The Jim Rutt Show

Jim talks with Emil Ejner Friis about political metamodernism and what comes after postmodernism. They discuss the "woke vacuum" & its failure to include common folks, psychosocial problems vs material challenges in Western countries, Jim's pushback on postmodernism, Trump as the first postmodern president, personal vs institutional change, emotional states & leadership, late-stage financialized capitalism's effects on communities, European vs American approaches to industry/manufacturing, military alliances & European defense independence, the urban-rural divide in American politics, "internet trans" vs medical gender dysphoria, social media's role in amplifying cultural divisions, the intersubjective verification of the inter-objective, comparing the internet with the printing press, multi-party vs two-party political systems, the potential for American democratic renewal, and much more. Episode Transcript The Listening Society, by Hanzi Freinacht Nordic Ideology, by Hanzi Freinacht JRS EP36 – Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodernism JRS EP53 – Hanzi Freinacht on the Nordic Ideology JRS EP82 – Hanzi Freinacht on Building a Metamodern Future JRS EP173 – Hanzi Freinacht on Metamodern Self-Help Metamoderna (website/organization Emil Ejner Friis is a theory artist and a teacher of metamodernism. He is a co-founder of Metamoderna and one of the writers behind Hanzi Freinacht. He has spent the last ten years trying to figure out how to create a listening society, a kinder and more developed society that deeply cares for the happiness and emotional needs of every citizen.

Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes' view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel's bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of consciousness, a factory waste disposal dilemma, animal rescue triage scenarios, probability calculations in moral consideration, the "one in a thousand" threshold, computational constraints in moral calculations, human exceptionalism & its limitations, fully automated luxury communism & rewilding Earth, responsibilities to wild animals, humans as a custodial species, and much more. Episode Transcript The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, by Jeff Sebo "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes, by Jeff Sebo Ethics and the Environment, by Dale Jamieson Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI. In 2024 Vox included him on its Future Perfect 50 list of "thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the future a better place."

Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about Trump as an avatar of the current digital transformation. They discuss the GameB movement & complexity theory, predictions made to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, security through development as alternative to war, the three spheres (East, West, Digital), China's approach to digital vs. the Western approach, Catholic social teaching principles, neo-feudalism vs. the scribal paradigm, Humanity 2.0, Aristotelian concepts of soul & hylomorphism, Cyber Sabbath practices, transitions between oral/scribal/digital paradigms, technological change as evolutionary pruning, Jonathan Rauch's Constitution of Knowledge, memory & imagination as key faculties, versions of the Enlightenment project, Daoism & Eastern philosophy, coherent pluralism, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 174 - Fred Beuttler and Mark Stahlman on Trivium University Center for the Study of Digital Life Exogenous (Mark's Substack) The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control, by George Dyson JRS EP 287 - Jonathan Rauch on the Epistemic Crisis Science and Civilization in China, by Joe Needham Mark Stahlman is a biologist, computer architect and ex-Wall Street technology strategist. He is the President of the not-for-profit Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL, 501(c)3, digitallife.center) and its educational project Trivium University (Triv U, trivium.university). He is also CEO of Exogenous, Inc. (EXO, exogenousinc.com), a strategic risk analysis group and on the editorial staff of its publication, the Three Spheres Newsletter (TSN). He studied for but did not complete advanced degrees in Theology (UofChicago) and Molecular Biology (UW-Mad). He has been widely interviewed and published, including teaching online courses (available on YouTube via 52 Living Ideas).

Jim talks with Adam B. Levine about AI programming aids for non-techies and the future of Bitcoin. They discuss Adam's background as a "technical non-technical" person, the evolution from manual LLM prompting to using IDEs, Windsurf as an AI-first IDE, Claude 3.7's thinking mode, productivity improvements with AI coding tools, different platforms like Cursor and Cline, the "pure idea space" vs technical execution, the role of liberal arts people in tech teams, Bitcoin as digital gold, Schelling points in cryptocurrency, the US dollar as hegemonic currency, "pools of fools" theory, sovereign wealth funds moving into Bitcoin, El Salvador's Bitcoin investment, Texas and Wyoming considering sovereign Bitcoin funds, game theory of nation-state Bitcoin adoption, regulatory transitions, predictions about Bitcoin's future based on sovereign adoption, and much more. Episode Transcript The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson Speaking of Bitcoin Podcast (formerly Let's Talk Bitcoin!) Adam B. Levine has spent over a decade pioneering disruptive technologies before they become mainstream. He launched one of the earliest Bitcoin podcasts, Let's Talk Bitcoin! (2013), founded Tokenly (2014)—one of the earliest companies exploring what could be done with blockchain tokens—and served as CoinDesk's first podcast editor (2019), hosting shows like Speaking of Bitcoin and Markets Daily. In 2021, he founded 330.ai, a startup building cutting-edge tools to boost creativity with AI.

Jim talks with BJ Campbell about the ideas in his Substack essay "On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs." They discuss forms of social control, absolute police states vs. belief states, the role of belief vs. actual enforcement in maintaining order, the noble lie concept & Plato's original formulation, the 2020 crime spike & "defund the police" movement, the history of police forces & alternative methods of maintaining order, the "God-shaped hole" concept, membranes & group coherence, anthropological research on fairness, non-supernatural belief systems, marketing challenges for new social systems, money as a noble lie & coordination signal, Saudi Arabian social control methods, and much more. Episode Transcript Handwaving Freakoutery (Substack) JRS Currents 090: BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan on Egregores JRS Currents 024: BJ Campbell on the Woke Religion "On Cops, Belief, and Chainsaw Faced Robot Dogs," by BJ Campbell The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel Dennett BJ Campbell is a licensed professional civil engineer and practicing hydrologist who consults in the land development and environmental industries. In addition to his Substack Handwaving Freakoutery, he writes for Open Source Defense, Quillette, and Recoil Magazine.

Jim talks with Jonathan Rauch about the ideas in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. They discuss the epistemic crisis, Plato's Theaetetus, Trump & propaganda techniques, the Constitution of Knowledge as a framework for epistemics, the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor, the reality-based community, the personal-institutional spiral, the social funnel of knowledge, social media's impact on epistemics, advertising vs subscription models, meme space pollution, the anti-vax movement, the importance of free speech to the gay rights movement, recommendations for defending truth, supporting institutions, speaking out against misinformation, maintaining viewpoint diversity, and much more. Episode Links The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rauch Plato's Theaetetus Heterodox Academy JRS EP273 - Gregg Henriques on the Unified Theory of Knowledge Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, by Renée DiResta Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, by Jonathan Rauch Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order.

Jim talks with Bob Levy about presidential powers, their history, and their potential for abuse. They discuss the nature of the presidential pardon, recent controversial pardons by Trump & Biden, proposed reforms, 3 main purposes of the pardon, court blocks on executive actions, the firing of federal employees, the Impoundment Control Act, immigration & deportation under Trump, presidential power over tariffs, courts as guardrails, the timeline for legal challenges, potential constitutional crisis scenarios, Congress's abdication of power, the growth of the administrative state, options if Trump defies court orders, contempt powers, impeachment as the ultimate check, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP245 - Bob Levy on the Second Amendment and Supreme Court "The US needs to rein in presidential pardon power," by Bob Levy JRS EP275 - Rachel Winkler on Mass Deportation Bob Levy was, for 14 years, chairman of the board of directors at the Cato Institute. He is now chairman emeritus. Bob joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. The Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies is named in his honor. He has also served on boards of the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the Institute for Justice. Bob received his PhD in business from the American University in 1966, then founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of investment information and software. At age 50, after leaving CDA in 1991, Bob went to George Mason law school, where he was chief articles editor of the law review and class valedictorian. He received his JD degree in 1994. The next two years he clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth on the US District Court and Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals, both in Washington, DC.

Jim talks with Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit, about the impact of AI on writing education and professional writing. They discuss Josh's background and career, Stephen Lane's recent op-ed arguing that AI should take over writing mechanics, problems with AI-generated writing, the role of writing in thinking, ChatGPT's "deep research," Jim's ScriptHelper project, the decline in math & navigation skills, the importance of memos for corporate decision-making, literacy as a fundamental life skill, Ethan Mollick's approach to AI in education, writing as art, the PowerPoint problem, the Idiocracy scenario, and much more. Episode Transcript "Could AI Replace the Teaching of Writing?: Why the Boston Globe op-ed is dead wrong" - Josh's blog post "AI in the classroom could spare educators from having to teach writing" - Stephen Lane's Boston Globe op-ed Writing Without Bullshit, by Josh Bernoff The Age of Intent: Using Artificial Intelligence to Deliver a Superior Customer Experience, by P.V. Kannan with Josh Bernoff Josh Bernoff is an expert on how business books can propel thinkers to prominence. He is the author of Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters – A Comprehensive Guide for Authors and Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, as well as coauthor of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. He works closely with nonfiction authors as an advisor, coach, editor, or ghostwriter.

Jim talks with Jordan Hall about the relationship between humanity and advanced AI. They discuss the false dichotomy of state vs market control of AI, the commons & the church as organizing principles, community vs society, why alignment with humanity is by definition impossible, the role of symbols & organizing principles in communities, how Moloch & Mammon shape AI development, hyper-concentration of power, neo-feudalism, the possibility of an AI singleton, entropy in communities, an alternative path centered on intimate AI, individual values, integrity, restoration of the commons, the potential for rapid dissemination, the choice between good & expediency, mutual self-correction, collective action guided by higher values, the need for a properly functioning priestly class, and much more. Episode Transcript Jordan's tweet Jim's response JRS EP8 – Jordan “Greenhall” Hall and Game B JRS EP26 – Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence JRS EP 170 – John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP 223 – Jordan Hall on Cities, Civiums, and Becoming Christian JRS EP 255 Is God Real? (with Jordan Hall) JRS EP 281 - Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay on the Thousand Brains Theory Jordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.

Jim talks with Brian Chau about what the new administration could mean for AI development. They discuss recent actions by the Tump administration including repealing Biden's executive order & the Stargate infrastructure project, Biden's impact on AI, the formation of the Alliance for the Future, regulatory bureaucracy, state patchwork laws, censorship, the Gemini controversy & DEI in AI, safety restrictions in chat models, the meaning of DeepSeek, economic implications of model distillation, historical analogies for AI development, national security & sovereignty implications, 3 main lanes for AI development, democratized access vs gatekeeping, trust issues, "AI" vs "LLMs," and much more. Episode Transcript Alliance for the Future From the New World (Substack) Brian Chau on Twitter JRS EP200 - Brian Chau on AI Pluralism Nous Research JRS EP221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference, by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor Brian Chau is a mathematician by training and is tied for the youngest Canadian to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He writes software for a living while posting on his spare time. He writes independently on American bureaucracy and political theory and has contributed to Tablet Magazine. His political philosophy can be summed up as “see the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.” Everything else is application.

Jim talks with Tyson Yunkaporta about the ideas in his new book Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. They discuss a symbolic emu visitor on Jim's farm, Aboriginal collective pronouns, Sand Talk's impact, wrong canoes, lore vs law, how Aboriginal law adapted to invasion, ritualized violence & rule-governed fighting, Aboriginal knowledge systems & peer review, signals & spirit in natural systems, the sacred as a way to deal with complex systems, Plato's noble lie, restricted knowledge, Aboriginal law & the Jewish Torah, plague impacts, art as store of capital vs communal knowledge, the metaphor & mythology of water dowsing, Tyson's upcoming book, how to be a deeply spiritual skeptical atheist, and much more. Episode Transcript Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, by Tyson Yunkaporta Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta JRS EP 65 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Complexity JRS EP 66 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Knowledge JRS Currents 032 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Spirits, GameB & Protopias JRS Currents 010 - Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans as Custodial Species Deakin University - Indigenous Systems Knowledge Lab Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne and is the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.

Jim talks with Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay about the Thousand Brains Project and Jeff's book A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. They discuss Mountcastle's theory of the neocortex's universal algorithm, cortical columns & their structure, learning modules in AI sensory systems, reprogramming of the neocortex, the 6 layers of cortex, mini-columns & macro-columns, the visual cascade, reference frames as essential for knowledge representation, "voting" for perceptual consensus, how the project differs from deep learning & LLM approaches, James Gibson's concept of affordances, the "Jennifer Aniston neuron" idea, current state of the Monty project, solving fundamental problems vs making impressive demos, avoiding "old brain" traits in AI systems, and much more. Episode Transcript Perceptual Neuroscience: The Cerebral Cortex, Vernon B. Mountcastle On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee (2004) A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins Monty Project – Open-Source Implementation Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick Bostrom Jeff Hawkins is a scientist whose life-long interest in neuroscience led to the creation of Numenta and its focus on neocortical theory. His research focuses on how the cortex learns predictive models of the world through sensation and movement. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, where he served as Director for three years. The institute is currently located at U.C. Berkeley. Previously, he co-founded two companies, Palm and Handspring, where he designed products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Jeff has written two books, On Intelligence (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021). Viviane Clay is the director of the Thousand Brains Project. She received her doctorate degree in Cognitive Computing and master’s degree in Cognitive Science at University of Osnabrück in Germany, where she focused on sensorimotor learning as a key aspect in intelligence. She brings to Numenta fifteen years of coding experience, along with her background in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning.

Jim talks with Rob Henderson about his book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class and the concept of luxury beliefs. They discuss Rob's journey from foster care to Yale and Cambridge, Jim's background, the decline in two-parent families from 1960 to 2005, changing forms of elite hypocrisy, intra-elite competition, corporate adoption of woke beliefs, enforcement of ideological conformity, the spread of academic ideas into mainstream culture, attributions of success, drugs and gambling as luxury beliefs, the self-control aristocracy, Western environmentalism's impact on Sub-Saharan Africa, elite opinion vs public opinion, and much more. Episode Transcript Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, by Rob Henderson Rob Henderson's Newsletter Marc Andreessen's interview with Ross Douthat in the New York Times "What the Left Did to Me and My Family," by Christopher Rufo Rob Henderson grew up in foster homes in Los Angeles and in the rural town of Red Bluff, California. After enlisting in the U.S. Air Force at the age of seventeen, he subsequently attended Yale on the GI Bill and was then awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a PhD in psychology in 2022. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Contributing Editor for City Journal, and his Substack newsletter is sent each week to more than 70 thousand subscribers.

Jim talks with epidemiology expert Samuel Scarpino about the recent spread of H5N1 (bird flu) in dairy cows and its implications for public health. They discuss the historical context of H5N1, fatality rates, modeling the spread, network effects in disease transmission, current surveillance efforts, H5N1 transmission mechanisms, challenges of human respiratory transmission, lessons learned & mislearned from Covid-19, the current state of the H5N1 vaccine preparation, extreme pandemic response scenarios, Sam's current risk assessment, economic impacts including egg & dairy prices, recommendations for immediate action, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 099 - Sam Scarpino on Preparing for the Next Pandemic JRS Currents 047 - Samuel Scarpino on the Epidemiology of Covid-19 Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation (CAPTRS) Global.health Metaculus Samuel Scarpino is the Director of AI + Life Sciences at the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University and a Professor of the Practice in Health and Computer Sciences. He holds appointments in the Institute for Experiential AI and the Network Science, Global Resilience, and Roux Institutes. Prior to joining Northeastern in November 2022, Scarpino was the Vice President of Pathogen Surveillance at The Rockefeller Foundation and Chief Strategy Officer at Dharma Platform (a social impact, technology startup). Outside of these roles, he has over 10 years of experience translating research into decision support and data science/AI tools across diverse sectors from public health and clinical medicine to real estate and energy.

Jim has a wide-ranging conversation with recurring guest Peter Wang on AI copyright frameworks and the rapidly changing tech landscape. They discuss "the Chattening" (ChatGPT's release in November 2022) & its impact, parallels between current AI & the invention of science, humans as narrow-band sensors, cybernetics & control systems, the unbearable slowness of being, the Platonic Representation Hypothesis, language & intelligence, why eyeballs are white, copyright challenges with AI, the Anaconda ML Public License framework for AI rights & usage permissions, AI's impact on various industries, impacts on software engineering careers, giant frontier models vs specialty models, AI models' convergence on underlying reality, representation complexity, evaluation frameworks, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP16 - Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed Internet JRS Currents 092: Peter Wang on The Meaning Crisis and Consequentiality "The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?" by Jieyu Zheng & Markus Meister "The Platonic Representation Hypothesis," by Minyoung Huh, Brian Cheung, Tongzhou Wang, & Phillip Isola "Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net," by John Perry Barlow Bluesky Qwen2.5 Instruct (model) Peter Wang is the Chief AI and Innovation Officer and Co-founder of Anaconda. Peter leads Anaconda’s AI Incubator, which focuses on advancing core Python technologies and developing new frontiers in open-source AI and machine learning, especially in the areas of edge computing, data privacy, and decentralized computing.

Jim talks with Kristian Rönn, co-founder of the carbon accounting tech company Normative, about his book The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future). They discuss Darwinian traps & demons, the parable of Picher, Oklahoma, the "cost of doing business" mentality, beauty filter arms races, perverse incentives in science, Goodhart's law, how nature deals with defection vs cooperation, kamikaze mutants, pandas as evolutionary dead ends, close calls with nuclear weapons, engineered pathogens, AI risk, radical transparency at the nation-state level, reputation systems, types of reciprocity, distributed reputation marketplaces, developing Darwinian demon literacy, local change, and much more. Episode Transcript The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future), by Kristian Rönn "Five Rules for Cooperation," by Martin Nowak "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis," by Nick Bostrom Kristian Rönn is a founder, author, and global governance advocate. He pioneered cloud-based carbon accounting by founding Normative, a platform that helps thousands of companies achieve net-zero emissions. A proponent of effective altruism, Kristian advocates for prioritizing the wellbeing of Earth's inhabitants as the key metric for progress. Before Normative, he worked at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, focusing on global catastrophic risks and AI. He has contributed to numerous global standards, legislation, and resolutions on climate and AI governance.

Jim talks with philosopher and cognitive scientist Carolyn Dicey Jennings about her book Attention and Mental Control. They discuss mental control vs self-control, the ping pong metaphor, prioritization vs single-threaded focus, voluntary vs automatic attention, perceptual processing & conscious attention, 3 forms of interest, meditation & mind wandering, hyperfocus as a superpower, ADHD & neurodiversity, the emergence of control, wave activity in the brain, local vs global brain activity, and much more. Episode Transcript Attention and Mental Control, by Carolyn Dicey Jennings "I Attend, Therefore I Am," by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (Aeon Magazine) More Videos and Papers The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz Carolyn Dicey Jennings explores whether it is possible for us to direct our own minds through attention and, if so, what impact this has on other functions of the mind. She has training in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience and combines these fields to approach fundamental questions about the nature of the mind, including the existence of the self, the foundation of consciousness, and the possibility of a free will. She has published three books, two monographs with Cambridge University Press (The Attending Mind, 2020 and Attention and Mental Control, 2022) and an edited volume (Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, 2022 with Ben Young). She is currently working on a new project, on “collective attention,” which intersects with recent digital technologies.

Jim talks with lawyer and former DHS policy person Rachel Winkler about Trump's promise to carry out a large-scale deportation operation. They discuss estimates of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., mixed-status households & the aging undocumented population, the legal standing of an undocumented immigrant, types of undocumented immigrants, the process for pending deportation orders, potential policy changes, prosecutorial discretion, practical constraints on mass deportations, private detention companies, cooperation with Mexico, the Alien Enemies Act & the Insurrection Act, balancing secure borders with the need for immigrants, and much more. Episode Transcript Rachel Winkler is a member of the Cross-Border Risks team. Utilizing experience working with federal law enforcement partners and professionals at DHS, Rachel’s practice focuses on U.S. immigration benefits, compliance, and status defense; visa sponsorship and eligibility; removal defense; forced labor supply chain compliance with Section 307; and international criminal investigations. She also handles customs and I-9 verification issues. Her clients include individuals (including those with white-collar convictions), entities, and startups across various industries including tech and entertainment.

Jim talks with historian Richard Overy about his new book Why War? They discuss historians' shyness in thinking about the nature of war, a correspondence between Einstein & Freud, the meaning of the term, the "pacified past," the interplay between warfare & cooperation, recent ethological studies of chimpanzees, conformity, 4 major types of anthropological evidence, the status of warriors over time, ecological drivers of war, Marxian analyses of war, hubristic warfare, Rome's centuries of warfare, the illusion of security, the future of war, and much more. Episode Transcript Why War?, by Richard Overy Richard Overy is Honorary Research Professor in the University of Exeter. He spent his teaching career at Cambridge, King's College London, and Exeter. He is the author of more than 30 books on World War II, air power, and the European dictators, including Why the Allies Won, Russia's War, The Air War 1939-1945, and most recently Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War 1931-1945, which won the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History and the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award for 2023. His next book, Rain of Ruin, on the bombing of Japan is due out in March 2025. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He lives between Italy and England.

Jim talks with Gregg Henriques about his new book UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge. They discuss the problem the book addresses, 3 vectors of knowing, the metacrisis, avoiding despair & techno-optimism, the enlightenment gap, the iQuad coin, the UTOK garden frame, a descriptive metaphysics for science, behavior & mind, endo-naturalism, 3 kinds of mindedness, webs of justification, the periodic table of behaviors, behavioral investment theory, the influence matrix, the tree of life, why wisdom is the ultimate virtue, the concept of God, the dragon's lair, the fifth joint point, the third attractor, personal information agents, the garden fractal, a transcendent naturalism, and much more. Episode Transcript Gregg's blog at Psychology Today UTOKing with Gregg (Podcast) JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap JRS EP 59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz JRS EP 266 - Marcia Gralha on the Common Core of Psychotherapy and Wokeism in Academia "In Search of the 5th Attractor," by Jim Rutt JRS EP 57 - Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, by David J. Temple Dr. Gregg Henriques is a Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University, where he has worked since 2003. He is a clinical and theoretical psychologist, and founder of UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, which is a new system of thought that bridges the sciences and humanities into a coherent whole. Dr. Henriques has authored three books, UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge (2024), A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap (2022), and A New Unified Theory of Psychology (2011). He has published many professional papers in the field’s top journals, and has a popular blog on Psychology Today, called Theory of Knowledge, which has almost 500 essays and received over 10 million views. Dr. Henriques is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the 2022 President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and head of the UTOK Circle. He teaches classes in psychotherapy, personality, personality assessment, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Vermont, did his postdoctoral training under Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia.

Jim talks with Loribeth Ford Jarrell, the director of Sumplicity Math, a mathematics enrichment program for children. They discuss working with the neural characteristics & firing patterns of individual children, education going modular, the microschool movement vs supplementary education, tutorial services, individual assessment, 10 vector dials, Jim's education in proving the teacher wrong, identifying Jim's learning profile, why education should belong to the child, the 10-frame dot model, dumb approaches in basic math education, long consolidators, phases of learning, the one-room schoolhouse model, types of readers, the neurological paths of reading, cognitive advantages of Arabic numerals, the nastiness of long division, how to deliver a bespoke learning trajectory, de-professionalizing math education, demonstrating that math is beautiful, counter-movements in education, supporting parents, and much more. Episode Transcript Sumplicity Math Loribeth Ford Jarrell, director of Sumplicity Math, President of Jarrell Academics, is an innovative educator who has built a lab school/lab program comprising a new model of Education Service Delivery based on the neural characteristics and firing patterns of individual children. Her work covers all aspects of bespoke education service delivery from understanding the behavioral and cognitive development needs of children on the Spectrum, to typically developing peers, to the advanced needs of the highest achieving children.

Jim talks with Lorraine Besser about the ideas in her book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in the Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. They discuss the turning point in Lorraine's life that inspired the book, the meaning of the good life, pleasure vs eudaimonia, Stoicism & Epicureanism, unstructured cognitive engagement, the interesting, Seinfeld's relationship to happiness, problems with the pursuit of pleasure & meaning, the arrival fallacy, saints vs human beings, psychological richness, pursuit mode, Neal Cassady of the Beats, high dimensionality, the show Somebody Somewhere, tips for developing an interesting mindset, how much to go into the danger zone, the value of friendship, interesting vs moral, and much more. Episode Transcript The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in the Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It, by Lorraine Besser JRS EP 130 - Ken Stanley on Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned Visions of Cody, by Jack Kerouac The First Third, by Neal Cassady JRS EP 269 - Alex Ebert on the War on Genius The Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well, by Lorraine Besser Lorraine Besser, PhD, is a professor of philosophy at Middlebury College, who specializes in the philosophy and psychology of the good life and teaches popular courses for undergraduates on happiness, well-being, and ethics. An internationally recognized scholar, she was a founding investigator on the research team studying psychological richness. She is the author of two academic books (The Philosophy of Happiness: An Interdisciplinary Introduction and Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well) and dozens of professional journal articles on moral psychology.

Jim talks with Nancy Jacobson, the founder and CEO of the No Labels political organization, in the last of four conversations featuring non-partisan thinkers on the upcoming US presidential election. They discuss No Labels's mission, the Problem Solvers Caucus, the common sense platform, the quality of No Labels volunteers, the power of party leaders, issues with the current parties, Nancy's vote for the 2024 election, what's next for No Labels, and more. Episode Transcript "The Republican Electoral College Advantage," by Jim Rutt No Labels - Books and Reform Proposals JRS EP 219 - Katherine Gehl on Breaking Partisan Gridlock The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter JRS EP 262 - Cliff Maloney on a Libertarian's Case for Trump Nancy Jacobson is the Founder and CEO of No Labels, a non-profit political organization in Washington D.C. that uses bi-partisan approaches to bring people together to solve today’s toughest political problems. She previously held senior roles on political campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Senator Al Gore, and Senator Evan Bayh.

Jim talks with Alex Ebert about his recent essay "Suboptimal Revolution: In Defense of Inefficiencies." They discuss what optimization does, genius vs democracy, negating the spatiotemporal experience of becoming a master, the decision-by-committee problem, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, dimensional collapse, the app Shazam, what happened to movies, preferred energetic states & the feat of problematizing, status burning, audience capture, the signature of a medium, the human ability to spot good bad things, cognitive sovereignty, the allure of inertia, fighting back against entropy, a million years to do cool stuff in the universe, suboptimal tech, constraints, natural implicit hierarchies, tying effort to sovereignty, and much more. Episode Transcript Bad Guru (Substack) "Suboptimal Revolution," by Alex Ebert Alex Ebert is a platinum-selling musician (Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros), Golden Globe-winning film composer, cultural critic and philosopher living in New Orleans. His philosophical project, FreQ Theory, as well as his cultural analyses, can be followed on his Substack.

Jim talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about the ideas in his new book, The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process. They discuss Jim's love for the book, the thinking behind the title, future books in the series, why Brendan avoided the word "religion," the nature of meaning, dissipative systems, Shannon information vs semantic information, relations vs static objects, meaning as adaptive information, the meaning of value, Gregg Henriques's Unified Theory of Knowledge, the meaning of learning, why the world is full of bogus learning, whether complexity increases over time, information overload, John Vervaeke's relevance realization, wisdom, evolution as learning, the meaning & evolution of sacredness, and much more. Episode Transcript The Evolution of Meaning: A Universal Learning Process, by Brendan Graham Dempsey JRS EP 172 - Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge, by Gregg Henriques JRS EP 159 - Bobby Azarian on the Romance of Reality JRS EP 143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, researcher, organic farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to "promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most." He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in religious studies and classical civilizations from the University of Vermont and earned his master's from Yale University, where he studied religion and culture. He is the author of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics and host of the Metamodern Spirituality Podcast. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.

Jim talks with Richard Hanania in the third of four interviews with heterodox political thinkers on the upcoming US presidential election. They discuss the danger of "heterodox orthodoxy," Trump's election denial, disagreeing with the Democrats on policy, Jim's critiques of both parties, religion's impact on policy, Republicans as the party of low human capital, the idea of Trump derangement syndrome, the number of people who served under Trump who are not supporting him, guardrails against overthrowing the election, the likelihood that Trump wins, the apparent swing toward Trump among young men, and much more. Episode Transcript Richard Hanania's Newsletter Richard Hanania is a Fellow at the Salem Center for Public Policy at the University of Texas, and a former Research Fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He holds a JD from the University of Chicago Law School and a PhD in Political Science from UCLA. His research interests include the relationship between wokeness and civil rights law, psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, and how to improve public discourse and policymaking by holding experts accountable through prediction markets. He has written in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Jim talks with Marcia Gralha about her and Gregg Henriques's work identifying the common core of psychotherapeutic traditions. They discuss her collaboration with & recent engagement to Gregg, framing psychotherapy, the enlightenment gap, the development of eclecticism, common factors between approaches, the integration movement, approaches to integration, the 3(+1) elements of the Common Core, the quality of the therapeutic bond, cultural legitimization, choosing interventions, rituals, the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK), disentangling confusions in terms, the persona filter, person-centered therapy, the neurotic loop, character adaptation systems, cognitive therapy & cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), wokeism in academia, a sexual harassment complaint, woke 1.0 vs 2.0, the ability to deal with strong stuff, and much more. Episode Transcript Inside UTOK (Substack) JRS EP59 - Gregg Henriques on Unifying Psychology JRS EP176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap "The Common Core of Psychotherapy," by Gregg Henriques and Marcia Gralha "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel Marcia Gralha is an independent scholar of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) and serves as a content and community curator for the theory. She holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Western Carolina University, North Carolina, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL. Marcia has contributed to the development of various UTOK initiatives, including the Annual Conference "Consilience," publications, lectures, workshops, and coaching services. She is also the co-founder of the Nexus project, an initiative dedicated to fostering unification and integrative approaches to psychology in Brazil.

Jim talks with Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of the AI-powered search engine Perplexity. They discuss Jim's use of Perplexity, its wide range of use cases, why Google search is limited by fear of mistakes, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), citations, coming up with the idea, leveraging existing tools vs inventing everything, the core product experience, how the orchestration engine works, semantic vector databases, testing Perplexity as a hedge fund strategist, the Perplexity API, Perplexity's moat, maintaining cognitive sovereignty, paid tiers, what the company needs to succeed, having individuals as major investors, debunking rumors of acquisition by NVIDIA, affordances for coders, and much more. Episode Transcript Perplexity Aravind Srinivas is the CEO of Perplexity, the conversational "answer engine" that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries — with in-line citations. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $165 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, NVIDIA, and the late Susan Wojciki. He has a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley and a Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Jim talks with Bret Weinstein in the second of four episodes featuring heterodox political thinkers on the 2024 presidential election. They discuss Bret's historical voting principles & why they don't apply this time, election interference, what actually happened with Biden's failed debate, current polling & apparent desperation of the Democrats, the long trajectory of feminism & its relationship to the current Democratic party, defections by men, a massive political realignment, hating both teams, voting against the status quo regime, the demographic shift in party alignment, a bias in courage towards religious worldviews, removal from the World Health Organization, understanding the failure of government institutions in Covid, Ukraine aid as a looting mechanism, global warming & solar forcing, the Carrington effect & the migration of Earth's magnetic poles, Trump's narcissism & its effects on decision-making, defeating the duopoly, deliberating until the last minute, and much more. Episode Transcript Bret Weinstein has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology, earning his PhD at the University of Michigan, before teaching at The Evergreen State College for 14 years. He is currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large-scale patterns in human history, and seeking a game-theoretically stable path forward for humanity, in service of which he has just co-organized the Rescue the Republic rally in Washington, DC. Bret has spoken at venues including the U.S. Congress, the International Covid Summit, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and the Hannah Arendt Center. With his wife, Heather Heying, he hosts the DarkHorse podcast and co-authored the NYT bestseller A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.

Jim talks with Evan McMullen about the state of self-driving car technology, with a special focus on simulators. They discuss the purpose of simulators, levels of simulation, how the world is modeled, gradually ramping up the complexity of the testing world, Tesla's approach, hardware-in-the-loop testing, Waymo's first-mover advantage, simulating the availability of a human intervener, driverless solutions vs driver aid, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), the question of which theories of ethics to use, international standards for functional safety, a liability shield equilibrium, tool-sharing between companies, open source simulators, NVIDIA's DRIVE Sim & other players, standards for interoperability, incentives for cooperation between companies, hardware accuracy, edge case generation, evaluating current offerings for consumers, vibrational tactile feedback vs heads-up displays, when we'll be able to read a book in self-driving car, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 94 - Shahin Farshchi on Self-Driving Tech JRS EP 124 - Jim Hackett on Ford, Electric Cars & More JRS EP 221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance Evan McMullen is a mechatronics engineer at dSPACE, a leading provider of hardware and software for simulation tools into the auto industry.

Jim talks with Cliff Maloney about the November election and his get-out-the-vote campaign, The Pennsylvania Chase. They discuss Cliff's libertarian background, why Pennsylvania is a crucial state, a Republican return to grassroots, the structure of the operation, the effectiveness of door-knocking, choosing the highest-impact doors to knock on, why Cliff is helping the Republicans, Jim's political trajectory, oikophobia, why Jim finds Trump intolerable, Cliff's political background, working for Ron Paul, the loss of the anti-war left, Trump's gut instinct, Trump's deficit record, comparing the foreign policy of Nikki Haley & John McCain, hurricane relief & Ukraine relief, whether support for Ukraine is a good investment, the drug war, returning abortion rights to the states, transgender surgeries for kids, luxury beliefs, Christian nationalism in the Republican Party, woke ideology vs the nuclear family, the unsustainability of American public education, teacher's unions, politics as the adjudication of power, the importance of open disagreements, Thomas Massie, and much more. Episode Transcript Get Out the Vote, by Donald Green and Alan Gerber "Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money," by Jim Rutt (YouTube) Cliff Maloney is a United States political strategist and commentator. He is nationally known for launching the grassroots program “Operation Win at the Door,” which has now knocked on over 3 million doors and elected 300+ state legislators. His life’s mission is to create a liberty state by targeting the 5,413 state legislative seats in America to elect principled citizen legislators.

Jim talks with Nikos Salingaros about architectural theory, urbanism, and urban planning. They discuss inherited knowledge, the capability to distinguish between ugly & beautiful buildings, John Vervaeke's 4 kinds of knowing, vertical vs horizontal design, how architecture went so wrong, backward evolution, a Messianic futurism cult, the destruction of living geometry, how the real estate racket works, biophilic design, the correlation between modern architecture & modern art, the human scale, James Gibson, the Fibonacci sequence, deconstructivism, architectural assassins, fractals in architecture, richness, interpretability, medical health, functional ornamentation, information overload, cultural continuity & erasure, the ruse of postmodernism, algorithmic design, the AI revolution in architecture, an opportunity for new entrants, wonderful modern buildings, failed typologies, urban planning, making several systems work together simultaneously, autopoietic systems, urban DNA, Jane Jacobs, the city as a living system, post-war zoning, peer-to-peer urbanism, why it hasn't worked, the "yes in my backyard" movement, the future of architecture, and much more. Episode Transcript A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life The Death and Life of American Cities, by Jane Jacobs How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, by Stewart Brand "P2P Urbanism," by Nikos Salingaros “Form, Language, Complexity: Unified Architectural Theory” - Syllabus and Course Videos Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include seven books on architecture and design, two of them co-authored with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros collaborated with the visionary architect and software pioneer Christopher Alexander over more than twenty years in editing Alexander’s monumental four-volume book The Nature of Order. Salingaros won the 2019 Stockholm Cultural Award for Architecture, and shared the 2018 Clem Labine Traditional Building Award with Michael Mehaffy. Salingaros holds a doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Stony Brook University, New York. He has directed and advised twenty-five Masters and PhD theses in architecture and urbanism.

Jim talks with Trent McConaghy and Ben Goertzel about the merger of Ben's SingularityNET AGIX token, Trent's Ocean Protocol, and Fetch. They discuss the relative size of the merger, motivations for pulling together the three networks, distinguishing this from a standard corporate merger, how the communities of the projects reacted, leveraging the benefits of scale, changing the ticker symbol, defining AGI vs ASI, forecasts on AGI, considering the arc of self-driving cars, data bottlenecks, the likely shape of superintelligence, what the 3 organizations do, autonomous economic agents, AI creativity, the amount of work happening on crypto networks, the antifragility of crypto, why AGI/ASI emerging from these networks might be plausible, making something work without understanding it, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP217 Ben Goertzel on a New Framework for AGI JRS EP211 Ben Goertzel on Generative AI vs. AGI Currents 072: Ben Goertzel on Viable Paths to True AGI JRS EP3 Dr. Ben Goertzel – OpenCog, AGI and SingularityNET JRS EP 22 Trent McConaghy on AI & Brain-Computer Interface Accelerationism (bci/acc) "Is It Worth Being Wise?" by Paul Graham "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data," Google Research Dr. Ben Goertzel is a cross-disciplinary scientist, entrepreneur and author. Born in Brazil to American parents, in 2020 after a long stretch living in Hong Kong he relocated his primary base of operations to a rural island near Seattle. He leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference. Dr. Goertzel’s research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. Trent McConaghy is founder of Ocean Protocol. He has 25 years of deep tech experience with a focus on AI and blockchain. He co-founded Analog Design automation Inc. in 1999, which built AI-powered tools for creative circuit design. It was acquired by Synopsys in 2004. He co-founded Solido Design Automation in 2004, using AI to mitigate process variation and help drive Moore’s Law. Solido was later acquired by Siemens. He then went on to launch ascribe in 2013 for NFTs on Bitcoin, then Ocean Protocol in 2017 for decentralized data markets for AI. He currently focuses on Ocean Predictoor for crowd-sourced AI prediction feeds.

Jim talks with Toufi Saliba about the Toda/IP protocol and HyperCycle, a decentralized network for AI-to-AI communication. They discuss the high-level view of Toda/IP & HyperCycle, enabling communication of value, what Toda adds on top of UDP, time & cost constraints, cryptographic proof in the first handshake, how Toda transfers value in very small quantities, how settlement occurs, who has custody of a dollar, transaction machines, where money is kept & what prevents stealing, an actual non-fungible token, fully decentralized smart contracts, whether or not Toda is analogous to paper money in a gold standard world, Toufi's motivation for building this tech, hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s, the currency for AI, OpenCog's AGI ASI project, why inter-operation with AI is important, wealth creation at the node level, a market in results not compute, how this helps facilitate AGI, the entire world reaching AGI vs a single entity reaching it, why Toufi thinks AGI is close, reasons for thinking decentralized AGI will happen first, how to get involved, the cost of a node, using Moloch's incentives to overthrow Moloch, learning how to run nodes, HyperCycle vs SinguarityNET, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 027: Charles Hoskinson on Cardano Blockchain Project JRS EP217 - Ben Goertzel on a New Framework for AGI Toufi Saliba is the co-author of the Toda/IP protocol and currently serves as the global chair for international protocols for AI security for the IEEE, which is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of all humanity. Toufi has a history of building various AI projects centered around cryptography and cybersecurity. In October 2022, he took on the leadership of Hypercycle.ai, which is focused on developing a general-purpose technology supporting a decentralized network for AI-to-AI communication.

Jim talks with Stephen Webb about his book If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens... Where Is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. They discuss Jim's obsession with the Fermi paradox, the meaning of the Fermi paradox, the Drake equation, discounting claims about UFOs, a question that everyone can contribute to, Perplexity AI's estimates, optimistic scenarios, anthropic principles, Kardashev civilizations, the principle of mediocrity, getting to the bottom of the UAP phenomenon, problems with the zoo scenario & the interdict hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis, Oumuamua, solar chauvinists, Stapledonian thinking, the signaling problem, 3 types of communications, the dark forest scenario, Dyson swarms, types of planets that would make space exploration hard, what might be special about Earth, the idea that Earth was deliberately seeded by aliens, the Great Filter idea & potential causes of extinction, the Carrington Event, previous filters, the co-evolution of tools & intelligence, where Stephen would place his bets, humanity's huge moral responsibility, and much more. Episode Transcript If the Universe Is Teeming With Aliens... Where Is Everybody?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life, by Stephen Webb JRS EP14 - Astrophysicist Jill Tarter on SETI and Technosignatures Stephen Webb has a passion for learning why the world is the way it is and asking whether it could be any different. He worked at several UK universities, being elected a Member of the Institute of Physics, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and was project lead for the UK Advance HE Collaborative Award in Teaching Excellence in 2022. He is also active in science outreach, and his TED Talk “Where are all the aliens?” has been viewed more than 6.5 million times. In 2023, he retired to devote more time to his writing. He has published numerous books, including an undergraduate textbook on distance determination in astronomy as well as several general and popular science books. His best-known book is Where is Everybody?, an exploration of the Fermi paradox.

Jim talks with Malcolm and Simone Collins about declining worldwide fertility rates and pronatalism. They discuss when fertility started declining, the pre-World-War-I fertility catastrophe, the countries entering fertility freefall, a population-based pyramid scheme, different cultural frameworks' resistances to fertility collapse, the urban monoculture, the rise of an anti-natalist mindset, preparing for a consistent economic decline, the UN's misleading statistic, the debt overhang, whether the downsides are overstated, why this is not a wealthy person problem, guillotines, how the urban monoculture affects the gene pool, equality vs removal of in-the-moment pain, oversensitivity to negative stimuli, causes of the current fertility collapse, declining sperm rates, endocrine disruptors, decrease in sex drive among gen alpha, forgetting of ancestral traditions, tradwives, raising kids as if they were retired billionaires, sumptuary laws as solutions to multipolar traps, fixing cultural norms over fixing real estate prices, valorizing austerity, the correlation between fertility crashes & embracing the Enlightenment, responses to the temptation of infinite pleasure whenever you want it, building pro-natalism as a cohesive movement, the religion of Techno-Puritanism, the Future Police Holiday, becoming gods through intergenerational martyrdom, taking the anti-mystic route, a positive correlation between consequentialism & fertility rates, cultivars, mystery cults vs theological evolution, and much more. Episode Transcript The Pragmatist's Guides to Life Based Camp (Podcast) JRS EP 213 - Robin Hanson on Declining Fertility Rates Pronatalist.org The Infant Development and Environment Study (TIDES) "Reclaiming Our Cognitive Sovereignty," by Jim Rutt Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin JRS EP 143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark Malcolm and Simone Collins are international pronatalist advocates and authors. They are co-writers of The Pragmatist's Guides to Life, a series on relationships, sexuality, governance, and crafting religion. They also co-host a podcast, Based Camp. Their core area of focus is on cultural evolution and predicting the future. Publicly they are generally known as "the elite couple breeding to save mankind."

Jim talks with Glenn Loury about his recent memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. They discuss the problem of self-regard, Glenn's mentorship under Thomas Schelling, his upbringing in the South Side of Chicago, his matriarch aunt Eloise, his best friend Woody, the one-drop rule, the social construction of race, the influence of his uncles, stealing a car for prom, the Illinois Institute of Technology, working at a printing plant, community college classes, discovering the life of the mind at Northwestern University, choosing MIT, macro- & microeconomics, separating from his wife, choosing a department to work in, getting the call from Harvard, walking the line between Economics & African-American Studies, modeling inequality in society, moving out of economic theory & into public intellectualism, "little essays," leading a double life, a torrid love affair ending in arraignment, being conservative, resisting the mournful recitation of historic victimization, a crack-cocaine addiction, resubmitting to the Christian faith, restoring his marriage, his wife's forgiveness, the arc of his political life, and much more. Episode Transcript Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, by Glenn C. Loury The Glenn Show Glenn C. Loury is Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Economics at Brown University. He holds the B.A. in Mathematics (Northwestern) and the Ph.D. in Economics (M.I.T). As an economic theorist he has published widely and lectured throughout the world on his research. He is also among America’s leading critics writing on racial inequality. He has been elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association, as a Member of the American Philosophical Society and of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, and as a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jordan Hall tries to convince Jim that the reality of the Christian God is logically necessary. They discuss points of agreement & resonance between their views, relational ontology vs substance ontology, belief as mental operation vs existential commitment, a hierarchical stack of concepts, the complexity lens, the conceptual level on which relationship belongs, relata as contained within relationship, relationship as the most real, the impossibility of imagining being without relationship, oneness & multiplicity & relationality, moving from the philosophical to the theological, hypostasis, the standard model of physics, the coordination of experience with theory, dehumanizing the persons of the Trinity, alternatives to a single universe, unfolding within lawfulness, pure nominalism, the Nicene Creed, whether the Trinity adds information to complexity, whether a cosmic consciousness defies physics, the laws of causation, theology as the discipline of reality, the existential commitment that belief constitutes, fath as livingness, the meaning of a personal God, an ongoing expansion of the relationship with reality, faith vs ideology, 3 forms of belief in Plato, the meaning of pistis, John Vervaeke's religion that is not a religion, refounding life on pistis, whether one can be a Christian without thinking so, Biblical literalism, the prescriptive & annoying stuff, good fiction, great literature as a means of accessing high-dimensional reality, the mediocrity of academic Biblical criticism, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP8 - Jordan "Greenhall" Hall and Game B JRS EP26 - Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence JRS EP 170 - John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP 223 - Jordan Hall on Cities, Civiums, and Becoming Christian Heidegger, Neoplatonism, and the History of Being: Relation as Ontological Ground, by James Filler JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object JRS EP 240 - Stuart Kauffman on a New Approach to Cosmology Jordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 17th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.

Jim talks with John Robb about the ideas in his recent Substack essay, "What Went Wrong With America?" They discuss why there's a need to address what went wrong, tribal conspiracy theories following the Trump assassination, a breakdown in collective sense-making, cohesion, coherence, legitimacy, OODA loops, the importance of orientation, reorienting after career retirement, America's choice to orient on globalism, open borders, the end of America's tribal narrative, Pat Buchanan, the Ross Perot 1992 presidential campaign, how the global orientation shaped the response to 9/11, the current global economic situation, the U.S.'s dependence on sanctions, drone warfare, likely scenarios if China invades Taiwan, prospects for flipping back to a national orientation, improving collective sense-making, the current anti-immigration protests in Europe, and much more. Episode Transcript Global Guerrillas (Substack) JRS EP 247 - Sergey Kuprienko on Drone Warfare in Ukraine John Robb is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot. He’s started numerous successful technology companies, including one in the financial sector that sold for $295 million and one that pioneered the software we currently see in use at Facebook and Twitter. John’s insight on technology and governance has appeared on the BBC, Fox News, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Economist, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek. John served as a pilot in a tier-one counter-terrorism unit that worked alongside Delta and Seal Team 6. He wrote the book Brave New War on the future of national security, and has advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, DoD, CIA, and the House Armed Services Committee.

Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the last of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist’s recent book Process and Event. They discuss the barred absolute as that which is hidden to us in the world, the barred subject, the mamilla in Lacan, barred absolutes vs the Barred Absolute, dissolving nihilism, accepting death as absolute, trans-determinism, Grand Project A, exodology, paradigmatics, the tyrant's lynch mob, oikophobia, Trumpism as a reaction to oikophobia, attentionalism, the abolition of advertising, consumtariats vs netocrats, the attentionalist paradigm, personal information agents, curators, comparing advertising & slavery, Perplexity, the Messiah Machine, protopianism, metastability, imploitation over exploitation, the necessity of growth, the Ecotopian Garden, the Syntheist Temple, the phallic gaze as the most important driver of motivation, the demographic crisis, bio-feminism, the Great Exodus, bringing life to space, parallel intelligences, inventing an alien civilization, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 163 - Benedict Beckeld on Western Self-Contempt Perplexity JRS Currents 010: Tyson Yunkaporta on Humans As Custodial Species Alexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist’s philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.

Jim talks with Alexander Bard in the second of three conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss eventological monotheism vs nomadological iconology, dualism vs monism, substance dualism, Spinoza's monism, graded relationality, emergence vector theory, Syntheism & its concepts, God as the ultimate dream, creating God, 4 dimensions of time, a more complete metaphysics, the problem with oneness, the two-headed phallus, priests & chiefs, the 3 fundamental entities in Hinduism, a congress of grandmothers, Plato & Confucius's idealization of tyrants, libido & mortido, objectification of the mamilla, Julia Kristeva's discovery, the Gnostic delusion, being embodied and en-minded, examples of boy pharaohs & pillar saints, paradigmatics, membranics, archetypology, the geneplex vs the memeplex, 4 paradigms in human history, finding one's paradigmatic role, embedded membranes, trans men & women as new paradigmatic categories, the dialectics of the Hegelian negation & the Nietzschean oscillation, the negation of the negation in identity production, negation in phenomenology, the golden age of 19th century German philosophy, American pragmatists, transcendental emergentism, getting laid, principles rather than laws, studying each emergence vector as its own domain, emergence vector theory in creativity, the stability of physics, cosmological Darwinism, negation & oscillation as the fundamental dialectics of reality & thought, and much more. Episode Transcript "The Last Question," by Isaac Asimov Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, by Julia Kristeva JRS EP 176 - Gregg Henriques Part 1: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap JRS EP 138 - W. Brian Arthur on the Nature of Technology JRS EP 227 - Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life JRS EP 5 Lee Smollin - Quantum Foundations and Einstein's Unfinished Revolution Alexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist’s philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.

Jim talks with Pamela Denise Long about the nomination of Kamala Harris and what it might mean for American Freedmen. They discuss the meaning & value of the term "Freedmen," what it means to be Black & why it matters, misallocated affirmative action, Barack Obama's ethnicity, the history of Bantu & Nilotic Africans, Kamala Harris as a metaphor, parallels between Harris & Obama, the question of Harris's Blackness, Harris's decision to identify as Black, the influence on public policy, her statements about reparation, her hesitance to commit to direct redress for Freedmen, the context of an increasingly multiracial America, emphasizing the question of resources, remaining tensions between Black and White Americans, when ethnic identification prevents redress to Freedmen, who Denise will vote for in the election, lineage specificity, immigration moderation, the increased number of Black Americans planning to vote, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 196 - Pamela Denise Long on Affirmative Action for Freedmen Dr. Pamela Denise Long is principal project manager and implementation consultant at Youthcentrix. Denise holds an EdD in organizational development, MS in Learning & Cognition, and BHS in allied health. Dr. Long is an award-winning business consultant for implementing trauma-informed diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism, 7th gen American, “Radical Republican,” and media personality featured at Newsweek, FOX News, WVON, The Griot Politics/Black News Channel, and more.

Jim talks with Alexander Bard for the first in a series of conversations about his and Jan Söderqvist's recent book Process and Event. They discuss Jim's process for reading the book, metaphysics, narratology, the sociont, dividuals vs individuals, a biochemical definition of individuality, eventology, Alexander's conversion to Zoroastrianism, nomadology, Nietzsche's concept of the eternal recurrence, 4 varieties of time, a defense of armchair philosophy, phallic linear time, the phallic gaze & direction, transcendental emergentism, the tendency to want a single explanation, problems with emergentism, emergence vectors, the ubiquity of uniqueness, the Great Filter, the narratological triad, 3 brains & their proportions in the population, the problem with literal belief in mythos, root of the phallus, the end of the age of mass religion, the barred absolute & whether it's desirable, tribopoiesis, membranes & boundaries, lawful semipermeability, membranics as a dialectical process, tantric labs, coherent pluralism & Zoroastrianism, decentralization, avoiding tyranny, disenfranchising the emergence of big men, boy pharaohs vs pillar saints, and much more. Episode Transcript Process and Event, by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist JRS Currents 065: Alexander Bard on Protopian Narratology JRS EP95 - Alexander Bard on God in the Internet Age JRS Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm Alexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist's philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.

Jim talks with Seth Lloyd about the many ways of measuring complexity. They discuss the difficulty of measuring complexity, the metabolism of bacteria, Kolmogorov complexity, Shannon entropy, Charles Bennett's logical depth, cellular automata, effective complexity & its discovery, the effective complexity of a bacterium, coarse graining, fractal dimensions, Lempel-Ziv complexity, the invention of Morse code, epsilon machines, thermodynamic depth, mutual information, integrated information as a more intricate form of mutual information, panpsychism, whether "consciousness" has a referent, network complexity, multiscale entropy, pragmatic application of complexity measures, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 79 - Seth Lloyd on Our Quantum Universe The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart Kauffman Seth Lloyd is professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Dr. Lloyd's research focuses on problems on information and complexity in the universe. He was the first person to develop a realizable model for quantum computation and is working with a variety of groups to construct and operate quantum computers and quantum communication systems. Dr. Lloyd has worked to establish fundamental physical limits to precision measurement and to develop algorithms for quantum computers for pattern recognition and machine learning. He is author of over three hundred scientific papers, and of Programming the Universe (Knopf, 2004).

Jim talks with Timothy Clancy about the Israel-Hamas War following Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. They discuss the sorting-out period that follows the end of an empire, Jerusalem as a perpetual battleground, 3 questions for understanding conflict, a missed opportunity for Jordan to take back the West Bank, what happened on October 7, recovering the sense of security, the scale of the atrocity, strategic limitations of bloodlust, unconditional surrender, grievance, pulling weeds vs addressing root grievances, the civil war between Fatah and Hamas, the story behind Yasser Arafat's rejection of the potential settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organization & Israel, ways to invade a city, the increasing likelihood of a ceasefire, the difference between conventional & asymmetric warfare, the importance of contingencies & constraints, the arms supply from the U.S. to Israel, the increase of Western support for Hamas, alignment with grievance, the role of Indian & Bangladeshi bot farms in increasing Palestine-Israel tensions, the colonial narrative, a system for analyzing grievances, Timothy's prediction for long-term trajectory, contingent factors of the rise of Iran, employment as a cure for grievance, Gaza as a feral city, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS Currents 057: Timothy Clancy on Russia's Mid-Game START Researcher Spotlight: Timothy Clancy "Dynamics of Atrocity Scripts in Conflict," by Timothy Clancy "Theory of an Emerging-State Actor: The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) Case," by Timothy Clancy Timothy Clancy is an Assistant Research Scientist at START specializing in studying wicked mess problems, including violence and instability, as complex systems. Current research topics include understanding violent radicalization as a system, the terror contagion hypothesis for public mass killings, the emerging-state actor hypothesis for asymmetric and irregular warfare conflicts, and advancing methods for modeling social complexity through computer simulations integrated with AI.

Jim talks with Sergey Kuprienko, CEO and co-founder of Swarmer, about drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War. They discuss the parallels between drones in Ukraine & the advance in aviation during World War I, the history of drone warfare in the conflict, Russia's electronic countermeasures, the niche Swarmer occupies, autonomy for coordinated robots, pilots vs operators, swarm vs swarm warfare, AI vs human decision-making, greener warfare, distribution of ability among drone pilots, current production rates, the kill ratio, Russia's brute-force industrial capacity, the mix of symbolic AI vs machine learning, working with D3 Capital, collective intelligence, computing hardware, the Russian use of smoke as a countermeasure, cybersecurity, extra-military applications, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 244 - Samo Burja on Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War "Don't Bring a Patriot to a Drone Fight—Bring Fighter UAVs Instead," by Paul Maxwell Sergey Kuprienko is the CEO and co-founder of Swarmer, a software company for drone software.

Jim and A.M. Hickman trade stories about the pleasures and tribulations of hitchhiking. They discuss Andy & his wife's recent hitchhiking honeymoon, how he started hitchhiking as a teenager, growing up in Utica, New York, the Adirondacks, multi-generational itchy-foot syndrome, "hobo college," Jim's earliest hitchhiking experience, hitchhiking on the East Coast, crazy happenings, fertilized chicken eggs, a four-year-old driver, psychoactive chemicals, a shift against hitchhiking in the Eighties, post-Covid leeriness, the decline in hitchhiking, finding odd jobs, the low cost of living on the road, Mormon country, ultra-light gear, the diversity of America's traveling homeless, sleeping in a Honda Civic on a freight train, rescuing a fourteen-year-old hitchhiker in Eureka, California, and much more. Episode Transcript Hickman's Hinterlands (Substack) A.M. Hickman is an itinerant geographer from the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. He writes on Substack at Hickman's Hinterlands.

Jim talks with Bob Levy about the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, in the Supreme Court. They discuss Bob's late-career move to law, never being too old to reinvent yourself, how Bob got involved in a pivotal Supreme Court case in establishing the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment, the text of the Second Amendment, District of Columbia v. Heller, United States v. Miller, United States v. Emerson, the scholarship around framing the Second Amendment as an individual right, the state of play of gun control in D.C. at the time, the handgun ban, handguns in the home for self-defense, the NRA case & a rookie error by the NRA's lawyers, legal strategy in the Heller case, sufficient vs necessary conditions for exercising the right, the meaning of "well-regulated," the specific holdings in Heller, the meaning of fundamental rights, Breyer's dissent against Scalia's opinion, the rational basis standard, McDonald v. City of Chicago, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, "good moral character," the murky precedent of striking down laws that weren't present during the framing era, a strict scrutiny approach, speculations on the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence, ghost guns, and much more. Episode Transcript The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, by Robert Levy & William Mellor "The Peculiar Story of United States v. Miller," by Brian L. Frye Bob Levy was, for 14 years, chairman of the board of directors at the Cato Institute. He is now chairman emeritus. Bob joined Cato as senior fellow in constitutional studies in 1997 after 25 years in business. The Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies is named in his honor. He has also served on boards of the Federalist Society, the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the Institute for Justice. Bob received his PhD in business from the American University in 1966, then founded CDA Investment Technologies, a major provider of investment information and software. At age 50, after leaving CDA in 1991, Bob went to George Mason law school, where he was chief articles editor of the law review and class valedictorian. He received his JD degree in 1994. The next two years he clerked for Judge Royce Lamberth on the US District Court and Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals, both in Washington, DC.

Jim talks with Samo Burja about lessons military strategists should take from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far. They discuss why military stockpiles are less useful than previously assumed, the scaling up of drone production, the impossibility of envisioning what tech will be needed, 4 factors that caused Russian miscalculation, offensive vs defensive dominance, the possibility of a U.S. military draft, the changing role of conscription, the high average age in Russia & Ukraine, the rapid evolution of drones, a comparison between drone pilots & snipers, the muted relevance of the air force, empty symbols of military strength, the progress of autonomous drones, the reevaluation of civilian casualties with changing tech, the information complexity of drone warfare, the importance of artillery, the need for a new George Marshall figure in the U.S., a war of production, how the Ukraine War can inform the Taiwan situation, the idea of an amphibious assault, autonomous submersible vehicles, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP 243 - Yaroslav Trofimov on Ukraine’s War of Independence JRS EP 221 - George Hotz on Open-Source Driving Assistance Samo Burja is the founder and President of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm that specializes in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. Bismarck uses the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have conducted over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that provide the foundation for healthy human societies, with an eye to engineering and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. He has authored articles and papers on his findings. His manuscript, Great Founder Theory, is available online. He is also a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation and Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute. Samo has spoken about his findings at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia.

Jim talks with Yaroslav Trofimov about his new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence. They discuss the reporting that went into the book, Yaroslav's connection to Ukraine, a brief history of Ukraine, the Golden Horde's conquering of modern-day Ukraine, Russia's inheritance of the Tatar-Mongol state, Ukraine's brief period of independence at the end of WWI, the complexity of Ukrainian identity, the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution & its outcome, a period of low-intensity conflict, what caused full-scale war to break out, how Putin drank his own kool-aid, his expectation that there would be little resistance, the widespread underestimation of Ukraine, Russia's initial thrusts, the pivotal battle at Hostomel Airfields, the Bucha massacre, the negotiations in Istanbul, the siege at Mariupol, what made the Ukrainians so tough, the role of Zelensky in inspiring the resistance & rallying international support, the Russian drought, the counter-offensives of August-September 2022, the Republican party's stalling of aid to Ukraine, the arguments for supporting aid, Yaroslav's prognosis, possible endgames, the likelihood of a frozen conflict, and much more. Episode Transcript Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence, by Yaroslav Trofimov No Country for Love, by Yaroslav Trofimov Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023, for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East. His latest non-fiction book, Our Enemies Will Vanish, was a finalist of the 2024 Orwell Prize.