Do We Need a Major, Major Reform in the Federal System?

Made You Think is back! And if you heard our previous update episode from a few weeks ago, consider this the Update 2.0 on what's to come for the podcast. We are excited to bring you new episodes this year, so stay tuned and follow our show on Spotify so you don't miss an episode.

In this episode of Made You Think, Nat and Neil cover a wide range of topics including:

• The rapidly growing world of Crypto and Web3
• Podcasting 2.0 - How you can further support your favorite podcast hosts 
• The Anti-work movement
• How the pandemic has exposed the fragility in supply chains
• Corruption in Congress 

And much more. Make sure to follow Neil and Nat on Twitter and give some suggestions on what books you'd like us to cover. We hope you enjoy this episode!

Links from the Episode:

Mentioned in the show:

• Solidity (5:05)
• Solana (7:36)
• Avalanche (7:39)
• Polygon (7:40)
• MYT #7: A Crash Course in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency (7:58)
• MYT #11: This Podcast Will Save Your Life: Emergency by Neil Strauss (10:26)
• Wild Planet (11:54)
• Podcasting 2.0 (12:16)
• Anchor (12:40)
• Adam Curry - The Joe Rogan Experience (13:06)
• Lightning Network (13:21)
• New CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal (15:31)
• Neil’s Twitter thread of quotes (19:03)
• Anti-work Reddit (19:22)
• Over 40% of New Stores Opening in the U.S. Are Dollar Stores (28:05)
• The Next: Justin Mares (30:28)
• EatWild (30:30)
• MYT #48: UBI Q&A. A Conversation with Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang (42:01)
• Fountain (44:06)

Books Mentioned:

• Emergency by Neil Strauss (10:22) [Podcast Episode]
• Gulag Archipelago (22:11) [Neil's Twitter Thread]
• The Fourth Turning (35:54)
• Dictator’s Handbook (43:02)
• The Quest of the Simple Life (43:07)

People Mentioned:

• Nader Dabit (4:25)
• Adam Curry (13:04)
• Parag Agrawal (15:16)
• Jack Dorsey (15:25)
• Nancy Pelosi (39:14)
• Andrew Yang (42:01)

Show Topics

0:00 We’re back again! Neil and Nat catch up and fill you in on what’s to come for the Made You Think podcast.

1:02 Security in cryptocurrency; Nat shares an error he made early on in crypto that ended up costing him. While there is lack of good educational material in this space, one way you can learn crypto programming is reading open source smart contracts.

5:48 The speed at which Web3 is moving makes it near impossible to keep up with every new thing going on. The key is to pick a niche or chain to stay on top of. Since the bull run of 2017, so many uses of cryptocurrency have been uncovered.

10:18 Neil and Nat talk about their favorite survival foods and reflected briefly on their Emergency episode.  

12:11 What is Podcasting 2.0? You can now tip podcast creators directly using the lightning network. Think Patreon, but without any centralized authority. 

19:22 There’s now a growing group of people who are anti-work. Neil and Nat discuss wealth disparity in the U.S. and how inflation has played a role.

24:55 Being a small business owner has its many challenges. Between the failure to prosecute crimes against small businesses and the hardships faced by store owners over the past two years of Covid, it’s the smaller businesses who are having to close their doors permanently. 

29:00 Fragility of supply chains. This affects prices of products at grocery stores as well as the consumers who choose which products to buy, especially those with lower incomes.

33:09 Given the many systemic issues mentioned in the episode, Nat and Neil chat about the competency of our leaders to solve the problems the country is facing. A significant change is needed, but it’s currently unknown what’s it going to take and how long.

38:15 Neil briefly discusses some ideas found in the Dictator’s Handbook. Differences in authoritarian vs. democratically-elected systems. Corruption, lying, and our current system. Is the system too far gone? (Flashback to our Andrew Yang episode!)

42:47 Thank you for listening! Hear what’s next for the Made You Think podcast and make sure to grab your copies of The Quest of the Simple Life and The Dictator's Handbook if you’d like to read up before our next episode.

If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a review on iTunes and tell a friend. As always, let us know if you have any book recommendations! You can say hi to us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS and @nateliason and share your thoughts on this episode.

You can now support Made You Think using the Value-for-Value feature of Podcasting 2.0. This means you can directly tip the co-hosts in BTC with minimal transaction fees. To get started, simply download a podcast app (like Fountain) that supports Value-for-Value and send some BTC to your in-app wallet. You can then use that to support shows who have opted-in, including Made You Think! We'll be going with this direct support model moving forward, rather than ads.

Thanks for listening. Until next time!