Ethan Penner - Greatness is a Choice

Geoff Shullenberger on Rene Girard and the New Right

Geoff Shullenberger is back for another fantastic episode. Geoff is one of the leading scholars on French philosopher Rene Girard. For this episode, we explore Girard's ideas and why they are important. We discuss the implications for the "New Right"; how Girard's ideas are becoming more popular; religion mapping to Girard's ideas; Christianity, Judaism, and Violence; growing out of your Ayn Rand phase, and much more. Geoff is the Managing Editor of Compact Magazine, a teacher, a thinker, and an important influence on many leading figures in Silicon Valley and beyond. During the discussion we mentioned a few links: Geoff's discussion with Justin Murphy [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOfxC1SeCok] Scott Alexander on I See Satan Fall Like Lightning [https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-i-saw-satan-fall-like]

Chris Giancarlo - Crypto Regulation and Policy

I interviewed Chris Giancarlo. Chris is the former Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Senior Counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and the co-founder of the Digital Dollar Project. We had a wide-ranging discussion covering crypto policy, the future of central bank digital currencies, financial competition with China, regulatory policy, crypto as a store of value for electricity, payments between GPTs, and much more. This episode is a must-listen.

Jennifer Schulp - Money Talks and Money Walks

I interview Jennifer Schulp, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. She focuses on the regulation of securities and capital markets. She has testified before Congress multiple times, including before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, and the Committee on House Administration. We discuss regulatory land grabs and mission creep, why ESG is terrible branding, crypto as a store of value for electricity, fractional reserve banking, payment for order flow, and how to protect investors from themselves. This is a wide-ranging conversation with a true expert in the field. Highly recommended.

War in Gaza

There's only one thing worth talking about this week. I am so upset, but there is a lot to cover about the war.

Ethan Penner - Greatness is a Choice

For this special episode, I had the great honor of sitting down with Ethan Penner. Ethan is a Wall Street legend - he created the CMBS market - and he has written a new book entitled Greatness is a Choice. We discuss a wide range of topics, including religion, charisma, counter-consensus thinking, sobriety, flow state, and much more. This is a fabulous interview - highly recommended. Ethan's book is available for pre-order here on Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Greatness-Choice-Ethan-Penner/dp/1394185758].