -- has a built-in ecosystem that allows you to not only search for employees, but also interact with them, their connections, and their former employers and colleagues in a way that closely mimics real-life communication. Visit LinkedIn.com/Tim and receive a $50 credit toward your first job post!

This podcast is also brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing the success of my friend Kevin Rose, and I've been enjoying it more than I ever imagined. Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right to your home. No worrying about fitting classes into your busy schedule or making it to a studio with a crazy commute.

New classes are added every day, and this includes options led by elite NYC instructors in your own living room. You can even live stream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors, or find your favorite class on demand.

Peloton is offering listeners to this show a special offer. Visit onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase. This is a great way to get in your workouts, or an incredible gift. Again, that's onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM.

***

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For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.

Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.

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Our weather series is over! This week Levi runs you through nuclear energy and Matt pulls apart Simon Sinek's pop psychology.

NUCLEAR POWER

Uranium energy density https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/f/fuelcomparison.htm

Information on Uranium and nuclear energy http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/what-is-uranium-how-does-it-work.aspx

Video on Thorium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMuxjHLLk0E

Chemical equations and reaction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBdVK4cqiFs

How uranium becomes nuclear fuel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apODDbgFFPI

SIMON SINEK

Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace: https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU

Simon Sinek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/

Simon Sinek Biography: https://startwithwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Simon-Sinek-Bio_April-2019.pdf

Millennials in the Workplace - A Communication Perspective on Millennials’ Organizational Relationships and Performance: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10869-010-9172-7.pdf

Millennials at Work - What We Know and What We Need to Do (If Anything): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-010-9177-2

Psychology Today article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201701/no-dopamine-is-not-addictive

Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelschein/2018/06/13/simon-sinek-is-full-of-fluff-and-other-reasons-you-should-follow-his-lead/#285dfaef5657

Birth Cohort Differences in Self-Esteem:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/a0019919?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.2#articleCitationDownloadContainer

It’s the premier episode of The Book Owl Podcast!!!

We’re being bombarded with news of scary things going on throughout the world, which means I know you’re eager to find out about something else that will kill you.

Although reading and books seem like safe pastimes, there is one book out there that will kill you.

In this premier episode of The Book Owl Podcast we’ll discover the story behind the woman who wrote this troublesome tome and the danger it still poses today.

If you want to get even more out of every episode (I’m talking bonus tidbits, people!) please join flock by signing up for The Book Owl Podcast newsletter.

Thanks for listening everyone, and enjoy the episode!!!

Note: There is a sound quality issue (low volume) that couldn’t be resolved in editing. It’s not too terrible, but just remember to turn down your earbuds once you finish listening.

***

Episode Notes:

Hey everyone, this is Tammie Painter and you’re listening to the Book Owl Podcast, the podcast where I entertain your inner book nerd with tales of quirky books and literary lore. And this is the very first show…in other words, bear with me, I’m just getting the hang of this. Now, even though we’re bombarded with news of scary things going on throughout the world, I know you’re eager out which book might kill you, so I’ll introduce myself at the end of the show. For now, a little theme music.

So if you tell someone, say your bungie jumping buddy, your favorite hobby, they probably look at like, “Wimp.” Reading’s something you do to relax, it’s something you do from the safety of an armchair, it’s about as far from bungie jumping danger as you can get, and it’s rarely associated with causing bodily harm unless you’r reading on your phone and walk straight into a lamppost, but that’s a whole nuther topic.

However, there is a book out there that can kill you. It won’t kill you quickly. It will invade your body, linger in there, and wreak havoc until you finally die. It’s so dangerous it’s stored in a lead-lined box and you have to sign a waiver to see it. Should you disregard the rules and safety instructions, you risk burns, nausea, and even cancer.

So who wrote this dangerous tome? A headstrong woman who was celebrated in her lifetime, but also scorned and shunned.

Her name? Marie Curie.

Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska (sorry for any pronunciation butchering there) in Warsaw in 1867. She couldn’t be bothered with conventions that said women didn’t need higher education so she studied in the wonderfully named Flying University, an underground school in Russia. This served its purpose for a time, but she eventually opted to finish her education in Paris.

But heading off to school in Paris wasn’t cheap. To afford her education, she turned off all the heat in her apartment and would instead wear all her clothes layered on top of one another to keep warm. Marie was big science nerd. She was obsessed with physics and chemistry, so much so that she’d get so lost in her work, she’d forget to eat. In Paris. Where they have taste tempting boulangeries. The mind boggles.

Anyway, she eventually came to work in the lab of Pierre Curie. I know, her name is a big spoiler alert, but let’s just say these two not only shared a passion for science, but for each other.

Pierre was keen to marry Marie, but she refused him. She had planned to go back to Poland and really had no intention of staying in Paris, so what would be the point. Pierre, rather romantic for a scientist, told her he would give up science and move to Poland with her. This still didn’t win Marie over. What sealed the deal? Marie found out that as a woman, she would have a tough time establishing a career in Poland, so back to Paris and back to Pierre.

The two were wed and let me just set this scene. This wasn’t frills and fancy dresses. Marie didn’t even have a wedding dress, she wore her normal lab clothes. So you can almost picture this couple urning the officiator to hurry up, they crank out their I dos, look at each other for a sec and then dash back to the lab to keep on working. Honeymoon, schmoneymoon, there’s chemicals to be analyzed.

And that’s where we get back to that deadly book. It’s actually a collection of books, Marie’s lab journals and notebooks.

Marie was curious about work being done with x-rays and decided to study uranium and how exactly radiation works.

So when I did my physics studies in college we of course had some lessons on radiation…with accompanying lab work. We were literally handed a piece of radioactive material and, well I don’t really remember what we did with it, but we did have to follow a lot of safety rules. And as a kid, my school took a field trip to the Hanford Nuclear Plant, because you know, what better way to educate kids than exposing them to radiation. But again, we all wore those little exposure meters and we all had to follow some strict rules.

Not so much in Marie’s days. There were no safety regulations because no one understood the danger. This was a time when young woman painted uranium directly onto watch faces to make them glow in the dark. This was fine, delicate work and the ladies would lick, LICK the paintbrushes to bring them to narrow points to do the detail work. Needless to say, these ladies were not the healthiest lasses on the block.

This was also a time of quack cures and fun stuff that tried to used science as a marketing tool. People knew certain materials like thorium radiated energy. Who doesn’t want more energy, right? And if you could tout your product as bursting with energy, why not toss a little thorium in? So, the stuff was tossed into toothpaste, drinking vessels, and, um, laxatives for that little extra something.

Anyway, back to Marie. She’s handling uranium, polonium, and radium with no more concern than we would handle a jug of merlot. She’d even keep vials of the stuff in her pocket. Forget they were there and wander home with them. She even delighted in keeping the vials around the lab because in the dark, and I quote, “the glowing tubes looked like fairy lights.” Yeah, Fairy lights of death!

Marie’s haphazard ways with deadly substances weren’t in vain. She coined the term radioactivity and ushered in the era of particle physics. She also won a couple Nobel Prizes, one in Physics (with Pierre) and one in Chemistry. Too bad that the heavy exposure to her fairy lights left both her and Pierre to ill to attend the ceremony for the first Nobel she won. Irony?

Three years after missing the Nobel Prize ceremony Pierre died. Oddly enough, not of radiation sickness, but of being crushed under a horse-drawn cart. Which makes you wonder if the horse was being fed thorium laden oats to boost his energy.

Marie mourned Pierre, but she continued her work. She was living in a time when women were meant to stay home and raise the kids, and she was working in a field that was filled mainly with men. She did not have an easy time of things and was often shunned despite her being super smart (except about safety). 

After a time, Marie started a relationship with a former student of Pierre’s. His name was Paul and he was married, but had been estranged from his wife long before hooking up with Marie. Nevertheless, Marie was labeled as a home wrecker. The tabloids were no different then than today and they had a field day denigrating Marie. Poor Marie wasn’t even home at the time. She’d gone off to a conference in Belgium. When she returned she had to fight her way through an angry mob.

Still, Marie wasn’t a woman to be held back by rumors. In that same year she won her second Nobel Prize becoming the first person ever to win two of the prestigious awards. Go Marie!

Surprisingly Marie lived to a fairly good age for the time of 67. Unlike Pierre, she did suffer the effects of radiation poisoning and had been plagued with chronic illness most of her adult life. Her passion for what she was studying would be the cause of her death.

Marie is recognized as one of the greatest scientists of her time and her notebooks contain a wealth of information and insight into her discoveries.

Unfortunately, as I said, they will kill you.

But the books can be seen. They’re kept in the Pierre and Marie Curie collection at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. To contain the radiation, the books live in lead-lined boxes. And no you can’t check them out even if your fines are paid up.

You can view them…provided you wear protective gear (a haz mat suit) and sign a liability waiver.

The crazy thing? This protocol hasn’t been in place all that long. The notebooks were actually used by the Institute of Nuclear Physics until 1978. When they started noticing an unusually high cancer rate amongst the scientists and the surrounding neighborhoods, the books, like many of us right now, were put in lockdown.

That’s it. I survived my first episode! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review or head to TheBookOwlPodcast.com to contact me and let me know what you think. And don’t forget to subscribe. You can find all the links you need at TheBookOwlPodcast.com/subscribe.

Now, a little about me. I am a book nerd. I love books so much that, after spending a decade as a scientist, I decided to write my own. I’ve published two historical fantasy series and I’m currently working on a humorous, paranormal, mystery (still trying to nail that down) trilogy. If you want to learn more, head to the About section of TheBookOwlPodcast.com. If you want to support the show, consider purchasing one of my books, which you can find at TheBookOwlPodcast.com/books.

Thanks everyone chat at you next time!

***

This episode was sponsored by Indigo Books & Movies where you can take 30% Off Bingeworthy True Stories (Ends April 19)

***

The Book Owl Podcast is a production of Daisy Dog Media, Copyright 2020, All Rights Reserved

This week, the Dilettantes discuss nuclear power after watching Chernobyl. We then get into a broader discussion about nuclear power and other renewable energy sources. Here are links to some of the articles and videos discussed:

https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce#:~:text=Nuclear%20energy%20has%20been%20powering,power%20per%20plant%20on%20average.

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

https://www.dailyastorian.com/opinion/columns/pro-con-is-the-green-new-deal-worth-its-price-tag/article_81240c96-308d-11e9-9f15-436048b71817.html

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3075403

https://world101.cfr.org/global-era-issues/climate-change/paris-agreement

https://www.mcginley.co.uk/news/how-much-of-each-energy-source-does-it-take-to-power-your-home/bp254/#:~:text=There%20is%202%2C460%20kWh%20of,around%204%2C750%20pounds%20of%20coal.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=207&t=3

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/thorium.aspx

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

https://youtu.be/UAXdA9fXR80