Village Global Podcast

Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak), joins Erik on this episode. He is a technologist, designer and researcher. They discuss:- The key thread throughout his work and what he’s trying to accomplish.- Why people read books despite remembering little of what they read.- What books should look like and the features they should have in the digital age.- Why spaced repetition is so powerful.- His requests for startups in the space.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Martin Gurri (@mgurri), author of The Revolt of The Public, joins Erik on this episode. They discuss:- Martin’s advice for Silicon Valley elites.- How to restore trust in democracy.- Why and how politicians became performers.- The history of information.- What will end the techlash.- The results of government colliding with digitization.… And much more.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Vinay Gupta (@leashless), CEO of Mattereum, joins Erik on this episode.They discuss:- The effects of overconsumption on the environment.- The breakdown of humanity’s carbon footprint. - Why we need to optimize waste in the same way that we optimize investment and production.- How to reduce the perceived fragility of life for those living in poverty.- Buckminster Fuller’s ambitions and why we’re living in the world that he wanted us to avoid.- Why Vinay “never trusted the decentralization framework.”- Why the vast majority of problems caused by poverty can be fixed with half a dozen simple machines but that market capitalism is not able to provide them to those in need.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) joins Erik on this episode for a conversation about friendship, Twitter as a global brain, online communities, fame, how we can better relate to others, and more.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Robert Tracinski (@Tracinski) and Jason Crawford (@jasoncrawford) join Erik on this episode. Robert is an author and creator of The Tracinski Letter. Jason is an entrepreneur and runs Roots of Progress, a blog about the ascent of mankind, from the caves to computers and beyond.They discuss:- The idea of a “capitalism appreciation society” akin to an art appreciation society.- The backward perspectives that people have on economic progress.- Their answers to the critiques of capitalism as unsustainable.- How society has changed from biological sources of resources to artificial ones over time.- Whether automation will mean that people work less in the future.- Growth and its relationship to democracy.- The role of business in ensuring the welfare of people in a country.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein). He is a biologist and evolutionary theorist. They discuss:- His start in the field of evolutionary biology and how he realized that the big questions everyone thought had been answered actually only seemed that way because the big questions had stopped being asked.- Why two characteristics of a given creature or object cannot be maximized at the same time, and why thinking in terms of trade-offs explains virtually all of biology and society.- Why he says “any utopian is not welcome at the adult table to discuss modern civilization.”- Why we need to get over the idea that we can blueprint a society that works.- Why markets are excellent at telling us how to do things but terrible at telling us what we should want.- Game B and some of the stubs of that idea that exist today that could be built out.- Why “no honorable person would choose to do what natural selection wants us to do.”Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Bill Janeway, a renowned venture capitalist and economist, shares his insights on the intricate relationship between markets and government. He discusses the dangers of financialization and the lessons from past AI hype cycles. Janeway emphasizes the need for disruptors to understand the systems they are challenging, and he advocates for global cooperation on climate change. He also critiques the balance of decentralization in capitalism and the necessity of government support in driving innovation, highlighting historical examples and the importance of regulatory frameworks.

Sarah Perry (@sarahdoingthing), writer and thinker, joins Erik on this episode. They discuss:- Sarah’s writing career and what it means to “work through your politics” early in your career as a writer.- The purpose of rituals and why democracy is itself a form of ritual.- Why ambiguity increases meaning.- What we as a culture don’t understand about meaning.- The narrative illusion in life, that there’s “nothing but time” and that that is the place from which meaning comes.- How to have non-zero-sum status in a society.- What it means to make the “honest decision.”- Why humor is so powerful.- Why people (mistakenly) romanticize the past.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joe Edelman (@edelwax), philosopher, social scientist, designer, and founder of Human Systems, joins Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Why the internet didn’t achieve its promise of connecting people on a deeper level.- Why we’ve become very good at shopping and networking around goals and preferences but not around values, and how this manifests in the differences between Couchsurfing and Airbnb.- Why he says that philosophers and micro-economists have the best ability to figure out how people make choices, and why their approach is better than that of psychology or neuroscience.- How a “meaning economy” or “wisdom economy” could work.- His explanation for what values mean to him, and how his have changed over time.- How he would change Twitter, Facebook, and Tinder, if he was in charge of product at those companies.- Why people who break down all their decisions in complicated spreadsheets are fooling themselves into thinking they’ve made a better decision.- How metrics and values interact, and how to think about metrics in your personal life.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Paul Bohm (@paulsbohm), investor and entrepreneur. They tackle a variety of topics on this wide-ranging episode, including:- How Paul became fascinated with self-perpetuating systems.- Why the European startup scene is problematic, why he is short Silicon Valley, and the idea of importing law from one jurisdiction to another (as companies do with Delaware C Corp designation). - The idea of narrative bias, what a “zombie field” is, and the rule of “Occam’s Bikini.”- Why he thinks that the prospects for AI and its impact on the world are overrated, despite the increasing hype cycle around the field.- His thoughts on collective sense-making and why, if we can’t escape echo chambers, we need a diversity of echo chambers.- Why he looks to youth as harbingers for how society will evolve in the future.- Influencer culture and why he says the impact of it is actually underrated.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.