Golden Age with Mike Solana (Hyperlegible 008)

Mike Solana is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Pirate Wires, one of my favorite publications on the whole internet and the only one I read every day.

You’ll hear this about a lot of our guests, because this is why I do Hyperlegible, but Mike is one of the best writers doing it today, one of the few whose name in my inbox gives me a little dopamine hit. His writing is unlike anything out there. He’s not afraid to tackle tricky subjects, not afraid to form his own opinion, not afraid to be earnest, and he writes the cover off the ball in a way that feels entirely his.

The piece we discuss today, Golden Age, is pure Solana. He starts by copping to having a lovely time in Disney World, before taking us on a tour of Walt Disney’s vision to build a whole futuristic city in the Florida swampland. He talks about why China has been able to execute on Disney’s vision better than America has, and what it would take to build a modern version, what he calls Golden City, a place where houses are cheap and rare earth metals are processed.

Go read it: https://www.piratewires.com/p/golden-age

It makes me nostalgic for this future, and after listening to our conversation and reading Golden Age, I hope you’ll add your voice to the small but mighty chorus calling on President Trump to just give Solana the federal land in California he needs to build this thing.

We talked all about this piece and much more, live from The Manhattan Lab in New York City, where Matt Marlinski was nice enough to let us record.

At the end of our conversation, Mike makes a couple of recommendations:

His favorite of his own essays:

Moral Inversion

One book everyone should read:

There is No Antimemetics Division

You can find this and all of the articles we discuss on Hyperlegible in one place thanks to our sponsor, Readwise - Visit readwise.io/hyperlegible for a free trial and get all Hyperlegible articles automatically added to your account.

Big thanks to Jim Portela for editing!