We chat about:

-why Turpentine is still in the early innings

-the optimal level of fame

-the limitations of talent selection in venture

Erik Torenberg is the co-founder of On Deck and Village Global and is most recently the founder of Turpentine, a comprehensive media network focusing on technology, business, culture, and the most important trends of our society. He is the co-host of the Moment of Zen podcast and writes an excellent Substack at eriktorenberg.substack.com. Previously, he was the first employee of Product Hunt.

We chat about:

-why professors with tenure are not very controversial

-marketing as an underrated tool in all facets of life

-“ugly truths” as an arbitrage opportunity

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a research fellow at the Mercatus Center. Known for his unconventional viewpoints, he's the author of several influential books, including “The Myth of the Rational Voter”, “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”, and “The Case Against Education”. Bryan is an outspoken individual with strong, sometimes controversial viewpoints on some of the most important issues of our times including education, immigration, and economics.

We chat about:

-the future of intellectual liquidity providers with AI aggregators

-reflecting on his guests on The Lunar Society

-the relative value of verbal intelligence and charisma in the coming years

Dwarkesh Patel is a recent college graduate and the host of his podcast and Substack called The Lunar Society. In his podcast, he interviews scientists, historians, economists, and intellectuals across disciplines – some of his guests include Marc Andreessen, Nat Friedman, Tyler Cowen, and Will MacAskill. In his interviews and his writing, Dwarkesh explores and discusses some of the most relevant ideas to modern society including the heritability of intelligence, the tradeoffs between different immigration policies, and the first and second-order impacts of AI.

We chat about:

-AIs trading crypto + the broader role of crypto/CBDCs

-the impact of AI on real interest rates (Cowen’s Third Law)

-the replenishing of low-hanging fruit

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and Director of the Mercatus Center. He needs little introduction given his widespread online footprint. Tyler writes regularly on his blog Marginal Revolution, hosts his podcast Conversations with Tyler, and is the author of a column on Bloomberg.

Tyler is an avid traveler, the author of books including The Great Stagnation and Talent, and a food connoisseur of many cuisines.

We chat about:

-his journey into cryptography

Neal Koblitz is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. Koblitz received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and received his PhD from Princeton University under Nicholas Katz. He is a world-renown mathematician best known for having co-created elliptic curve cryptography (or ECC) in 1985, a technology that underpins many of the information systems that exist today including Bitcoin and Ethereum. He was recently awarded the Levchin Prize in Real World Cryptography in 2021 for his work on ECC. He, along with his wife, runs the Kovalevskaia Fund, a foundation that encourages and aids women in science and technology in developing countries.

We chat about:

-his early days playing poker         

Haseeb Qureshi is a Managing Partner at Dragonfly, a crypto and web3 focused venture firm founded in 2018. Haseeb's path towards becoming a VC today was anything but straightforward: at age 19, he dropped out of college to play poker full-time and became one of the strongest No-Limit Hold 'Em players in the world. Following his poker career, Haseeb discovered Effective Altruism, gave away the vast majority of his poker winnings, and went back to college to pursue tech startups. He ultimately found his way into the anti-fraud team at Airbnb but was quickly red-pilled into the crypto industry, working full time in the space starting in 2017 at Earn.com, which was acquired by Coinbase, and later at MetaStable Capital.