The Accent Podcast

Dr. Peter Brand is an ancient historian and Egyptologist specializing in history and culture of ancient Egypt during its imperial age (ca. 1550–1100 BCE). He is author of The Monuments of Seti I and their Historical Significance: Epigraphic, Historical and Art-Historical Analysis (Brill, 2000), and has written numerous articles on Egyptian kingship, monumental art and construction, history, popular religion, warfare, and diplomacy during the late Eighteenth Dynasty and Ramesside period. Since 2001, Dr. Brand has served as director of the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, which is recording, conserving, and interpreting hundreds of scenes and hieroglyphic texts carved on the walls and columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall. Dr. Brand has appeared in over twenty documentaries for the History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic. 

GET THE BOOK - Ramesses II, Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh: https://amzn.to/3RufmMS 

 SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:35 Teaching Egyptology 

08:20 How pyramids were built 

12:50 Ancient Egypt through 18th Dynasty: Akhenaten, Tutankhamun 

26:30 Beginning of 19th Dynasty 

31:15 Seti I 

35:50 Ancient Egypt’s source of wealth 

38:25 Egyptian army 

40:25 Ramesses II – Childhood 

45:05 Prince Ramesses II 

49:45 “Female Household” and wives of Ramesses II 

01:04:05 Ramesses II takes the throne 

01:09:55 Highlights of Ramesses II reign 

01:15:05 The Battle of Kadesh 

01:21:10 Interpreting Hieroglyphs 

01:27:40 Pharaohs or Kings? 

01:30:40 Decline of Ancient Egypt 

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy (which we discuss in the interview).

SELECT BOOKS BY JEREMI SURI:

- Civil War by Other Means: https://amzn.to/3F5DXSC 

- The Impossible Presidency: https://amzn.to/3RQTRI1

- Liberty’s Surest Guardian: https://amzn.to/3toGe8R 

SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:20 The Civil War never ended 

03:05 Formation of the Republican Party 

07:50 Causes of the Civil War and the reasons for North winning 

14:15 South after the Civil War 

19:00 Why Abraham Lincoln is the best president in the US history 

20:10 John Wilkes Booth 

22:55 Andrew Johnson is the worst president 

26:20 Alexander Watkins Terrell 

29:45 Moving on after wars 

31:00 Ulysses S. Grant Presidency 

34:45 Disputed 1876 Elections 

38:10 Electoral College must go 

45:55 Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur 

50:45 Grover Cleveland – first President from the Democrat Party 

53:50 Republicans and Democrats switching agendas 

55:40 Cancers in American institutions 

01:00:55 Rating the recent Presidents 

01:04:45 Most Overrated and Underrated Presidents 

01:07:00 How you should read Jeremi Suri’s books

Dr. Konstantin Batygin is a Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. Professor Batygin and his colleague, Michael Brown, have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which they have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the Sun.

Support the Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:45 Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg 

03:35 Encounter with conspiracists 

06:40 Rumors of Alien space crafts 

10:15 Where to look for life in the Universe 

12:50 Planet Formation 

17:20 Discovering planets 

25:20 Pluto is no longer a planet 

27:40 Planet Nine 

34:30 Hypothesis of other cosmic bodies 

35:15 Primordial Black Holes 

43:15 Music Career 

52:25 Scientific awards 

57:40 Immigration to Japan and USA 

01:01:30 Lex Fridman 

01:02:30 Parents influence

Dr. Allen Frances is a Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is best known for serving as chair of the American Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the development and revision of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Dr. Frances is the founding editor of two well-known psychiatric journals: the Journal of Personality Disorders and the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. During the development of the current diagnostic manual, DSM-5, Dr. Frances became critical of the expanding boundaries of psychiatry and the medicalization of normal human behavior, problems he contends are leading to the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the "worried well" and the gross undertreatment of the severely ill. Dr. Frances is the author or co-author of multiple books within the fields of psychiatry and psychology.

Dr. FRANCES's BOOKs:

Saving Normal: https://amzn.to/497dxxq

Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis: https://amzn.to/494eRBe

FOLLOW Dr. FRANCES ON TWITTER:   / allenfrancesmd  

SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON:   / theaccentpodcast  

TIMESTAMPS 

01:25 Changes since Saving Normal 

02:30 What is DSM? 

06:20 Inflation of diagnosis in children’s mental illnesses 

14:10 Pharma advertises mental illnesses directly to people 

17:00 Nature or Nurture – the root cause of mental illnesses 

21:35 Psychotherapy 

25:35 Depressions should not be confused with normal mammalian phenomena 

29:35 Addiction to medication and drugs 

37:45 Selecting psychiatrist 

Brian Fagan is an Archeologist, Author, and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. He has written a number of books on archeology, humans, and, most recently, climate change. We discussed Early Humans, the history of hunting, the most influential civilizations, and the effects of localized climate change, which by the way, has nothing to do with politics but rather the history of the phenomena.

TIMESTAMPS 

01:10 Did humans evolve from apes 

04:25 Hunting of early humans 

12:45 Neanderthals 

14:40 Humans walked out from Africa 

20:50 Most important human tool 

22:50 Complexities of archeological discovery 

27:25 First Civilizations 

32:55 Most influential Civilizations 

34:45 Inca Civilization 

37:55 Were there lost Civilizations (Atlantis)? 

40:50 Why Civilizations Fall 

44:35 Localized climate change 

50:25 The Future of the human race

James Pan is a former Hedge Fund manager who, a decade ago, returned funds to outside investors and converted his firm into a family office. If you search for CP&E Partners' letters, you will see the phenomenal performance that James has achieved, and he did it as a one-man-shop. In this interview, we discussed James' investment philosophy, investment process, current holdings, and many other things.

Books James is Ayn Rand's fan, so don't forget to read Atlas Shrugged: https://amzn.to/3sqGEel

Support the Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

02:05 Absorbing information 

03:45 Path to a Family Office 

09:15 Defining Value Investing 

13:30 Looking for investment ideas 

15:30 First thing to see in a stock 

19:30 Valuing companies 

25:10 Concentrated vs Diversified portfolio 

31:10 Meta 

34:30 Latest investment – U-Haul 

43:35 Management assessment 

44:50 NOL as part of the valuation 

46:20 Rolls-Royce 

49:05 Writing Call Options 

55:35 Investing with Dyslexia 

59:15 Definition of Happiness 

Dr. Scott Aaronson is Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers and computational complexity theory more generally. For the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, he is on leave to work at OpenAI on the theoretical foundations of AI safety. In this interview, Dr. Aaronson discussed a quantum computer, its comparison to classical computers, and its use cases. He also shared his take on the potential role of quantum computers in Artificial Intelligence.

Get Scott Aaronson's Book

Quantum Computing since Democritus: https://amzn.to/3E290yb

Read Scott Aaronson's blog: https://scottaaronson.blog

Support The Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:45 Misconceptions about Quantum computing 

03:00 Quantum Computer vs Classical Computer 

08:30 The Schrodinger equation 

18:00 What is Quantum Computer good for? 

28:45 The look of Quantum computers 

43:40 Quantum Error Correction 

46:50 Quantum computing in AI 

55:25 Would you choose Machin Learning or Quantum Computer for a major 

57:50 Take on Michio Kaku’s book Quantum Supremacy….(oh, well)

Joby Warrick is a best-selling author and a national security correspondent for The Washington Post. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he served for 24 years with the Post’s national and investigative staffs, reporting from Washington and scores of cities around the world. He is the author of three two nonfiction books, including “The Triple Agent”, a New York Times best-seller about a CIA operation in Afghanistan; "Red Line", and “Black Flags”, a narrative account of the personalities and events that gave rise to the Islamic State. “Black Flags” was listed as one of the best books of 2015 by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other publications, and it was the recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.

BOOKs: 

Black Flags: https://amzn.to/3QE46NK

The Triple Agent: https://amzn.to/49zq5On

Red Line: https://amzn.to/3FYaLxo

SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:35 The most surprising thing about ISIS 

03:30 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 

06:45 Afghanistan after the Soviet Union 

08:00 Zarqawi in al-Jafr prison 

10:05 Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi 

13:00 Al-Qaida of Iraq, and Zarqawi’s weaponization of religion 

17:30 Black Flags 

20:00 The US invasion of Iraq 

28:00 Big pause after Zarqawi 

31:50 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the Rise of ISIS 

38:00 A typical ISIS Fighter 

40:30 New ISIS 

43:10 Roots of Islamic Radicalization 

47:00 Joby’s books 

Tapio Schneider is a climate scientist and a professor of environmental science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology. His research is focused on understanding how the turbulent dynamics of the atmosphere, from clouds to large-scale weather systems, shape Earth's climate. Ultimately, his goal is to develop a set of physical laws that govern climate.

SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:20 Climate Change or Global Warming? 

04:25 Greenhouses and their effects 

07:25 The worst-case scenario 

12:30 Genesis of Thoughts on Climate Change 

17:35 Melting of Ice Sheets 

23:20 Disagreements on the Climate Change 

27:50 Main emitters of greenhouses 

30:35 Solutions to Climate Change 

33:50 Do EVs make a difference 

39:00 Why not switch to renewables

Tim Staermose is the founder of the African Lions Fund, which invests in sub-Saharan African “Frontier” economies, excluding South Africa. Tim is also an investment writer, and his website - www.GlobalValueHunter.com - is full of global value investing ideas. 

SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast

TIMESTAMPS 

01:10 Perception of Africa (Factfulness book) 

08:25 Long or Short-term opportunity: Main Thesis 

13:25 Asian model will not work in Africa 

16:10 Leading Industries 

18:35 Valuations in Africa 

21:55 Investment process 

29:25 Banking Industry in Africa 

32:10 Position sizing 

35:10 Hedging 

38:50 Taxation of the fund 

40:15 Largest position (NMB Bank - Tanzania) 

48:45 Recent investments (KCB Bank, Equity Bank, Safaricom – Kenya) 

52:40 Selling stocks