Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Sam Altman - How to Make an Abundant Future - [Invest Like the Best, EP.484]

I think we're at an early moment in what will eventually be seen as a clear inflection point in history — the moment when AI started to do real scientific research autonomously and the pace of scientific progress started to change in a way that will just seem unimaginable to us now.

EconTalk

Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn)

Flyn rejects the myth of pristine, unpeopled wilderness, revealing that the wildest-looking landscapes have been shaped by humans for centuries.

Throughline

The architect of modern China | Throughline

If I wanted to propose a grand synthesis for Americans to understand Shenzhen, it would be uh Detroit in its heyday of about 100 years ago to Silicon Valley today.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

What Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is really about

It's just a pattern, maybe not worth diving into at great length, but in the '90s, Apple pushed copyright law to the limit. They sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing on how the Mac looked and felt with Windows. And then in the 2000s and early 2010s, Apple pushed patent law to the limit, suing Samsung for allegedly violating a bunch of patents with Android and Galaxy phones because Apple felt that they had protected the iPhone. But I'll point out that Android still exists, Samsung is doing just fine. Apple may have redefined patent law around 3G and 4G licensing, but fundamentally, it did not actually succeed in stopping its competitors with intellectual property lawsuits.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

What Apple’s OpenAI lawsuit is really about

It's just a pattern, maybe not worth diving into at great length, but in the '90s, Apple pushed copyright law to the limit. They sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing on how the Mac looked and felt with Windows. I will point out that Windows still exists, Microsoft is fine. And then in the 2000s and early 2010s, Apple pushed patent law to the limit, suing Samsung for allegedly violating a bunch of patents with Android and Galaxy phones because Apple felt that they had protected the iPhone. Samsung eventually paid about $1 billion in damages and those cases just went around in circles forever. But I'll point out that Android still exists, Samsung is doing just fine.

Book of the Day

Deb Haaland on 'A Voice Like Mine' and her candidacy for governor of New Mexico

Our country is all ancestral homelands of Native Americans, of indigenous people indigenous to North America, and we love our land and we celebrate it every day, right? We don't need a 250th anniversary to celebrate.

Throughline

The architect of modern China

To make that vision real, he had to change China's relationship to the world and introduce capitalism to a society steeped in tradition and communist ideals.

Radiolab

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase "can neither confirm nor deny" is the perfect non-denial denial. It's such a perfect deflection that it seems like it's been around forever, but reporter Julia Barton takes us back to the 1970s and the surprising origin story of what's now known as a "Glomar Response."

The Prof G Pod

Is America Sliding Toward Authoritarianism? — with Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer

This is the slow hollowing out of institutions. It happens gradually. And so I actually think even if to folks like us it was clear that there was a political crisis, it wasn't clear exactly what to do about it because the threat looks different now.

Radiolab

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

According to these theories, Project Azorian was nothing more than an elaborate cover-up disguised as ... an elaborate cover-up.

The Prof G Pod

Is America Sliding Toward Authoritarianism? — with Julia Angwin & Ami Fields-Meyer

Authoritarianism doesn't look like what it used to look like. It's not your grandmother's authoritarianism. It doesn't ride into town on the back of a coup in the way that it used to, in the way that so many of us have in our imagination. This is the slow hollowing out of institutions. It happens gradually.

Book of the Day

Mary Beard's 'Talking Classics' examines our obsession with the ancient world

We might not like the ancient world. I don't think I like it very much. But we can't just ignore it, or we have an impoverished view of our own culture if we try to ignore it.

Book of the Day

Mary Beard's 'Talking Classics' examines our obsession with the ancient world

I've never wanted to say that the classical world offers us ready-made lessons to solve our own problems. But, whatever I morally think about some of the things that the ancient world in general stood for, I do know that the ancient writers faced the same kinds of problems that we face.

Code Switch

How anti-DEI hit the military | Code Switch

Crossing the ocean to fight for freedom abroad that he wasn't even fully granted at home.

Book of the Day

'America's Founding Son' documents John Quincy Adams' influential post-presidency

But now you're not talking about abolition, you're talking about the first amendment. You're talking about the right to petition the government which is protected. And so he becomes a defender of the abolitionists not on necessarily on the grounds of abolition but on the grounds of free speech.

Book of the Day

Norah O'Donnell’s 'We the Women' pays tribute to U.S. history's female heroes

On the Declaration of Independence, she puts her name as Mary Katherine Goddard. She wanted to be remembered. She wanted to be part of this founding document and as you point out, it was dangerous and treasonous to put your name on that document.

EconTalk

EconTalk Book Club on the Iliad (with Ido Hevroni)

Ego, pride, wrath, fear, gods, superheroes, mortals, and lots of killing. Welcome to Homer's Iliad, which reads at times like a script for a Tarantino film or the latest installment of the Avengers franchise.

TED

Why Democracy Requires Renewal | Michael Dimock | TED

The founders didn't hand us a finished product. They handed us an ongoing project that requires engagement and creativity from one generation to the next.

Radiolab

Atomic Artifacts

If Washington DC were hit, every object in the the National Archives would be eviscerated in a moment. Terrified by this reality, they set out to save some of America's most precious stuff.

The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

Rep. Jim Himes: America Is Losing Leverage in Iran

There's about 4,000 years of Persian history to suggest that that's not a happy place to be.

Radiolab

The Gondolier

On the winding canals in the hidden parts of Venice, we learn about the nearly 1000-year old tradition of the Venetian Gondolier, and how the global media created a 20-year battle between that tradition and a supposed feminist icon.

EconTalk

Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald)

How much of human progress is inevitable, and how much depends on the determination of remarkable individuals?

The Week

The Week: Elon Musk Becomes the World's First Trillionaire

But the problem with that ad is they always say that this time it's different is never different.

It's Been a Minute

What does freedom actually look like? | It's Been a Minute

All throughout the north, black people are on high alert because slave catchers are out sort of like ICE, snatching people off the street, picking them up, throwing them in jail, throwing them in these holding pens, sending them back to slavery. Even if you were born in freedom, you felt like your life was at risk.

Fresh Air

Best Of: A family split by race / Eddie Glaude Jr. on America at 250

My grandfather kept Edward's secret right from the very beginning out of a sense of protectiveness for him. He knew that this was a very dangerous and risky thing that Edward was doing. Black men who were found to be posing as white could face all sorts of violence, even death in the Jim Crow era.

Fresh Air

Best Of: A family split by race / Eddie Glaude Jr. on America at 250

Every anniversary, the nation throws itself a party and quietly edits out the parts of the story it cannot bear to face.

Fresh Air

The collapse of Freedman’s Bank / Remembering Abdullah Ibrahim

This idea that the enslaved and the newly free can enter the period of freedom without knowledge of money or savings or thrift, as they called it, was not true and really incompatible with the ideas that the white founders of the Freedmen's Bank held at this time.

Book of the Day

Maggie O'Farrell's novel 'Land' takes readers to a famine-ravaged yet resilient Ireland

I think what interested me was the people who neither died nor left. I was interested in the people who survived and stayed behind. You know, a lot of history focuses, and rightly so, on the million or so people who died. And then also the people who emigrated. I feel as though those stories have been — we know those stories in a sense, and they're terrible, tragic stories.

Code Switch

Trump's 'weaponization' fund steals reparations blueprint

On this 250th birthday of the United States, the bill that would allow Mother Randall to be compensated is languishing in some congressional committee somewhere. Bills for black reparations for slavery have sat collecting dust for decades, but people convicted for their roles in January 6 came way closer to official government sanctioned redress than anybody in those groups. So, who counts as having been harmed by the state?

Code Switch

Pete Hegseth's American crusade | Code Switch

As as people thought that they were doing the will of God through violence, well, suddenly there's a sanction for violence that has almost a universal adapter.

Freakonomics Radio

676. Has America Lost the Plot?

Another war in the Middle East. A retreat from the international order. A presidency built on self-dealing and arbitrary power. It's enough to make you think the U.S. is in a steep decline — but Fareed Zakaria thinks otherwise.

Fresh Air

Richard Pryor’s daughter Elizabeth is a scholar of the N-word

It's the most volatile word in the American language. It has been used to harm, to bond, to challenge, to unite, to separate. It's impossible to discuss American history, literature, and culture without it.

Hidden Brain

The Cowboy Philosopher

Will Rogers was born in 1879 in what is now Oklahoma, to a prominent Cherokee family. He grew up roping cattle, learned to do tricks with a lasso, and eventually turned his cowboy skills into a stage act. But it was his folksy observations about politics and society that made him one of the most beloved figures in America.

The Daily

How A Drug Cocktail Made of Paper Is Killing Inmates

For most of human history, drugs have been grown in the land. When the war on drugs was first declared by President Nixon, there was cocaine, marijuana, heroin. Now there's, like, 1,450 new psychoactive substances.

Book of the Day

In 'Backtalker,' Kimberlé Crenshaw turns from political theory to personal memoir

I would say in American society, forward momentum has always been met by retrenchment. Going all the way back to reconstruction after eight years of active effort to create full citizenship for the freed slaves, there came decades after that of retrenchment.

Fresh Air

Son of radicals, Zayd Ayers Dohrn grew up underground & on the run

Along with his father, Bill Ayers, she helped found the Weather Underground, a group committed to armed resistance against the government.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

That UL safety logo is a lot more complicated than it looks

UL's been around for more than 100 years; it started as a way for insurance companies to standardize fire and safety testing as electricity was the new technology spreading into homes.

Freakonomics Radio

Why Does Everyone Hate Rats? (Update)

History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that claim.

The Origins Podcast

Motion, from Galileo to Dark Mysteries. Lecture 3 in the Origins Podcast Series on Physics

The fact that it took Galileo to redefine our thinking about motion and intelligent people from Aristotle and onward had thought about how things moved in the world and gotten it totally wrong suggests that motion is not so simple.

Hidden Brain

How to Change the World

Pop culture and conventional history often teach us that violence is the most effective way to produce change. But is that common assumption actually true?

Freakonomics Radio

Why Does Everyone Hate Rats? (Update)

History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that claim. In an updated episode from 2025, we ask: Is the rat a scapegoat?

Hidden Brain

How to Change the World

Pop culture and conventional history often teach us that violence is the most effective way to produce change. But is that common assumption actually true? Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who has studied more than 100 years of revolutions and insurrections, says the answer is counterintuitive.

Hidden Brain

How to Change the World

Does power truly flow from the barrel of a gun? Pop culture and conventional history often teach us that violence is the most effective way to produce change. But is that common assumption actually true?

It's Been a Minute

"Girl Math" does not add up to financial freedom | It's Been A Minute

At a certain point, we have to hold ourselves accountable as women and say, "It's barely been 50 years that we can even have a credit card, that we can own property, that we can do things in our own name." to be so eager to give up all of that and to go back into this place of voluntary helplessness and voluntary ignorance in service of a very specific kind of love to me is we just can't allow ourselves to do that.

EconTalk

The Match That Lit the Flame: Hannah Senesh and the Creation of Modern Israel (with Matti Friedman)

a 23-year-old Hungarian poet who traded her Budapest life for a kibbutz, then traded the kibbutz for a parachute and a near-certain death sentence--and whose poems, scribbled on scraps of paper in forests near the Hungarian border, became some of the most famous texts in modern Hebrew

EconTalk

The Match That Lit the Flame: Hannah Senesh and the Creation of Modern Israel (with Matti Friedman)

Hannah Senesh, a 23-year-old Hungarian poet who traded her Budapest life for a kibbutz, then traded the kibbutz for a parachute and a near-certain death sentence--and whose poems, scribbled on scraps of paper in forests near the Hungarian border, became some of the most famous texts in modern Hebrew.

Fresh Air

Will President Trump act on his threat to take Cuba?

anybody who knows the Cubans and Cuban history, this, you know, this island nation just off our shores knows that it has, to an unusual degree, a profound nationalist sentiment when it comes to its own sovereignty, its independence, and especially vis-a-vis the United States.

EconTalk

The Match That Lit the Flame: Hannah Senesh and the Creation of Modern Israel (with Matti Friedman)

a 23-year-old Hungarian poet who traded her Budapest life for a kibbutz, then traded the kibbutz for a parachute and a near-certain death sentence--and whose poems, scribbled on scraps of paper in forests near the Hungarian border, became some of the most famous texts in modern Hebrew.