Jim talks with Peter Wang about his idea that meaning comes from making consequential choices. They discuss the immediacy of consequences, the modeling of causal loops, the subjective aspect of causality, two hundred varieties of shampoo, the intersubjective realm, middle-class consumer culture, the desire to be a live player, examples from Succession and Mad Men, the manufacture

Jim talks with Bruce Damer about genius and the use of psychedelics for creative thinking. They discuss the roots of genius, the discovery of fire, Einstein’s four great discoveries, building blocks of genius, endotripping vs exotripping, set, setting, & setup, the danger of over-relying on LLMs for knowledge, geniuses in the scanner, crosstalk in the

Jim talks with Daniel Suarez about his science-fiction imaginings in the near future of space exploration, Delta-V and Critical Mass. They discuss the inspiration for the novels, the beginning of a renaissance in private space exploration, characters in the series, space law, choice-making at the beginning, the nature of explorers, the research process, a frontier economy, experiments with

  Jim talks with Dave Snowden about the document he co-authored, “Managing Complexity (And Chaos) In Times of Crisis.” They discuss the Cynefin framework, its development into a complexity-informed framework, distinguishing complex from complicated, emergence, enabling constraints vs governing constraints, openness in complex systems, short-term teleology vs top-down causality, lines of flight, six sigma, Taylorism,