Keen On America

“Washington and Hamilton were governed by Willing.” — John Adams, 1813

Thomas Willing voted against the Declaration of Independence. He was the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican slave trader printing money. So he saw little reason to declare independence from Britain. Especially since the renegades — the poor Scots-Irish Presbyterians flooding into the country, the MAGA people of their day — had no love of wealthy aristocrats like himself. And then Willing did something that took everyone, even perhaps himself, by surprise: he financed the very revolution he’d voted against.
In The Banker Who Made America, the financial historian Richard Vague tells a story that reframes the Founding. After Bunker Hill, Willing financed the smuggling of gunpowder via the Caribbean at a critical moment in the struggle against the British. He and his partner Robert Morris became the principal suppliers of finance and other essential materiel for the revolution. When the Continental Currency collapsed in inflationary chaos, it was Willing’s bank that financed the second half of the war. The purpose of America’s first bank, like the Bank of England before it, was to fund war. Without it, there would have been no successful revolution.
But the real revelation in the Willing story is political. Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — an annually elected lower house, neither an upper house nor a governor with veto power. Willing and his fellow financial elites like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton hated this form of people’s democracy. So when they showed up in 1787 to write the US Constitution, they’d learned their lesson: too much democracy is dangerous to the wealthy. The result — an unelected Senate, an unelected president, judges appointed for life — was, as Vague puts it, “a counterrevolution against democracy.” Even Thomas Paine ended up on Willing’s payroll. This Philadelphia story became the American story. Follow the money.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Thomas Willing Voted Against Independence — Then Financed It: The wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican coastal elite making money hand over fist. He voted against the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. Then he smuggled gunpowder through the Caribbean, funded the Continental Army, and created America’s first bank to finance the back half of the war. John Adams wrote that Washington and Hamilton were “governed by Willing.” Nobody knows his name.
•       The Constitution Was a Counterrevolution Against Democracy: Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — annually elected lower house, no upper house, no governor with veto power. Willing and the financial elites clawed it back. The 1787 US Constitution gave America an unelected Senate, an unelected president, and judges appointed for life. Vague calls it a counterrevolution. The tension between money and democracy has never stopped shaping American politics.
•       Even Thomas Paine Ended Up on Willing’s Payroll: The great radical pamphleteer, author of Common Sense, defender of the rights of man — working for the financial elite he should have loathed. Man’s gotta eat. It tells you everything about the relationship between money and idealism in the American founding.
•       The Revolution Wasn’t About High Taxes: Americans’ tax burden was lighter than Britain’s. The real causes were financial: George Washington wanted to speculate on land west of the Appalachians. Willing wanted to start a bank. The British prevented both. The revolution was capitalism demanding permission to operate. Follow the money, Vague argues, and most history that’s written without its financial dimension is incomplete.
•       Some Things Never Change: The purpose of America’s first bank was to fund war. The Bank of England was created for the same reason in 1694. The Pentagon is seeking $200 billion for Iran as we speak. American debt has grown to $39 trillion. Willing was the only person ever to turn down the US government for a loan — and he did it twice. We could use a Willing now.
 
About the Guest

Richard Vague is a businessman, banker, and commentator on economics. He is the former Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His books include The Banker Who Made America (Polity, 2026), The Case for a Debt Jubilee, and The Paradox of Debt.
References:

•       The Banker Who Made America by Richard Vague (Polity, 2026) — the book under discussion.
•       Adam Gopnik, “Who Bankrolled the American Revolution?” — The New Yorker review referenced in the conversation.
•       Episode 2842: Symbolic Capitalism vs. Symbolic Democracy — yesterday’s TWTW on whether capitalism permits democracy or the reverse. Willing is the proof.
•       Philadelphia Citizen excerpt — an excerpt from the book covering Willing’s vote against independence.
About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

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Apple Podcasts

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Chapters:

“I don’t know if any rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company.” — Keith Teare

Is capitalism by permission of democracy, or is democracy by permission of capitalism? That’s the question Keith Teare and I have been circling for a while on our weekly tech roundup, and this week it triggered a full-blown discussion of our 21st century economic and political fate.
Earlier this week, Vinod Khosla — one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists — posted on X that “capitalism is by permission of democracy.” Keith agrees. I’m not so sure. My sense is that as AI start-ups approach valuations that rival the GDP of nation states, the old equation inverts. Governments no longer permit capitalism. Capitalism permits government. The Sam Altmans and Elon Musks of the future, running 10 or $15 trillion dollar startups, won’t lobby politicians. They’ll replace them. Dario Amodei’s confrontation with the US government, then, is a sneak preview of the future. Indeed, as what Om Malik calls a “symbolic capitalist”, Amodei is a good example of the type of engaged capitalist who will usurp traditional politicians. That’s the good news. The bad news is that other examples of symbolic capitalists include Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Keith Says OpenAI Will Be Worth $10 Trillion in Five Years: I told him I’d take him to dinner if he’s right. He said I’d have to do more than that. His logic: NVIDIA promises $1 trillion in new revenue by the end of next year, Anthropic did $5 billion in new revenue in a single month, and the three expected IPOs — Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX — would together raise more money than the entire IPO market of the last decade. The Netscape moment, if it comes, won’t be a moment. It’ll be an earthquake.
•       Fundrise Is the Canary in the Coal Mine: A fund holding private shares in Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Databricks, and Anduril went public this week at $34 and closed above $100. Retail investors paying three times net asset value for companies that aren’t even public yet. Keith says that’s not irrational — it’s the market pricing the future. I’m less sure. History is littered with futures the market got catastrophically wrong.
•       Om Malik Reframes the Entire Debate: His essay on “neo-symbolic capitalism” argues that value in the 21st century derives from symbols, narratives, and reputation rather than products. In that framing, Amodei’s fight with the government isn’t a miscalculation — it’s brand-building. Musk is the master of it. Altman tries to wear every hat simultaneously. Peter Thiel is in Rome talking about the Antichrist. And the billionaires who signed the Giving Pledge now want out.
•       Keith and I Disagree on What $10 Trillion Means: Keith says the government retains power regardless of corporate size. Being big doesn’t give you political power unless governments are corrupt. I think that’s naïve. If AI companies approach valuations that rival the GDP of nation states, the old equation inverts. Government doesn’t permit capitalism. Capitalism permits government. The Amodeis and Musks of the future won’t lobby politicians. They’ll replace them.
•       Contrarianism Is at the Very Core of Innovation: The one thing Keith and I agree on this week. Every billionaire is irrational. Musk is on the spectrum. Thiel believes in the Antichrist. Amodei thinks he can fight the US government and win. Keith concedes: no rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company. The question is whether that irrationality is a feature of capitalism or a threat to democracy. We disagree on the answer.
 
About the Guest

Keith Teare is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly newsletter on the tech economy. He is co-founder of SignalRank and a regular Saturday guest on Keen On America.
References:

•       That Was The Week — Keith’s editorial on public markets and price outcomes.
•       Om Malik on neo-symbolic capitalism — the essay that reframes the Amodei debate.
•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — last week’s TWTW, where the Amodei debate began.
•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — Charles Steel on the curious mind of Elon Musk, referenced in the conversation.
•       Fundrise (VCX) — the IPO that triggered this week’s discussion, trading at 300% above NAV.
About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction: AI and unreason define the world

(01:49) - Markets as prediction machines: NVIDIA’s $1 trillion promise

(04:42) - The three IPOs that would dwarf a decade of IPOs

(05:50) - Fundrise (VCX): retail investors paying 300% premium

(09:23) - Keith’s prediction: OpenAI at $10 trillion in five years

(11:44) - The Anthropic debate continues: tactics vs. morals

(14:22) - Silicon Valley’s behind-the-scenes support for Amodei

(16:42) - What happens when an AI company rivals a nation’s GDP?

(23:05) - Om Malik on neo-symbolic capitalism

(28:10) - Musk as the master of symbolic capitalism

(30:08) - Bezos, Project Prometheus, and the Prometheuses of AI

(32:07) - Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and the Giving Pledge collapse

(35:27) - Vinod Khosla: capitalism by permission of democracy?

(38:23) - Or democracy by permission of capitalism?

“We do not exist without nature — unless Silicon Valley figures something out in their bunkers.” — Natalie Kyriacou

Forget the Middle East for a moment. Or rather, don’t — because today’s petroleum war is an environmental catastrophe, perhaps even an ecocide. Militaries are the largest source of emissions on the planet. Trump uses Iran’s oil fields as a bargaining chip while assassinating its leaders, as if the price of petroleum is more important than human life (which it clearly is to him). Natalie Kyriacou, an Australian environmentalist and author of Nature’s Last Dance, isn’t surprised. Trump, she says, is the symptom rather than the disease. His rotten system of prioritising oil over human lives has been ruining the planet now for over a century. He’s just less polite about it.
Nature’s Last Dance is made up of what Kyriacou calls “tales of wonder” in our age of extinction. It tells the story, for example, of a 2000 oil spill off South Africa that threatened 90,000 African penguins and triggered the largest volunteer workforce ever assembled. Zoos, NGOs, school kids on bikes, Australians knitting sweaters all conspired to save the oiled penguins. It worked. At least in terms of those 90,000 penguins.
But did it change anything structurally? Perhaps not. But she’s arguing that the impulse to show up matters, that community is the unit of change, and that falling in love with the wonder of nature is the precondition for fighting for it. She presents forgiving Australian surfers who’ve been attacked by sharks now fighting to protect them. And she imagines birdwatching as a form of quiet rebellion.
But what does the world look like if this does, indeed, turn out to be nature’s last dance? Kyriacou’s answer is a kind of natural horror movie. A Hitchcockian David Attenborough movie: more pigeons, more rats and more “bin chickens” — Australia’s ibis, a bird that thrives in urban garbage. Nature’s revenge. So if we all don’t take up birdwatching, Kyriacou warns, we will all end up in The Birds.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Trump Is a Symptom, Not the Disease: Countries have prioritised oil over lives for centuries. Trump is just more abrasive about it. The US negotiated Kyoto and didn’t join it, designed Paris around its own preferences, then pulled out twice. Kyriacou argues we’ve been relying on a broken system long before Trump accelerated its collapse.
•       90,000 Oiled Penguins and the Largest Volunteer Workforce Ever Assembled: In 2000, an oil spill off South Africa threatened the largest colony of African penguins. What followed was extraordinary: zoos and NGOs from a dozen countries mobilised overnight, tens of thousands of volunteers arrived, Australians knitted sweaters. It didn’t stop oil. But it showed that the impulse to show up still exists, and that community is the unit of change.
•       AI Puts Our Destructive Relationship with the World on Steroids: Kyriacou’s sharpest point: the problem with AI isn’t water usage or compute power. It’s that AI amplifies every facet of humanity’s existing relationship with the planet. If we’re already this destructive, this divided, this extractive — AI makes all of it a million times more extreme. The same system that destroys nature destroys communities. It’s a systems failure.
•       No Country on Earth Is on Track: Not one country in the world is currently meeting its climate or nature targets. Not one. The UN has been stretched too thin, too bureaucratic, too afraid of self-criticism. World leaders set targets, shake hands, and go home to fail. Kyriacou wants to revive the UN, not destroy it — but she’s blunt about its limits.
•       The World in Grayscale: What happens if nature’s last dance is truly the last? More pigeons. More rats. More of Australia’s “bin chicken” — the ibis that thrives in urban garbage. A sanitised, diminished version of nature, and our own diminishment with it. Zuckerberg might say we can watch birds in virtual reality. Kyriacou would prefer not to. So would I.
 
About the Guest

Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award-winning Australian environmentalist, Forbes 30 Under 30, UNESCO Green Citizens Pathfinder, and founder of My Green World. Her book Nature’s Last Dance: Tales of Wonder in an Age of Extinction was a bestseller in Australia and is out now in the US and UK.
References:

•       Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou — the book under discussion, out now in the US and UK.
•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed Silicon Valley’s relationship with nature and humanity.
•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — this week’s TWTW, covering AI’s relationship to leadership and society.
About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction: it might be nature’s last dance

(01:18) - Ecocide: countries don’t count military emissions

(03:05) - Trump as symptom: oil over lives for centuries

(04:16) - Neither optimist nor pessimist — or both

(06:54) - The oiled penguins of South Africa

(09:11) - Did it change anything structurally?

(11:26) - America’s broken climate leadership

(13:37) - UNESCO and the limits of the United Nations

(16:46) - Making nature impossible to ignore

(18:46) - Solar, nuclear, and the biodiversity blind spot

(20:58) - Wisdom from Australia: nationalism for wildlife

(24:14) - Birdwatching as quiet rebellion

(26:44) - AI puts our destructive relationship on steroids

(29:48) - Systems failure: tech billionaires and ecocide

(33:48) - What if there are no birds left? The world in grayscale

“Nobody’s reality is more or less real.” — Kevin Ashton

It’s the chicken and egg question. What came first: stories or language? For Kevin Ashton, the answer is stories. In his new book, The Story of Stories, Ashton argues that rather than inventing stories with language, we invented language to tell stories. Stories, for Ashton, predate language. They are what makes us human.
300,000 years ago, Ashton argues, humans sat around night fires needing to talk about things they couldn’t point to — the past, the future, the Gods. So they created language. Grunts got grammatical. And the grammar had a structure that hasn’t changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world’s 7,000 languages is built upon the need to tell stories. Every conversation you’ve ever had contains a narrative. Even this one.
I asked Ashton whether this makes reality itself just another narrative and him just another postmodernist. Our brains construct reality, he explained, in the same way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop. Our dog sees a different rainbow to the one we see. But, in contrast with our dog, we tell stories about that rainbow.
Ashton is a technologist who first coined the term “Internet of Things”. But on AI, he is surprisingly critical. A large language model is a more complicated toaster, he says. It can produce language that fits the format of a story — character, chronology, consequence — because it’s digested millions of words. But it can’t produce meaning. We humans, in contrast, are made meaningful by our stories. That’s why you are reading this now.
 
Five Takeaways

•       We Invented Language to Tell Stories, Not the Other Way Around: Ashton’s central claim is that storytelling preceded and caused the evolution of language. A million years ago, humans around night fires needed to talk about things they couldn’t point to — the past, the future, the gods. Grunts became grammar. The structure hasn’t changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world’s 7,000 languages is built on this need to narrate.
•       Nobody’s Reality Is Real: Our brains construct reality the way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop — useful, not true. Your dog sees a different rainbow than you do. Whose is real? Both. Neither. Ashton isn’t a postmodernist — he’s arguing that our story-shaped brains are the lens through which all experience is filtered, and there is no stepping outside it.
•       The Bible Hitched a Ride on Writing: The world’s great religions spread because they were among the first stories to exploit writing as a distribution technology. The Bible is just a word for book. Scripture is a word for writing. Where those texts travelled, those religions still dominate today. Homer is an oral tradition frozen by the alphabet. The oldest surviving story in the world is Noah’s flood, and it comes from Southern Iraq, not Greece.
•       A Large Language Model Is a More Complicated Toaster: Ashton is brutally dismissive of AI. A machine can produce something that fits the format of a story because it’s digested millions of them. But it can’t produce meaning. Machines are inherently meaningless. We anthropomorphise them because that’s what our story-shaped brains do — we named our cars, now we’re naming our chatbots.
•       We Humans Are Made Meaningful by Our Stories: Ashton’s own life is the proof: a Birmingham DJ who learned Norwegian in nightclubs, fell for Ibsen, marketed lipstick for Procter & Gamble, and accidentally invented the Internet of Things because mascara kept going out of stock. No algorithm would have written that life. No machine could have lived it. That’s why you’re reading this now.
 
About the Guest

Kevin Ashton is a technologist and author who coined the term “the Internet of Things” and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. His previous book, How to Fly a Horse, was named Porchlight’s Business Book of the Year. The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art is published by Harper. He lives in Austin, Texas.
References:

•       The Story of Stories by Kevin Ashton (Harper, 2026) — the book under discussion.
•       How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton — his previous book on the secret history of invention.
•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed AI, the scientific method as secular religion, and whether machines can think.
•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, AI slop, and cognitive atrophy — a natural companion to today’s conversation.
About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction: technology tells good stories about itself

(01:46) - Language was invented to tell stories, not the other way around

(04:47) - If stories are our water, how do you get outside them?

(06:40) - Character, chronology, consequence: the Lego brick of narrative

(07:07) - Hyper-realism and the graphic user interface of reality

(09:05) - Nobody’s reality is real — your dog sees a different rainbow

(12:35) - Darwin, Einstein, and science as storytelling

(14:32) - True stories, true crime, and the O.J. Simpson test

(17:15) - The Bible as storytelling technology

(21:49) - Socrates vs. Plato: speech, writing, and the Reformation

(23:49) - The Internet of Stories: from campfire to smartphone

(25:05) - Were the Greeks really better storytellers? No.

(28:49) - Favourite storytellers: Pynchon, McCarthy, Dead Space

(30...

“I don’t like the idea of losing out to a machine because I feel like I’m losing a part of myself in the process.” — Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion

Most of us can’t remember our spouse’s phone number. We barely know our own. We haven’t read a physical map in years. Some of us don’t even know what a map is. Such is the impoverishment of mental life in our digital age.
Nelson Dellis, unlike most of us, is a rich man — at least mentally. He can memorise a shuffled deck of 52 cards in under a minute. He stores every stranger’s phone number in his head for 24 hours before putting it in his phone — on principle. He’s a six-time USA Memory Champion, a computer science professor at Skidmore, and the author of a new book, Everyday Genius, which suggests we can all be a lot smarter than our smart phones.
Dellis got into memory after watching his grandmother get lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s. And as a computer science professor, he’s equally terrified by what he now sees in the classroom. His students can’t craft an email without ChatGPT. They can’t focus. They can’t solve a problem without asking a machine. He warns that we’re outsourcing our cognitive agency to devices and mislabelling it as human productivity.
For Dellis, it’s the same mental atrophy that destroyed his grandmother. AI-generated mnemonics, he warns, feel “dead inside.” Our brains, like our language, are degenerating into slop. Thus the value of his hacks to restore our focus and boost our memories.
 
Five Takeaways

•       I Can’t Remember My Wife’s Phone Number: Neither can you. Neither can anyone under 50. We’ve outsourced our memories to devices and the consequences are only beginning to show. Nelson Dellis memorises every new phone number for 24 hours before putting it in his phone. Not because he needs to — because his brain needs him to.
•       His Grandmother Disappeared into Alzheimer’s and It Changed His Life: Dellis watched the woman who raised him become a shell of herself — unable to recognise her own grandson. He went down a rabbit hole into memory science, discovered a former champion’s audiobook, tried the techniques, and was hooked. He won his first US Memory Championship within two years. He’s won six.
•       If Everyone’s a Genius, Nobody Is: I pushed back on the book’s premise. Dellis conceded the point but held his ground: the techniques are learnable, the results are real, and the distinction between “genius” and “trained” matters less than the distinction between a brain that’s exercised and one that’s atrophying. The London cab driver study is his best evidence — hippocampi that grow with use and shrink without it.
•       AI Slop Is by Definition Forgettable: Dellis teaches computer science, so he’s no Luddite. But AI-generated mnemonics, he says, feel “dead inside.” The vivid, absurd, grotesque images that make memory techniques work are products of individual human imagination. A machine can’t generate weirdness. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His students can’t write an email without ChatGPT. That should terrify us more than it does.
•       Eat Your Blueberries: Four pillars of brain health: mental exercise, physical fitness, diet, and — the one that surprises people — social interaction. Dellis trains a 90-year-old and a five-year-old using the same techniques. Both can do things their peers cannot. The brain doesn’t expire at 70. But it does atrophy if you let your iPhone do the thinking.
 
About the Guest

Nelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2021, 2024), certified mountaineer and Everest summiteer, and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Skidmore College. His new book is Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. He has taught memory techniques to audiences ranging from five-year-olds to nonagenarians.
References:

•       Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis — the book under discussion, currently the number one new release in memory improvement on Amazon.
•       Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer — the bestselling account of competitive memory that Dellis discusses and Foer, a friend of his, promoted at the same event where Dellis won his first title.
•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — this week’s TWTW, where Keith Teare covered AI disruption from the tech side.
•       USA Memory Championship — the annual competition Dellis has won six times.
About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction: we've never had a memory champion

(01:23) - Is everyone a genius? The soccer medal problem

(03:25) - Controlling the thing inside our skull

(05:07) - The brain as the most complicated object in the universe

(06:40) - Grandmother’s Alzheimer’s: the origin story

(08:26) - Can brain training delay Alzheimer’s?

(11:53) - Mental longevity vs. the iPhone warranty

(13:46) - Inside the USA Memory Championship

(15:52) - Numbers, cards, names, poems: the events

(18:13) - Joshua Foer and Moonwalking with Einstein

(21:28) - Social genius: loneliness as cognitive decline

(24:43) - Blueberries, omega-3s, and pre-competition doping

(27:24) - Freaks or trained humans?

(31:01) - Your iPhone is atrophying your brain

(37:51) - AI slop: why machines can’t make memories

(39:23) - Hack: how to remember any name you hear