Undertone

Aug 06 2024 19 ep. 77 mins 18
Undertone Podcast artwork

Conversations with the most interesting people on the planet.

  Society & Culture
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Henry Oliver

Aug 06 2024 69 mins  
Henry Oliver is the author of the book "Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life" and prolific blogger on literature. Episode transcript -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:38) Late Bloomers (0:07:28) Great Man theory of history (0:16:14) The Common Reader (0:20:56) Rear Window (0:22:58) Literature vs film or music (0:26:41) Mime

Jan Swafford

Jun 17 2024 85 mins  
Jan Swafford is an author and composer of classical music. He's written canonical biographies on Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, and is a composer of works such as Landscape with Traveler, From the Shadow of the Mountain, and The Silence at Yuma Point. Episode transcript -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:43) Beethoven and immortality (0:02:35) Mozart and human nature (0:

Eli Dourado

Jun 06 2024 72 mins  
Eli Dourado is the chief economist at the Abundance Institute and writes and thinks about how to increase the pace of American economic growth. Episode transcript -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:43) Non-TFP econ metrics (0:04:59) Are ideas getting harder to find? (0:06:52) Economics as a field (0:10:43) Tyler Cowen’s influence (0:13:00) Culture and economic growth (0:16:13) U

Sebastian Mallaby

Apr 18 2024 75 mins  
Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He’s the author of many of my favorite business books of all time in

Nabeel S. Qureshi

Mar 12 2024 144 mins  
Nabeel is a Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center focused on developing an optimistic vision for AI, but as you’ll see in this conversation his breadth of interests goes about as wide as you can imagine. We talk about foreign film, interpreting the Iliad, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, Derek Parfit, SF vs. NYC, AI, startups, and a lot more. Episode transcript Timestamps (0:00:00) I

Sarah Constantin

Feb 26 2024 70 mins  
Sarah and I talk about ultrasound neuromodluation, AI, and cancer research. -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:22) Ultrasound neuromodulation (0:02:33) Where is it in the tech lifecycle? (0:03:48) Why should it be possible? (0:07:44) How impactful will neuromodulation be? (0:12:08) Startups working on neuromodulation (0:16:33) Could we read minds? (0:18:54) Public acceptance of ne

Alexey Guzey

Feb 13 2024 60 mins  
Alexey and I talk about science, productivity, and utilitarianism. -- Timestamps (00:00) Intro (00:23) How accessible should a good research paper be? (03:47) Good taste (07:07) What does Russia get right? (12:05) Favorite Dostoyevsky novel (14:16) Utilitarianism (16:42) High IQ v genius (17:59) Tyler Cowen's advice (20:13) Bad science (31:25) Productivity (32:55) Updating beli

Noah Smith

Jan 30 2024 78 mins  
Noah and I talk about Keynes' 15 hour work week, Piketty's r>g, economic development in Africa, Javier Milei, Anime, and more. -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:30) Noah’s intellectual influences (0:10:20) Javier Milei (0:11:43) Which macroeconomist would Noah give the highest grade? (0:13:47) Defining mainstream macro in 2024 (0:18:22) Innovation in macroeconomics (

Tyler Cowen

Jan 15 2024 75 mins  
Tyler and I talk about nearly everything. Transcript -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:28) Identifying talent on Tyler’s podcast (0:03:48) Why are follow up questions overrated? (0:04:21) Tyler’s preferred guest career stage (0:05:16) Optimal frequency for recording podcasts (0:05:50) Tyler’s podcast prep (0:07:39) Importance of in-person episodes (0:09:56) What would Tyler

Samo Burja

Jan 03 2024 81 mins  
Samo and I talk about history, gerontocracy, and energy. -- Timestamps (0:00:00) Intro (0:00:21) Knowledge decaying over time (0:06:02) History and the overabundance of information (0:11:10) History as a profession (0:13:32) What would Hitler and Stalin think of our textbooks? (0:16:44) What would we gain from a more accurate picture of history? (0:22:31) Defining Live Players and