Two Bros One Book

This time we’ve read Underground: a Human History of the Worlds Beneath our feet, in which adventure bro Will Hunt explores the caves of South Dakota, the underground city of Paris, and ancient holy sites of South America in this captivating adventure reportage.

In this People’s Episode of the BroCast, we review the book that launched a thousand conservative backlashes: the surprisingly sedate and measured Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engles. Written in a time of rapid and seemingly gathering reform, the Manifesto became the soundtrack to the revolutions of 1948-49, and had far reaching consequences, from the American Civil War to the Russian Revolution. Yet for all that, it’s a terribly misunderstood piece of political writing that most people never bother to read. If they did, as we discover in this episode, they might find that many of its arguments remain as vital today as the day they were written.

Today the bros talk about a monumental, if flawed, effort to present a coherent argument against the idea that “Strong Ai” or the idea that consciousness arises solely from algorithmic processes (and that therefore the human brain is in essence a computer and the mind is a program). Does he succeed? Maybe. Probably not. But the process is very interesting.

Bibliography:

- Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Re: physicalism, qualia, individuated sentience, Einstein-brains

- J.R. Lucas: Minds Machines and Godel

- Searle: Minds Brains and Programs

Re: Chinese Room

-A Historical Overview of Ai Winters

Re: Framing effect, “Ai Effect”

-Newman and Nagel: "Gödel's Proof"

Re: mathematical incompleteness

-Wallace: Consider The Lobster, "Authority and American Usage"

Re: Constructing realities, being and consciousness

-Hegel: Example Of The Hegelian Dialectic"

Duality of being and nothing, dialectic processes, sublation

-Christian: Big History

Re: Watchmaker fallacy, God of Gaps, philosophy of knowledge

-Assefa: Tiling the Plane

Recent discovery of infinite non-periodic tiling shapes

In this episode, the boys talk about Bill Bryson’s latest (and reportedly final) book: The Body, a Guide for Occupants. Bryson takes the reader on a tour of the delightfully weird human form, covering everything from the world of microbial life, to DNA, disease, evolution, and the history of medicine.

More on the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43582376-the-body

This time the guys talk about a provocative book on geopolitics, demography, globalization, technology, and trade, by analyst Peter Zeihan. In it, Zeihan argues that the world is entering a period of disorderly de-globalization and de-industrialization in which the living standards of billions of people will precipitously drop.

Read more about the book: https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/

On this episode we dive into the wild life and times of everyone’s favorite billionaire: Elon “I’m Actually a Socialist” Musk. It tells the tale of how Musk bought Twitter in 2020, possibly during an Ambien binge, in what would become the largest take-private deal in the history of the Tech industry.

Things… did not go well. Hear our take on the book, and on the Enigma that is Musk.

Legendary stage director and founder of the Moscow Art Theater (MAT), Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski, published one of the seminal texts of modern acting method, An Actor Prepares, in 1938.

Regarded popularly as the founder of “Method” acting, Stanislavski preached the total commitment of the body and mind to the art of becoming an actor’s subject. He is credited with the popular showbiz saying: “the show must go on,” which, legend has it, he muttered in the midst of a heart attack during a performance. He spent the rest of his life as a director and teacher. A who’s who of legendary actors have counted themselves as followers of his method, including Marlon Brando, Anthony Hopkins, Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Meryl Streep.

Often misunderstood in the media and criticized (or idolized) in popular culture, Stanislavski’s teachings are not merely the total embodiment of character, but the meticulous preparation of a performance, down to the tiniest seemingly insignificant details. In this episode, we discuss the book that propelled Stanislavski to immortal fame, and we let you know why (or why not), you may want to give it a read.

In this premiere episode, Will and Lloyd discuss Joseph Campbell’s surprisingly popular book The Hero with 1000 Faces, in which he explores his theory of the “Mono Myth,” a hugely influential recipe for storytelling with mass appeal. We think it kind of sucks.