Podcasts about with london

Just as Scrooge wanders London's streets on a cold Christmas night, Dan Snow follows the ghosts of Charles Dickens' past to discover the city that inspired his greatest works. With London-born tour guide David Charnick, they slip down hidden alleyways to find the old debtor's prison that the Dickens family once called home; a place that haunted a young Charles for the rest of his life. They find the old counting houses and graveyards that inspired the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge and the locations that appear in A Christmas Carol. With David's masterful guidance and atmospheric readings, this immersive episode takes you to the fireside of a London coaching inn as the sun sets outside on a late December afternoon.A warning: this episode contains references to historical suicides.Dickens' extracts are read by Robyn Wilson.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.

Audible's bold new addition to the Sherlock Holmes universe, Moriarty: The Devils Game, dares to ask: What if Holmes' most villainous nemesis was actually an innocent man?Featuring Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings, Lost) in a riveting lead performance, Moriarty turns one of literature's most famous rivalries on its head, recasting Professor James Moriarty as a desperate fugitive framed for murder–and hunted by dark forces who will stop at nothing to exploit his brilliance.Moriarty finds the professor on the heels of an earth-shattering mathematical breakthrough–a formula so powerful, it can predict the future–and at the scene of a gruesome murder he must solve to prove his innocence. With London's sprawling underworld as their battleground, Moriarty and Holmes match their peerless intellects to gain the ever-shifting upper hand. But as their duel escalates, so does the deadly cost of pursuing the truth. “What will it take to get your justice?” Dr. Watson asks an utterly ensnared Moriarty, “And if do you get it… what will you become?”Vividly brought to life by a sensational cast and meticulously crafted sound design, Moriarty is a heart-pounding series filled with biting wit and shocking twists at every turn.Listen closely - and assume nothing. The game is afoot.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Science and the arts have much to say to one another. This episode is a conversation between scientists and artists, between scientists who foster the arts through fellowships and residencies and artists active in science and people who live in both worlds: science and the arts. All this makes for interesting and sometimes challenging groups of identities. With: London-based artist Charlotte Jarvis, Designer, now medical student Mika Futz, Jean Mary Zarate, editor with Nature Neuroscience, musician and actor, Catherine Musselman and John Rinn, genetics researchers at University of Colorado, proteomics researcher Albert Heck. (Art: J. Jackson, Music: David Gives, Views from Palermo licensed from artlist.io) 

In This Episode This special episode of Breaking Banks begins with a mashup interview with the new Lord Mayor of London, Nicholas Lyons, Brett King and Emerge Everywhere host Jennifer Tescher. The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the City of London and the leader of the City of London Corporation, a municipal governing body covering the historic center of London and the location of much of the United Kingdom's financial sector. As ambassador for the UK's Financial & Professional Services, and accorded precedence over all individuals except the sovereign, he retains traditional powers, rights and privileges, and some ceremonial duties. Look for the Lord Mayor of London at the coronation of King Charles III. As a top global financial center, The Lord Mayor of London wants to help companies grow, scale, and stay in London and the UK.  With London's fintech success, he's focusing on tech innovation across the board -- green tech, biotech, life sciences, renewable tech -- encouraging start-ups and looking to create more investment from the UK system as well as access to funding. He's thinking 30 years ahead, framing options for the growth economy, and looking at the painful divide in society and widening gap in numeracy, financial literacy and financial inclusion --  initiatives he's working hard to address in his mayoralty. Part of the answer lies in fintech, with London all about building bridges and partnerships. Then Brett continues the investment theme with a conversation with Alex Sion, Managing Director, Motive Partners, mentor of hundreds of start-ups and lecturer on innovation, fintech and digital strategy having co-founded a neobank himself and having led innovation efforts at Citi and JP Morgan Chase. They discuss current challenges for banking and what has happened in the startup world particularly in fintech where Silicon Valley Bank was a big supporter and validator, and what the next chapter looks like. It's all things fintech from a VC perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGptCgG_dWs

On this episode, I talk to Ava Glass about her relentlessly suspenseful spy thriller Alias Emma.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsCheck out the book hereAlias Emma SynopsisNothing about Emma Makepeace is real. Not even her name.A newly minted secret agent, Emma's barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. Eager to serve her country and prove her worth, she dives in headfirst.Emma must covertly travel across one of the world's most watched cities to bring the reluctant—and handsome—son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don't find him first. With London's famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city's streets, alleys, and gutters.Buses, subways, cars, and trains are out of the question. Traveling on foot, and operating without phones or bank cards that could reveal their location or identity, they have twelve hours to make it to safety. This will take all of Emma's skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when Emma's handler goes dark, there's no one left to trust. And just one wrong move will get them both killed.

Ahead of our big launch for Season 2 In December, we're going to celebrate the season of art. With London's Frieze, The Paris Art Fair our conversations with Ed Ruscha, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Jonas Wood, and as she's so magnificent once again our close friend Tracey Emin. At The River Cafe, our own art book The 'River Cafe Look Book' with recipes from The River Cafe Kitchen is out now. Food and art! Art and food! Artist and chefs let's begin! For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On Ruthie's Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.  Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe's open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was my great pleasure to speak once again to Tyler Cowen. His most recent book is Talent, How to Find Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Across the World.We discuss:how sex is more pessimistic than he is,why he expects society to collapse permanently,why humility, stimulants, intelligence, & stimulants are overrated,how he identifies talent, deceit, & ambition,& much much much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.More really cool guests coming up, subscribe to find out about future episodes!You may also enjoy my interviews of Bryan Caplan (about mental illness, discrimination, and poverty), David Deutsch (about AI and the problems with America's constitution), and Steve Hsu (about intelligence and embryo selection).If you end up enjoying this episode, I would be super grateful if you shared it. Post it on Twitter, send it to your friends & group-chats, and throw it up on any relevant subreddits & forums you follow. Can't exaggerate how much it helps a small podcast like mine.A huge thanks to Graham Bessellieu for editing this podcast and Mia Aiyana for producing its transcript.Timestamps(0:00) -Did Caplan Change On Education?(1:17) - Travel vs. History(3:10) - Do Institutions Become Left Wing Over Time?(6:02) - What Does Talent Correlate With?(13:00) - Humility, Mental Illness, Caffeine, and Suits(19:20) - How does Education affect Talent?(24:34) - Scouting Talent(33:39) - Money, Deceit, and Emergent Ventures(37:16) - Building Writing Stamina(39:41) - When Does Intelligence Start to Matter?(43:51) - Spotting Talent (Counter)signals(53:57) - Will Reading Cowen's Book Help You Win Emergent Ventures?(1:04:18) - Existential risks and the Longterm(1:12:45) - Cultivating Young Talent(1:16:05) - The Lifespans of Public Intellectuals(1:19:42) - Risk Aversion in Academia(1:26:20) - Is Stagnation Inevitable?(1:31:33) - What are Podcasts for?TranscriptDid Caplan Change On Education?Tyler Cowen   Ask Bryan about early and late Caplan. In which ways are they not consistent? That's a kind of friendly jab.Dwarkesh Patel   Okay, interesting. Tyler Cowen   Garrett Jones has tweeted about this in the past. In The Myth of the Rational Voter, education is so wonderful. It no longer seems to be true, but it was true from the data Bryan took from. Bryan doesn't think education really teaches you much. Dwarkesh Patel So then why is it making you want a free market?Tyler Cowen  It once did, even though it doesn't now, and if it doesn't now, it may teach them bad things. But it's teaching them something.Dwarkesh Patel   I have asked him this. He thinks that education doesn't teach them anything; therefore, that woke-ism can't be a result of colleges. I asked him, “okay, at some point, these were ideas in colleges, but now they're in the broader world. What do you think happened? Why did it transition together?” I don't think he had a good answer to that.Tyler Cowen   Yeah, you can put this in the podcast if you want. I like the free podcast talk often better than the podcast. [laughs]Dwarkesh Patel   Okay. Well yeah, we can just start rolling. Today, it is my great pleasure to speak to Tyler Cowen about his new book, “Talent, How to Find Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Across the World.” Tyler, welcome (once again) to The Lunar Society. Tyler Cowen   Happy to be here, thank you!Travel vs. HistoryDwarkesh Patel 1:51  Okay, excellent. I'll get into talent in just a second, but I've got a few questions for you first. So in terms of novelty and wonder, do you think travelling to the past would be a fundamentally different experience from travelling to different countries today? Or is it kind of in the same category?Tyler Cowen   You need to be protected against disease and have some access to the languages, and obviously, your smartphone is not going to work, right? So if you adjust for those differences, I think it would be a lot like travelling today except there'd be bigger surprises because no one else has gone to the past. Older people were there in a sense, but if you go back to ancient Athens, or the peak of the Roman Empire, you'd be the first traveller. Dwarkesh Patel   So do you think the experience of reading a history book is somewhat substitutable for actually travelling to a place? Tyler Cowen   Not at all! I think we understand the past very very poorly. If you've travelled appropriately in contemporary times, it should make you more skeptical about history because you'll realize how little you can learn about the current places just by reading about them. So it's like Travel versus History, and the historians lose.Dwarkesh Patel   Oh, interesting. So I'm curious, how does travelling a lot change your perspective when you read a work of history? In what ways does it do so? Are you skeptical of it to an extent that you weren't before, and what do you think historians are probably getting wrong? Tyler Cowen   It may not be a concrete way, but first you ask: was the person there? If it's a biography, did the author personally know the subject of the biography? That becomes an extremely important question. I was just in India for the sixth time, I hardly pretend to understand India, whatever that possibly might mean, but before I went at all, I'd read a few hundred books about India, and it's not like I got nothing out of them, but in some sense, I knew nothing about India. Now that I've visited, the other things I read make more sense, including the history.Do Institutions Become Left Wing Over Time?Dwarkesh Patel   Okay, interesting. So you've asked this question to many of your guests, and I don't think any of them have had a good answer. So let me just ask you: what do you think is the explanation behind Conquest's Second Law? Why does any institution that is not explicitly right-wing become left-wing over time?Tyler Cowen   Well, first of all, I'm not sure that Conquest's Second Law is true. So you have something like the World Bank which was sort of centrist state-ist in the 1960s, and by the 1990s became fairly neoliberal. Now, about what's left-wing/right-wing, it's global, it's complicated, but it's not a simple case of Conquest's Second Law holding. I do think that for a big part of the latter post-war era, some version of Conquest's Law does mostly hold for the United States. But once you see that it's not universal, you're just asking: well, why have parts? Why has the American intelligentsia shifted to the left? So that there's political science literature on educational polarization? [laughs] I wouldn't say it's a settled question, but it's not a huge mystery like “how Republicans act wackier than Democrats are” for example. The issues realign in particular ways. I believe that's why Conquest's Law locally is mostly holding.Dwarkesh Patel   Oh, interesting. So you don't think there's anything special about the intellectual life that tends to make people left-wing, and this issue is particular to our current moment?Tyler Cowen    I think by choosing the words “left-wing” you're begging the question. There's a lot of historical areas where what is left-wing is not even well defined, so in that sense, Conquests Law can't even hold there. I once had a debate with Marc Andreessen about this–– I think Mark tends to see things that are left-wing/right-wing as somewhat universal historical categories, and I very much do not. In medieval times, what's left wing and what's right wing? Even in 17th century England, there were particular groups who on particular issues were very left-wing or right-wing. It seems to me to be very unsatisfying, and there's a lot of fluidity in how these axes play out over real issues.Dwarkesh Patel   Interesting. So maybe then it's what is considered “left” at the time that tends to be the thing that ends up winning. At least, that's how it looks like looking back on it. That's how we categorize things. Something insightful I heard is that “if the left keeps winning, then just redefine what the left is.” So if you think of prohibition at the time, it was a left-wing cause, but now, the opposite of prohibition is left-wing because we just changed what the left is.Tyler Cowen    Exactly. Take the French Revolution: they're the historical equivalent of nonprofits versus 1830s restoration. Was everything moving to the left, between Robespierre and 1830? I don't pretend to know, but it just sure doesn't seem that way. So again, there seem to be a lot of cases where Conquest's Law is not so economical.Dwarkesh Patel   Napoleon is a great example of this where we're not sure whether he's the most left-wing figure in history or the most right-wing figure in history.Tyler Cowen 6:00Maybe he's both somehow.What Does Talent Correlate With?Dwarkesh Patel How much of talent or the lack thereof is a moral judgment for you? Just to give some context, when I think that somebody is not that intelligent, for me, that doesn't seem like a moral judgment. That just seems like a lottery. When I say that somebody's not hard working, that seems like more of a moral judgment. So on that spectrum, where would you say talent lies?Tyler Cowen   I don't know. My default is that most people aren't that ambitious. I'm fine with that. It actually creates some opportunities for the ambitious–– there might be an optimal degree of ambition. Well, short of everyone being sort of maximally ambitious. So I don't go around pissed off at unambitious people, judging them in some moralizing way. I think a lot of me is on autopilot when it comes to morally judging people from a distance. I don't wake up in the morning and get pissed off at someone in the Middle East doing whatever, even though I might think it was wrong.Dwarkesh Patel   So when you read the biographies of great people, often you see there's a bit of an emotional neglect and abuse when they're kids. Why do you think this is such a common trope?Tyler Cowen   I would love to see the data, but I'm not convinced that it's more common than with other people. Famous people, especially those who have biographies, on average are from earlier times, and in earlier times, children were treated worse. So it could be correlated without being causal. Now, maybe there's this notion that you need to have something to prove. Maybe you only feel you need to prove something if you're Napoleon and you're short, and you weren't always treated well. That's possible and I don't rule it out. But you look at Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg without pretending to know what their childhoods were like.  It sure sounds like they were upper middle class kids treated very well, at least from a distance. For example, the Collison's had great parents and they did well.Dwarkesh Patel   It could just be that the examples involving emotional neglect stuck out in my mind in particular.  Tyler Cowen   Yeah. So I'd really like to see the data. I think it's an important and very good question. It seems to me, maybe one could investigate it, but I've never seen an actual result.Dwarkesh Patel   Is there something you've learned about talent spotting through writing the book that you wish wasn't so? Maybe you found it disturbing, or you found it disappointing in some way. Is there something that is a correlate for talent that you wish wasn't? Tyler Cowen   I don't know. Again, I think I'm relatively accepting of a lot of these realities, but the thing that disappoints me a bit is how geographically clustered talent is. I don't mean where it was born, and I don't mean ethnically. I just mean where it ends up. So if you get an application, say from rural Italy where maybe living standards are perfectly fine–– there's good weather, there's olive oil, there's pasta. But the application just probably not that good. Certainly, Italians have had enough amazing achievements over the millennia, but right now, the people there who are actually up to something are going to move to London or New York or somewhere. So I find that a bit depressing. It's not really about the people. Dwarkesh Patel   When you do find a cluster of talent, to what extent can that be explained by a cyclical view of what's happening in the region? In the sense of the “hard times create strong men” theory? I mean at some point, Italy had a Renaissance, so maybe things got complacent over time.Tyler Cowen   Again, maybe that's true for Italy, but most of the talent clusters have been such for a long time, like London and New York. It's not cyclical. They've just had a ton of talent for a very long time. They still do, and later on, they still will. Maybe not literally forever, but it seems like an enduring effect.Dwarkesh Patel   But what if they leave? For example, the Central European Jews couldn't stay where they were anymore and had to leave.Tyler Cowen   Obviously, I think war can destroy almost anything. So German scientific talent took a big whack, German cultural talent too. I mean, Hungarian Jews and mathematics-–I don't know big of a trend it still is, but it's certainly nothing close to what it once was.Dwarkesh Patel   Okay. I was worried that if you realize that some particular region has a lot of talent right now, then that might be a one-time gain. You realize that India, Toronto or Nigeria or something have a lot of talent, but the culture doesn't persist in some sort of extended way. Tyler Cowen   That might be true for where talent comes from, but where it goes just seems to show more persistence. People will almost certainly be going to London for centuries. Is London producing a lot of talent? That's less clear. That may be much more cyclical. In the 17th century, London was amazing, right? London today? I would say I don't know. But it's not obvious that it's coming close to its previous glories. So the current status of India I think, will be temporary, but temporary for a long time. It's just a very big place. It has a lot of centres and there are things it has going for it like not taking prosperity for granted. But it will have all of these for quite a while–– India's still pretty poor.Dwarkesh Patel   What do you think is the difference between actual places where clusters of talent congregate and places where that are just a source of that talent? What makes a place a sink rather than a source of talent?Tyler Cowen   I think finding a place where people end up going is more or less obvious. You need money, you need a big city, you need some kind of common trade or linguistic connection. So New York and London are what they are for obvious reasons, right? Path dependence history, the story of making it in the Big Apple and so on. But origins and where people come from are areas that I think theory is very bad at understanding. Why did the Renaissance blossom in Florence and Venice, and not in Milan? If you're going back earlier, it wasn't obvious that it would be those places. I've done a lot of reading to try to figure this out, but I find that I've gotten remarkably not far on the question.Dwarkesh Patel   The particular examples you mentioned today–– like New York, San Francisco, London, these places today are kind of high stakes, because if you want to move there, it's expensive. Do you think that this is because they've been so talented despite this fact, or because you need some sort of exclusion in order to be a haven of talent?Tyler Cowen   Well, I think this is a problem for San Francisco. It may be a more temporary cluster than it ought to have been. Since it's a pretty recent cluster, it can't count on the same kind of historical path dependence that New York and Manhattan have. But a lot of New York still is not that expensive. Look at the people who work and live there! They're not all rich, to say the least. And that is an important part of why New York is still New York. With London, it's much harder, but it seems to me that London is a sink for somewhat established talent––which is fine, right? However, in that regard, it's much inferior to New York.Humility, Mental Illness, Caffeine, and Suits Dwarkesh Patel   Okay, I want to play a game of overrated and underrated with you, but we're going to do it with certain traits or certain kinds of personalities that might come in when you're interviewing people.Tyler Cowen   Okay, it's probably all going to be indeterminate, but go on.Dwarkesh Patel   Right. So somebody comes in, and they're very humble.Tyler Cowen   Immediately I'm suspicious. I figure most people who are going to make something of themselves are arrogant. If they're willing to show it, there's a certain bravery or openness in that. I don't rule out the humble person doing great. A lot of people who do great are humble, but I just get a wee bit like, “what's up with you? You're not really humble, are you?”Dwarkesh Patel   Maybe humility is a way of avoiding confrontation–– if you don't have the competence to actually show that you can be great. Tyler Cowen   It might be efficient for them to avoid confrontation, but I just start thinking that I don't know the real story. When I see a bit of arrogance, I'm less likely to think that it may, in a way, be feigned. But the feigning of arrogance in itself is a kind of arrogance. So in that sense, I'm still getting the genuine thing. Dwarkesh Patel   So what is the difference? Let's say a 15-year-old who is kind of arrogant versus a 50-year-old who is kind of arrogant, and the latter has accomplishments already while the first one doesn't. Is there a difference in how you perceive humility or the lack thereof?Tyler Cowen   Oh, sure. With the 50-year-old, you want to see what they have done, and you're much more likely to think the 50 year old should feign humility than the 15-year-old. Because that's the high-status thing to do–– it's to feign humility. If they can't do that, you figure, “Here's one thing they're bad at. What else are they bad at?” Whereas with the 15-year-old, maybe they have a chip on their shoulder and they can't quite hold it all in. Oh, that's great and fine. Let's see what you're gonna do.Dwarkesh Patel   How arrogant can you be? There are many 15 year olds who are really good at math, and they have ambitions like “I want to solve P ≠ NP” or “I want to build an AGI” or something. Is there some level where you just clearly don't understand what's going on since you think you can do something like that? Or is arrogance always a plus?Tyler Cowen   I haven't seen that level of arrogance yet. If a 15-year-old said to me, “in three years, I'm going to invent a perpetual motion machine,”  I would think “No, now you're just crazy.” But no one's ever said that to me. There's this famous Mark Zuckerberg story where he went into the VC meeting at Sequoia wearing his pajamas and he told Sequoia not to give him money. He was 18 at a minimum, that's pretty arrogant behavior and we should be fine with that. We know how the story ends. So it's really hard to be too arrogant. But once you say this, because of the second order effect, you start thinking: “Well, are they just being arrogant as an act?” And then in the “act sense”, yes, they can be too arrogant.Dwarkesh Patel   Isn't the backstory there that Mark was friends with Sean Parker and then Sean Parker had beef with Sequoia…Tyler Cowen   There's something like that. I wouldn't want to say off the top of my head exactly what, but there is a backstory.Dwarkesh Patel   Okay. Somebody comes in professionally dressed when they don't need to. They've got a crisp clean shirt. They've got a nice wash. Tyler Cowen How old are they?Dwarkesh Patel 20.Tyler Cowen They're too conformist. Again, with some jobs, conformity is great, but I get a little suspicious, at least for what I'm looking for. Though I wouldn't rule them out for a lot of things–– it's a plus, right?Dwarkesh Patel   Is there a point though, where you're in some way being conformist by dressing up in a polo shirt? Like if you're in San Francisco right now, it seems like the conformist thing is not to wear a suit to an interview if you're trying to be a software engineer.Tyler Cowen   Yeah, there might be situations where it's so weird, so over the top, so conformist, that it's actually totally non-conformist. Like “I don't know anyone who's a conformist like you are!” Maybe it's not being a conformist, or just being some kind of nut, that makes you interested again.Dwarkesh Patel   An overall sense that you get from the person that they're really content, almost like Buddha came in for an interview. A sense of wellbeing.Tyler Cowen   It's gonna depend on context, I don't think I'd hold it against someone, but I wouldn't take it at face value. You figure they're antsy in some way, you hope. You'll see it with more time, I would just think.Dwarkesh Patel   Somebody who uses a lot of nootropics. They're constantly using caffeine, but maybe on the side (multiple times a week), they're also using Adderall, Modafinil, and other kinds of nootropics.Tyler Cowen   I don't personally like it, but I've never seen evidence that it's negatively correlated with success, so I would try to put it out of my mind. I sort of personally get a queasy feeling like “Do you really know what you're doing. Is all this stuff good for you? Why do you need this?” That's my actual reaction, but again, at the intellectual level, it does seem to work for some people, or at least not screw them up too much.Dwarkesh Patel   You don't drink caffeine, correct? Tyler Cowen  Zero.Dwarkesh Patel Why?Tyler Cowen I don't like it. It might be bad for you. Dwarkesh Patel Oh really, you think so? Tyler Cowen People get addicted to it.Dwarkesh Patel    You're not worried it might make you less productive over the long term? It's more about you just don't want to be addicted to something?Tyler Cowen   Well, since I don't know it well, I'm not sure what my worries are. But the status quo regime seems to work. I observe a lot of people who end up addicted to coffee, coke, soda, stuff we know is bad for you. So I think: “What's the problem I need to solve? Why do it?”Dwarkesh Patel   What if they have a history of mental illness like depression or anxiety? Not that mental illnesses are good, but at the current margins, do you think that maybe they're punished too heavily? Or maybe that people don't take them seriously enough that they actually have a bigger signal than the people are considering?Tyler Cowen   I don't know. I mean, both could be true, right? So there's definitely positive correlations between that stuff and artistic creativity. Whether or not it's causal is harder to say, but it correlates. So you certainly should take the person seriously. But would they be the best Starbucks cashier? I don't know.How does Education Affect Talent?Dwarkesh Patel   Yeah. In another podcast, you've pointed out that some of the most talented people you see who are neglected are 15 to 17 year olds. How does this impact how you think? Let's say you were in charge of a high school, you're the principal of a high school, and you know that there's 2000 students there. A few of them have to be geniuses, right? How is the high school run by Tyler Cowen? Especially for the very smartest people there? Tyler Cowen   Less homework! I would work harder to hire better teachers, pay them more, and fire the bad ones if I'm allowed to do that. Those are no-brainers, but mainly less homework and I'd have more people come in who are potential role models. Someone like me! I was invited once to Flint Hill High School in Oakton, it's right nearby. I went in, I wasn't paid. I just figured “I'll do this.” It seems to me a lot of high schools don't even try. They could get a bunch of people to come in for free to just say “I'm an economist, here's what being an economist is like” for 45 minutes. Is that so much worse than the BS the teacher has to spew? Of course not. So I would just do more things like that.Dwarkesh Patel   I want to understand the difference between these three options. The first is: somebody like you actually gives an in-person lecture saying “this is what life is like”. The second is zoom, you could use zoom to do that. The third is that it's not live in any way whatsoever. You're just kind of like maybe showing a video of the person. Tyler Cowen   I'm a big believer in vividness. So Zoom is better than nothing. A lot of people are at a distance, but I think you'll get more and better responses by inviting local people to do it live. And there's plenty of local people, where most of the good schools are.Dwarkesh Patel   Are you tempted to just give these really smart 15-year-olds a hall pass to the library all day and some WiFi access, and then just leave them alone? Or do you think that they need some sort of structure?Tyler Cowen   I think they need some structure, but you have to let them rebel against it and do their own thing. Zero structure strikes me as great for a few of them, but even for the super talented ones, it's not perfect. They need exposure to things, and they need some teachers as role models. So you want them to have some structure.Dwarkesh Patel   If you read old books about education, there's a strong emphasis on moral instruction. Do you think that needs to be an important part of education? Tyler Cowen   I'd like to see more data. But I suspect the best moral instruction is the teachers actually being good people. I think that works. But again, I'd like to see the data. But somehow getting up and lecturing them about the seven virtues or something. That seems to me to be a waste of time, and maybe even counterproductive.Dwarkesh Patel   Now, the way I read your book about talent, it also seems like a critique of Bryan's book, The Case Against Education.Tyler Cowen   Ofcourse it is. Bryan describes me as the guy who's always torturing him, and in a sense, he's right.Dwarkesh Patel   Well, I guess more specifically, it seems that Bryan's book relies on the argument that you need a costly signal to show that you have talent, or you have intelligence, conscientiousness, and other traits. But if you can just learn that from a 1500 word essay and a zoom call, then maybe college is not about the signal.Tyler Cowen   In that sense, I'm not sure it's a good critique of Bryan. So for most people in the middle of the distribution, I don't think you can learn what I learned from Top 5 Emergent Ventures winners through an application and a half-hour zoom call. But that said, I think the talent book shows you my old saying: context is that which is scarce. And you're always testing people for their understanding of context. Most people need a fair amount of higher education to acquire that context, even if they don't remember the detailed content of their classes. So I think Bryan overlooks how much people actually learn when they go to school.Dwarkesh Patel   How would you go about measuring the amount of context of somebody who went to college? Is there something you can point to that says, “Oh, clearly they're getting some context, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do this”?Tyler Cowen   I think if you meet enough people who didn't go to college, you'll see the difference, on average. Stressing the word average. Now there are papers measuring positive returns to higher education. I don't think they all show it's due to context, but I am persuaded by most of Brian's arguments that you don't remember the details of what you learned in class. Oh, you learn this about astronomy and Kepler's laws and opportunity costs, etc. but people can't reproduce that two or three years later. It seems pretty clear we know that. However, they do learn a lot of context and how to deal with different personality types.Dwarkesh Patel   Would you falsify this claim, though, that you are getting a lot of context? Is it just something that you had to qualitatively evaluate? What would have to be true in the world for you to conclude that the opposite is true? Tyler Cowen   Well, if you could show people remembered a lot of the facts they learned, and those facts were important for their jobs, neither of which I think is true. But in principle, they're demonstrable, then you would be much more skeptical about the context being the thing that mattered. But as it stands now, that's the residual. And it's probably what matters.Dwarkesh Patel   Right. So I thought that Bryan shared in the book that actually people don't even remember many of the basic facts that they learned in school.Tyler Cowen   Ofcourse they don't. But that's not the main thing they learn. They learn some vision of how the world works, how they fit into it, that they ought to have higher aspirations, that they can join the upper middle class, that they're supposed to have a particular kind of job. Here are the kinds of jerks you're going to meet along the way! Here's some sense of how dating markets work! Maybe you're in a fraternity, maybe you do a sport and so on. That's what you learned. Dwarkesh Patel   How did you spot Bryan?Tyler Cowen   He was in high school when I met him, and it was some kind of HS event. I think he made a point of seeking me out. And I immediately thought, “Well this guy is going to be something like, gotta keep track of this guy. Right away.”Dwarkesh Patel   Can you say more - what happened?Tyler Cowen   His level of enthusiasm, his ability to speak with respect to detail. He was just kind of bursting with everything. It was immediately evident, as it still is. Bryan has changed less than almost anyone else I know over what is now.. he could tell you how many years but it's been a whole bunch of decades.Dwarkesh Patel   Interesting. So if that's the case, then it would have been interesting to meet somebody who is like Bryan, but a 19 year old.Tyler Cowen   Yeah, and I did. I was right. Talent ScoutingDwarkesh Patel   To what extent do the best talent scouts inevitably suffer from Goodhart's Law? Has something like this happened to you where your approval gets turned into a credential? So a whole bunch of non-earnest people start applying, you get a whole bunch of adverse selection, and then it becomes hard for you to run your program.Tyler Cowen   It is not yet hard to run the program. If I needed to, I would just shut down applications. I've seen a modest uptick in bad applications, but it takes so little time to decide they're no good, or just not a good fit for us that it's not a problem. So the endorsement does get credentialized. Mostly, that's a good thing, right? Like you help the people you pick. And then you see what happens next and you keep on innovating as you need to.Dwarkesh Patel   You say in the book that the super talented are best at spotting other super talented individuals. And there aren't many of the super talented talent spotters to go around. So this sounds like you're saying that if you're not super talented, much of the book will maybe not do you a bunch of good. Results be weary should be maybe on the title. How much of talent spotting can be done by people who aren't themselves super talented?Tyler Cowen   Well, I'd want to see the context of what I wrote. But I'm well aware of the fact that in basketball, most of the greatest general managers were not great players. Someone like Jerry West, right? I'd say Pat Riley was not. So again, that's something you could study. But I don't generally think that the best talent scouts are themselves super talented.Dwarkesh Patel   Then what is the skill in particular that they have that if it's not the particular thing that they're working on?Tyler Cowen   Some intangible kind of intuition, where they feel the right thing in the people they meet. We try to teach people that intuition, the same way you might teach art or music appreciation. But it's not a science. It's not paint-by-numbers.Dwarkesh Patel   Even with all the advice in the book, and even with the stuff that isn't in the book that is just your inarticulable knowledge about how to spot talent, all your intuitions… How much of the variance in somebody's “True Potential” is just fundamentally unpredictable? If it's just like too chaotic of a thing to actually get your grips on. To what extent are we going to truly be able to spot talent?Tyler Cowen   I think it will always be an art. If you look at the success rates of VCs, it depends on what you count as the pool they're drawing from, but their overall rate of picking winners is not that impressive. And they're super high stakes. They're super smart. So I think it will mostly remain an art and not a science. People say, “Oh, genomics this, genomics that”. We'll see, but somehow I don't think that will change this.Dwarkesh Patel   You don't think getting a polygenic risk score of drive, for example, is going to be a thing that happens?Tyler Cowen   Maybe future genomics will be incredibly different from what we have now. Maybe. But it's not around the corner.Dwarkesh Patel   Yeah. Maybe the sample size is just so low and somebody is like “How are you even gonna collect that data? How are you gonna get the correlates of who the super talented people are?”Tyler Cowen   That, plus how genomic data interact with each other. You can apply machine learning and so on, but it just seems quite murky.Dwarkesh Patel   If the best people get spotted earlier, and you can tell who is a 10x engineer in a company and who is only a 1x engineer, or a 0.5x engineer, doesn't that mean that, in a way that inequality will get worse? Because now the 10x engineer knows that they're 10x, and everybody else knows that they're 10x, they're not going to be willing to cross subsidize and your other employees are going to be wanting to get paid proportionate to their skill.Tyler Cowen   Well, they might be paid more, but they'll also innovate more, right? So they'll create more benefits for people who are doing nothing. My intuition is that overall, inequality of wellbeing will go down. But you can't say that's true apriori. Inequality of income might also go up.Dwarkesh Patel   And then will the slack in the system go away for people who are not top performers? Like you can tell now, if we're getting better.Tyler Cowen   This has happened already in contemporary America. As I wrote, “Average is over.” Not due to super sophisticated talent spotting. Sometimes, it's simply the fact that in a lot of service sectors, you can measure output reasonably directly––like did you finish the computer program? Did it work? That has made it harder for people to get paid things they don't deserve.Dwarkesh Patel   I wonder if this leads to adverse selection in the areas where you can't measure how well somebody is doing. So the people who are kind of lazy and bums, they'll just go into places where output can't be measured. So these industries will just be overflowing with the people who don't want to work.Tyler Cowen   Absolutely. And then the people who are talented in the sectors, maybe they'll leave and start their own companies and earn through equity, and no one is really ever measuring their labor power. Still, what they're doing is working and they're making more from it.Dwarkesh Patel   If talent is partly heritable, then the better you get at spotting talent, over time, will the social mobility in society go down?Tyler Cowen   Depends how you measure social mobility. Is it relative to the previous generation? Most talent spotters don't know a lot about parents, like I don't know anything about your parents at all! The other aspect of spotting talent is hoping the talent you mobilize does great things for people not doing anything at all. That's the kind of automatic social mobility they get. But if you're measuring quintiles across generations, the intuition could go either way.Dwarkesh Patel   But this goes back to wondering whether this is a one time gain or not. Maybe initially they can help the people who are around them. Somebody in Brazil, they help people around them. But once you've found them, they're gonna go to those clusters you talked about, and they're gonna be helping the people with San Francisco who don't need help. So is this a one time game then?Tyler Cowen   Many people from India seem to give back to India in a very consistent way. People from Russia don't seem to do that. That may relate to the fact that Russia is in terrible shape, and India has a brighter future. So it will depend. But I certainly think there are ways of arranging things where people give back a lot.Dwarkesh Patel   Let's talk about Emergent Ventures. Sure. So I wonder: if the goal of Emergent Ventures is to raise aspirations, does that still work given the fact that you have to accept some people but reject other people? In Bayesian terms, the updates up have to equal the updates down? In some sense, you're almost transferring a vision edge from the excellent to the truly great. You see what I'm saying?Tyler Cowen   Well, you might discourage the people you turn away. But if they're really going to do something, they should take that as a challenge. And many do! Like “Oh, I was rejected by Harvard, I had to go to UChicago, but I decided, I'm going to show those b******s.” I think we talked about that a few minutes ago. So if I just crushed the spirits of those who are rejected, I don't feel too bad about that. They should probably be in some role anyway where they're just working for someone.Dwarkesh Patel   But let me ask you the converse of that which is, if you do accept somebody, are you worried that if one of the things that drives people is getting rejected, and then wanting to prove that you will reject them wrong, are you worried that by accepting somebody when they're 15, you're killing that thing? The part of them that wants to get some kind of approval?Tyler Cowen   Plenty of other people will still reject them right? Not everyone accepts them every step of the way. Maybe they're just awesome. LeBron James is basketball history and past a certain point, it just seems everyone wanted him for a bunch of decades now. I think deliberately with a lot of candidates, you shouldn't encourage them too much. I make a point of chewing out a lot of people just to light a fire under them, like “what you're doing. It's not gonna work.” So I'm all for that selectively.Dwarkesh Patel   Why do you think that so many of the people who have led Emergent Ventures are interested in Effective Altruism?Tyler Cowen   There is a moment right now for Effective Altruism, where it is the thing. Some of it is political polarization, the main parties are so stupid and offensive, those energies will go somewhere. Some of that in 1970 maybe went to libertarianism. Libertarianism has been out there for too long. It doesn't seem to address a lot of current problems, like climate change or pandemics very well. So where should the energy go? The Rationality community gets some of it and that's related to EA, as I'm sure you know. The tech startup community gets some of it. That's great! It seems to be working pretty well to me. Like I'm not an EA person. But maybe they deserve a lot of it.Dwarkesh Patel   But you don't think it's persistent. You think it comes and goes?Tyler Cowen   I think it will come and go. But I think EA will not vanish. Like libertarianism, it will continue for quite a long time.Dwarkesh Patel   Is there any movement that has attracted young people? That has been persistent over time? Or did they all fade? Tyler Cowen   Christianity. Judaism. Islam. They're pretty persistent. [laughs]Dwarkesh Patel   So to the extent that being more religious makes you more persistent, can we view the criticism of EA saying that it's kind of like a religion as a plus?Tyler Cowen   Ofcourse, yeah! I think it's somewhat like a religion. To me, that's a plus, we need more religions. I wish more of the religions we needed were just flat-out religions. But in the meantime, EA will do,Money, Deceit, and Emergent VenturesDwarkesh Patel   Are there times when somebody asks you for a grant and you view that as a negative signal? Let's say they're especially when well off: they're a former Google engineer, they wanna start a new project, and they're asking you for a grant. Do you worry that maybe they're too risk averse? Do you want them to put their own capital into it? Or do you think that maybe they were too conformist because they needed your approval before they went ahead?Tyler Cowen   Things like this have happened. And I asked people flat out, “Why do you want this grant from me?” And it is a forcing question in the sense that if their answer isn't good, I won't give it to them. Even though they might have a good level of talent, good ideas, whatever, they have to be able to answer that question in a credible way. Some can, some can't.Dwarkesh Patel   I remember that the President of the University of Chicago many years back said that if you rejected the entire class of freshmen that are coming in and accepted the next 1500 that they had to reject that year, then there'll be no difference in the quality of the admits.Tyler Cowen   I would think UChicago is the one school where that's not true. I agree that it's true for most schools.Dwarkesh Patel   Do you think that's also true of Emergent Ventures?Tyler Cowen   No. Not at all.Dwarkesh Patel   How good is a marginal reject?Tyler Cowen   Not good. It's a remarkably bimodal distribution as I perceive it, and maybe I'm wrong. But there aren't that many cases where I'm agonizing and if I'm agonizing I figure it probably should be a no.Dwarkesh Patel   I guess that makes it even tougher if you do get rejected. Because it wasn't like, “oh, you weren't a right fit for the job,” or “you almost made the cut.” It's like, “No, we're actually just assessing your potential and not some sort of fit for the job.” Not only were you just not on the edge of potential, but you were also way on the other edge of the curve.Tyler Cowen   But a lot of these rejected people and projects, I don't think they're spilling tears over it. Like you get an application. Someone's in Akron, Ohio, and they want to start a nonprofit dog shelter. They saw EV on the list of things you can apply to. They apply to a lot of things and maybe never get funding. It's like people who enter contests or something, they apply to EV. Nothing against non-profit dog shelters, but that's kind of a no, right? I genuinely don't know their response, but I don't think they walk away from the experience with some deeper model of what they should infer from the EV decision.Dwarkesh Patel   How much does the money part of Emergent Ventures matter? If you just didn't give them the money?Tyler Cowen   There's a whole bunch of proposals that really need the money for capital costs, and then it matters a lot. For a lot of them, the money per se doesn't matter.Dwarkesh Patel   Right, then. So what is the function of return for that? Do you like 10x the money, or do you add .1x the money for some of these things? Do you think they add up to seemingly different results? Tyler Cowen   I think a lot of foundations give out too many large grants and not enough small grants. I hope I'm at an optimum. But again, I don't have data to tell you. I do think about this a lot, and I think small grants are underrated.Dwarkesh Patel   Why are women often better at detecting deceit?Tyler Cowen   I would assume for biological and evolutionary reasons that there are all these men trying to deceive them, right? The cost of a pregnancy is higher for a woman than for a man on average, by quite a bit. So women will develop defense mechanisms that men maybe don't have as much.Dwarkesh Patel   One thing I heard from somebody I was brainstorming these questions with–– she just said that maybe it's because women just discuss personal matters more. And so therefore, they have a greater library.Tyler Cowen   Well, that's certainly true. But that's subordinate to my explanation, I'd say. There are definitely a lot of intermediate steps. Things women do more of that help them be insightful.Building Writing StaminaDwarkesh Patel   Why is writing skill so important to you?Tyler Cowen   Well, one thing is that I'm good at judging it. Across scales, I'm very bad at judging, so there's nothing on the EV application testing for your lacrosse skill. But look, writing is a form of thinking. And public intellectuals are one of the things I want to support. Some of the companies I admire are ones with writing cultures like Amazon or Stripe. So writing it is! I'm a good reader. So you're going to be asked to write.Dwarkesh Patel   Do you think it's a general fact that writing correlates with just general competence? Tyler Cowen   I do, but especially the areas that I'm funding. It's strongly related. Whether it's true for everything is harder to say.Dwarkesh Patel   Can stamina be increased?Tyler Cowen   Of course. It's one of the easier things to increase. I don't think you can become superhuman in your energy and stamina if you're not born that way. But I think almost everyone could increase by 30% to 50%, some notable amount. Dwarkesh Patel   Okay, that's interesting.Tyler Cowen   Put aside maybe people with disabilities or something but definitely when it comes to people in regular circumstances.Dwarkesh Patel   Okay. I think it's interesting because in the blog post from Robin Hanson about stamina, I think his point of view was that this is just something that's inherent to people.Tyler Cowen   Well, I don't think that's totally false. The people who have superhuman stamina are born that way. But there are plenty of origins. I mean, take physical stamina. You don't think people can train more and run for longer? Of course they can. It's totally proven. So it would be weird if this rule held for all these organs but not your brain. That seems quite implausible. Especially for someone like Robin, where your brain is just this other organ that you're gonna download or upload or goodness knows what with it. He's a physicalist if there ever was one.Dwarkesh Patel   Have you read Haruki Murakami's book on running?Tyler Cowen   No, I've been meaning to. I'm not sure how interesting I'll find it. I will someday. I like his stuff a lot.Dwarkesh Patel   But what I found really interesting about it was just how linked building physical stamina is for him to building up the stamina to write a lot.Tyler Cowen   Magnus Carlsen would say the same with chess. Being in reasonable physical shape is important for your mental stamina, which is another kind of simple proof that you can boost your mental stamina.When Does Intelligence Start to Matter?Dwarkesh Patel   After reading the book, I was inclined to think that intelligence matters more than I previously thought. Not less. You say in the book that intelligence has convex returns and that it matters especially for areas like inventors. Then you also say that if you look at some of the most important things in society, something like what Larry and Sergey did, they're basically inventors, right? So in many of the most important things in society, intelligence matters more because of the increasing returns. It seems like with Emergent Ventures, you're trying to pick the people who are at the tail. You're not looking for a barista at Starbucks. So it seems like you should care about intelligence more, given the evidence there. Tyler Cowen   More than who does? I feel what the book presents is, in fact, my view. So kind of by definition, I agree with that view. But yes, there's a way of reading it where intelligence really matters a lot. But it's only for a relatively small number of jobs.Dwarkesh Patel   Maybe you just started off with a really high priori on intelligence, and that's why you downgraded?Tyler Cowen   There are a lot of jobs that I actually hire for in actual life, where smarts are not the main thing I look for.Dwarkesh Patel   Does the convexity of returns on intelligence suggest that maybe the multiplicative model is wrong? Because if the multiplicative model is right, you would expect to see decreasing returns and putting your stats on one skill. You'd want to diversify more, right?Tyler Cowen   I think the convexity of returns to intelligence is embedded in a multiplicative model, where the IQ returns only cash out for people good at all these other things. For a lot of geniuses, they just can't get out of bed in the morning, and you're stuck, and you should write them off.Dwarkesh Patel   So you cite the data that Sweden collects from everybody that enters the military there. The CEOs are apparently not especially smart. But one thing I found interesting in that same data was that Swedish soccer players are pretty smart. The better a soccer player is, the smarter they are. You've interviewed professional basketball players turned public intellectuals on your podcast. They sound extremely smart to me. What is going on there? Why, anecdotally, and with some limited amounts of evidence, does it seem that professional athletes are smarter than you would expect?Tyler Cowen   I'm a big fan of the view that top-level athletic performance is super cognitively intense and that most top athletes are really extraordinarily smart. I don't just mean smart on the court (though, obviously that), but smart more broadly. This is underrated. I think Michelle Dawson was the one who talked me into this, but absolutely, I'm with you all the way.Dwarkesh Patel   Do you think this is just mutational load or––Tyler Cowen   You actually have to be really smart to figure out things like how to lead a team, how to improve yourself, how to practice, how to outsmart the opposition, all these other things. Maybe it's not the only way to get there, but it is very G loaded. You certainly see some super talented athletes who just go bust. Or they may destroy themselves with drugs: there are plenty of tales like that, and you don't have to look hard. Dwarkesh Patel   Are there other areas where you wouldn't expect it to be G loaded but it actually is?Tyler Cowen   Probably, but there's so many! I just don't know, but sports is something in my life I followed. So I definitely have opinions about it. They seem incredibly smart to me when they're interviewed. They're not always articulate, and they're sort of talking themselves into biased exposure. But I heard Michael Jordan in the 90s, and I thought, “That guy's really smart.” So I think he is! Look at Charles Barkley. He's amazing, right? There's hardly anyone I'd rather listen to, even about talent, than Charles Barkley. It's really interesting. He's not that tall, you can't say, “oh, he succeeded. Because he's seven foot two,” he was maybe six foot four tops. And they called him the Round Mound of Rebound. And how did he do that? He was smart. He figured out where the ball was going. The weaknesses of his opponents, he had to nudge them the right way, and so on. Brilliant guy.Dwarkesh Patel   What I find really remarkable is that (not just with athletes, but in many other professions), if you interview somebody who is at the top of that field, they come off really really smart! For example, YouTubers and even sex workers.Tyler Cowen   So whoever is like the top gardener, I expect I would be super impressed by them.Spotting Talent (Counter)signalsDwarkesh Patel   Right. Now all your books are in some way about talent, right? Let me read you the following passage from An Economist Gets Lunch, and I want you to tell me how we can apply this insight to talent. “At a fancy fancy restaurant, the menu is well thought out. The time and attention of the kitchen are scarce. An item won't be on the menu unless there's a good reason for its presence. If it sounds bad, it probably tastes especially good?”Tyler Cowen   That's counter-signaling, right? So anything that is very weird, they will keep on the menu because it has a devoted set of people who keep on ordering it and appreciate it. That's part of the talent of being a chef, you can come up with such things. Dwarkesh Patel   How do we apply this to talent? Tyler Cowen   Well, with restaurants, you have selection pressure where you're only going to ones that have cleared certain hurdles. So this is true for talent only for talents who are established. If you see a persistent NBA player who's a very poor free throw shooter like Shaquille O'Neal was, you can more or less assume they're really good at something else. But for people who are not established, there's not the same selection pressure so there's not an analogous inference you can draw.Dwarkesh Patel   So if I show up to an Emergent Ventures conference, and I meet somebody, and they don't seem especially impressive with the first impression, then I should believe their work is especially impressive. Tyler Cowen Yes, absolutely, yes. Dwarkesh Patel   Okay, so my understanding of your book Creative Destruction is that maybe on average, cultural diversity will go down. But in special niches, the diversity and ingenuity will go up. Can I apply the same insight to talent? Maybe two random college grads will have similar skill sets over time, but if you look at people on the tails, will their skills and knowledge become even more specialized and even more diverse?Tyler Cowen   There are a lot of different presuppositions in your question. So first, is cultural diversity going up or down? That I think is multi-dimensional. Say different cities in different countries will be more like each other over time.. that said, the genres they produce don't have to become more similar. They're more similar in the sense that you can get sushi in each one. But novel cuisine in Dhaka and Senegal might be taking a very different path from novel cuisine in Tokyo, Japan. So what happens with cultural diversity.. I think the most reliable generalization is that it tends to come out of larger units. Small groups and tribes and linguistic groups get absorbed. Those people don't stop being creative and other venues, but there are fewer unique isolated cultures, and much more thickly diverse urban creativity. That would be the main generalization I would put forward. So if you wanted to apply that generalization to talent, I think in a funny way, we come back to my earlier point: talent just tends to be geographically extremely well clustered. That's not the question you asked, but it's how I would reconfigure the pieces of it.Dwarkesh Patel   Interesting. What do you suggest about finding talent in a globalized world? In particular, if it's cheaper to find talent because of the internet, does that mean that you should be selecting more mediocre candidates?Tyler Cowen   I think it means you should be more bullish on immigrants from Africa. It's relatively hard to get out of Africa to the United States in most cases. That's a sign the person put in a lot of effort and ability. Maybe an easy country to come here from would be Canada, all other things equal. Again, I'd want this to be measured. The people who come from countries that are hard to come from like India, actually, the numbers are fairly high, but the roots are mostly pretty gated.Dwarkesh Patel   Is part of the reason that talent is hard to spot and find today that we have an aging population?  So then we would have more capital, more jobs, more mentorship available for young people coming up, than there are young people.Tyler Cowen   I don't think we're really into demographic decline yet. Not in the United States. Maybe in Japan, that would be true. But it seems to me, especially with the internet, there's more 15-year-old talent today than ever before, by a lot, not just by little. You see this in chess, right? Where we can measure performance very well. There's a lot more young talent from many different places, including the US. So, aging hasn't mattered yet. Maybe for a few places, but not here.Dwarkesh Patel   What do you think will change in talent spotting as society becomes older?Tyler Cowen   It depends on what you mean by society. I think the US, unless it totally screws up on immigration, will always have a very seriously good flow of young people that we don't ever have to enter the aging equilibrium the way Japan probably already has. So I don't know what will change. Then there's work from a distance, there's hiring from a distance, funding from a distance. As you know, there's EV India, and we do that at a distance. So I don't think we're ever going to enter that world..Dwarkesh Patel   But then what does it look like for Japan? Is part of the reason that Japanese cultures and companies are arranged the way they are and do the recruitment the way they do linked to their demographics? Tyler Cowen   That strikes me as a plausible reason. I don't think I know enough to say, but it wouldn't surprise me if that turned out to be the case.Dwarkesh Patel   To what extent do you need a sort of “great man ethos” in your culture in order to empower the top talent? Like if you have too much political and moral egalitarianism, you're not going to give great people the real incentive and drive to strive to be great.Tyler Cowen   You've got to say “great man or great woman ethos”, or some other all-purpose word we wish to use. I worry much less about woke ideology than a lot of people I know. It's not my thing, but it's something young people can rebel against. If that keeps you down, I'm not so impressed by you. I think it's fine. Let the woke reign, people can work around them.Dwarkesh Patel   But overall, if you have a culture or like Europe, do you think that has any impact on––Tyler Cowen   Europe has not woken up in a lot of ways, right? Europe is very chauvinist and conservative in the literal sense, and often quite old fashioned depending on what you're talking about. But Europe, I would say, is much less woke than the United States. I wouldn't say that's their main problem, but you can't say, “oh, they don't innovate because they're too woke”, like hang out with some 63 year old Danish guys and see how woke you think they are once everyone's had a few drinks.Dwarkesh Patel   My question wasn't about wokeism. I just meant in general, if you have an egalitarian society.Tyler Cowen   I think of Europe as less egalitarian. I think they have bad cultural norms for innovation. They're culturally so non-egalitarian. Again, it depends where but Paris would be the extreme. There, everyone is classified right? By status, and how you need to wear your sweater the right way, and this and that. Now, how innovative is Paris? Actually, maybe more than people think. But I still think they have too few dimensions of status competition. That's a general problem in most of Europe–– too few dimensions of status competition, not enough room for the proverbial village idiot.Dwarkesh Patel   Interesting. You say in the book, that questions tend to degrade over time if you don't replace them. I find it interesting that Y Combinator has kept the same questions since they were started in 2005. And of course, your co-author was a partner at Y Combinator. Do you think that works for Y Combinator or do you think they're probably making a mistake?Tyler Cowen   I genuinely don't know. There are people who will tell you that Y Combinator, while still successful, has become more like a scalable business school and less like attracting all the top weirdos who do amazing things. Again, I'd want to see data before asserting that myself, but you certainly hear it a lot. So it could be that Y Combinator is a bit stale. But still in a good sense. Like Harvard is stale, right? It dates from the 17th century. But it's still amazing. MIT is stale. Maybe Y Combinator has become more like those groups.Dwarkesh Patel   Do you think that will happen to Emergent Ventures eventually?Tyler Cowen   I don't think so because it has a number of unique features built in from the front. So a very small number of evaluators too. It might grow a little bit, but it's not going to grow that much. I'm not paid to do it, so that really limits how much it's going to scale. There's not a staff that has to be carried where you're captured by the staff, there is no staff. There's a bit of free riding on staff who do other things, but there's no sense of if the program goes away, all my buddies on staff get laid off. No. So it's kind of pop up, and low cost of exit. Whenever that time comes.Dwarkesh Patel   Do you personally have questions that you haven't put in the book or elsewhere because you want them to be fresh? For asking somebody who's applying to her for the grant? Tyler Cowen   Well, I didn't when we wrote the book. So we put everything in there that we were thinking of, but over time, we've developed more. I don't generally give them out during interviews, because you have to keep some stock. So yeah, there's been more since then, but we weren't holding back at the time.Dwarkesh Patel It's like a comedy routine. You gotta write a new one each year.Tyler Cowen That's right. But when your shows are on the air, you do give your best jokes, right?Will Reading Cowen's Book Help You Win Emergent Ventures?Dwarkesh Patel Let's say someone applying to emergent ventures reads your book. Are they any better off? Or are they perhaps worse off because maybe they become misleading or have a partial view into what's required of them?Tyler Cowen   I hope they're not better off in a way, but probably they are. I hope they use it to understand their own talent better and present it in a better way. Not just to try to manipulate the system. But most people aren't actually that good at manipulating that kind of system so I'm not too worried.Dwarkesh Patel   In a sense, if they can manipulate the system, that's a positive signal of some kind.Tyler Cowen   Like, if you could fool me –– hey, what else have you got to say, you know? [laughs]Dwarkesh Patel   Are you worried that when young people will encounter you now, they're going to think of you as sort of a talent judge and a good one at that so they're maybe going to be more self aware than whether––Tyler Cowen   Yes. I worry about the effect of this on me. Maybe a lot of my interactions become less genuine, or people are too self conscious, or too stilted or something.Dwarkesh Patel   Is there something you can do about that? Or is that just baked in the gig?Tyler Cowen   I don't know, if you do your best to try to act genuine, whatever that means, maybe you can avoid it a bit or delay it at least a bit. But a lot of it I don't think you can avoid. In part, you're just cashing in. I'm 60 and I don't think I'll still be doing this when I'm 80. So if I have like 18 years of cashing in, maybe it's what I should be doing.Identifying talent earlyDwarkesh Patel   To what extent are the principles of finding talent timeless? If you're looking for let's say, a general for the French Revolution, how much of this does the advice change? Are the basic principles the same over time?Tyler Cowen   Well, one of the key principles is context. You need to focus on how the sector is different. But if you're doing that, then I think at the meta level the principles broadly stay the same.Dwarkesh Patel   You have a really interesting book about autism and systematizers. You think Napoleon was autistic?Tyler Cowen   I've read several biographies of him and haven't come away with that impression, but you can't rule it out. Who are the biographers? Now it gets back to our question of: How valuable is history? Did the biographers ever meet Napoleon? Well, some of them did, but those people had such weak.. other intellectual categories. The modern biography is written by Andrew Roberts, or whoever you think is good, I don't know. So how can I know?Dwarkesh Patel   Right? Again, the issue is that the details that stick in my mind from reading the biography are the ones that make him seem autistic, right?Tyler Cowen   Yes. There's a tendency in biographies to storify things, and that's dangerous too. Dwarkesh Patel   How general across a pool is talent or just competence of any kind? If you look at somebody like Peter Thiel–– investor, great executive, great thinker even, certainly Napoleon, and I think it was some mathematician either Lagrangian or Laplace, who said that he (Napoleon) could have been a mathematician if he wanted to. I don't know if that's true, but it does seem that the top achievers in one field seem to be able to move across fields and be top achievers in other fields. I

Antariksh Matters #1: India’s Space Policy under IN-SPACe— Pranav R SatyanathOn 10 June, 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the headquarters of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The setting up of IN-SPACe promises to usher in a new era for India’s commercial space sector, as the organisation is geared to function as a one-stop institution for regulating space activities and providing entities in the private sector access to facilities run by the Department of Space (DOS) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The creation of IN-SPACe was announced in June 2020 within the pages of the Draft National Space Transport Policy published in June 2020, in light of the growing importance of commercial entities for driving innovation in the space sector. IN-SPACe is structured as an independent body within the DOS, and as of this writing, IN-SPACe has authorised two private companies to launch their payloads onboard the PSLV-C53. The structure of INSPACe’s regulatory mechanism is shown below.Before IN-SPACeTo fully appreciate the significance of a regulatory body like IN-SPACe and identify its shortcomings, we must first see the regulatory arrangement present in India before the coming of this new autonomous body. The image below shows the structure of India’s space enterprise run by the DOS. Under this arrangement, it is clear that the DOS did not have any straightforward mechanism to interact with private space companies or regulate their activities. Since ISRO operated all of India’s launch facilities and a large number of research laboratories, it became a single point of contact for private companies, and therefore, a de facto  space activities regulator.   The Structure of India’s space ecosystem prior to IN-SPACe Source: ISROAs the private space industry in India began to grow, the difficulty of gaining access to gaining critical facilities and services made it all too evident that India desperately needed a new space policy. Further, the international regulatory environment on space sustainability also began to take shape under the Long-term Sustainability (LTS) Guidelines of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS). India desperately needed a coherent domestic space policy to keep up with the international standards of regulating private entities and ensuring the safety and security of India’s own space assets. Within this context, the necessity of a new regulatory body for space activities was born. The Current Structure of India’s space ecosystem Source: ISROIN-SPACe now and in the futureThe existing structure of IN-SPACe promises a smooth process for private entities to:Be granted permission to operate.Be given access to facilities operated under DOS.Be granted permission to run their own facilities.IN-SPACe also promises to share technologies and remote sensing data with private companies through a new remote sensing policy. The substance of these promises can only be analysed once the IN-SPACe begins operating in full-swing.Some of the unintended consequences of IN-SPACe may be that it might act more as a gatekeeper than an enabler. Such risks can be avoided by maintaining the autonomy of IN-SPACe and reducing the role of other stakeholders in the decision-making process. Second, the DOS must eventually ensure that ISRO becomes a scientific research institution and cedes control of its legacy space launch vehicles to New Space India Limited, which must function as a fully private launch entity that competes with other domestic players.Cyberpolitik: India Needs a Fortified Computing Ecosystem— Arjun GargeyasThe advent of the Information Age and the digital economy has brought the concept of computational capacity into the limelight. Advanced computing mechanisms such as high-performance, quantum, and cloud have taken over the field of computing. Nation-states (and even private companies) are embroiled in a high-stakes race to increase indigenous computing power for several strategic purposes. Harnessing this pivotal technological resource remains a priority for a rising technological society like India. With the country’s data generation at an all-time high, there is a need for improving the computational capabilities of the state by utilising emerging advanced computing technologies. The announcement of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), in 2015 by the government of India, was the first step taken by the state in the field of High-Performance Computing technologies. A jointly funded programme between the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), a total outlay of Rs 4500 crore has been allocated for the mission over a period of 7 years (2016-2023). The main objectives of the mission were to spearhead research in the development of supercomputers and build a National Supercomputing Grid across the country. The implementation of the mission was divided into three phases. The first involved assembling supercomputers in India (till the end of 2018) and the second was meant for designing these high-performance computing solutions in the country (completed by September 2021). The final phase, which has officially commenced, involves the indigenous design and manufacturing of supercomputers in the country. Till the end of February 2022, there have been 10 supercomputers installed at various host institutions under the mission. However, considering the distribution of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world, India accounts for just 0.6% of the total. While the national mission has kick started work in the field, there is a long way to go before India can develop its own interconnected structure of supercomputers.The other major advanced computing technology dominating the market is quantum computing. While India has a dedicated supercomputer programme in the form of NSM, there has been no dedicated government policy towards the field of quantum computing specifically. However, the domestic private sector has gotten involved in the development of quantum computing hardware, software, and algorithms. The government has relied on partnership deals with major private firms to advance the quantum computing landscape in the country. In 2021, the government of India announced tie-ups with technology giants, Amazon Web Services and IBM India to improve access to a quantum computing development environment for the industrial and the scientific community. This led to the establishment of the Quantum Computing Applications Laboratory to build small-scale quantum computers. The establishment of the Greater Karnavati Quantum Computing Technology Park (GKQCTP), by the government of Gujarat and a research firm, Ingoress looks to house the country’s first-ever quantum computer.Recent progress by the state in the computing domain has showcased the government’s intent to view computational capacity as a strategic tool to possess. However, the headway has been slow and adequate measures have to be taken to ensure India does not fall behind the pack. A holistic strategy is needed to facilitate the advancement in the computing field.First, the ability to build advanced computing devices and facilities rests on a wide range of components and raw materials. It would be impossible for any state, let alone India, to indigenously manufacture the whole system from scratch. This is where the reliance on high-tech imports kicks in. Trade barriers such as export control mechanisms and import restrictions that still exist can hamper access to the building blocks of these systems. For example, advanced processors for supercomputers and cryogenic cooling systems for quantum computers are a necessity. But with existing export controls, indigenously developing them will take time for India. Cutting down on import tariffs, especially in the electronics sector, along with embracing multilateral trade agreements like the Information Technology Agreement (ITA 2015) must be the government’s priority. Moving towards a liberalised trade policy that embraces tech imports can help the country accelerate its computing programmes.Second, there needs to be a more holistic vision for developing a nationwide computing grid. China’s recently announced National Computing Network can serve as a blueprint for India to scale up its computing infrastructure. The Chinese plan talks about a geographical approach to building data centres and computing clusters across the mainland. The concept of ‘Data from east, Computing in the west’ has been proposed, which involves the setting up of computing architecture in the less developed western regions of the country to handle the data stored in centres already established in the tech-aligned eastern region. A computing grid in India can follow a similar pattern with computing clusters scattered across the country. Till now, the government has focused on academic and scientific research institutions as hosts for large-scale computing systems. Dispersing these facilities across other locations can enhance and coordinate regional development also. Creating a better network can improve the functioning and efficiency of an advanced computing grid as well as handle large-scale data processing with ease.Third, looking at the need to increase computing power from a military and strategic perspective can improve the computing technology being used currently. In an age of information warfare and cybersecurity threats, increased computational capacity is a necessity and a risk mitigation tool. Advanced computing facilities at strategic environments like naval bases, air command control centres and border outposts can help in the faster analysis and real-time data processing that contains critical military intelligence. India must focus on its computing strategy keeping in mind the defence and national security angle. Countries like the US and China are looking at advanced computing systems to simulate military operations and gain key advantages. India needs to leverage its computing capabilities effectively for defence and cannot afford to remain complacent in this domain.(An edited version of this article came out in the Hindustan Times on 10th June 2022))Antariksh Matters #2: The UK Wants to be a Big Spacefarer— Aditya RamanathanOn 23 June, the UK’s minister for science, announced four sets of proposed plans that he said were intended to encourage sustainable use of space. The minister, George Freeman, unveiled the UK’s Plan for Space Sustainability during a talk at the latest edition of the Summit for Space Sustainability, which is hosted by the US-based Secure World Foundation and the UK government.The first of Freeman’s proposed plans is to strive “to lead in the global regulatory standards for orbital activities”. The second is to pursue international cooperation in the sustainable use of space. The third is to create what Freeman called “simple, accurate metrics” to gauge space sustainability. The fourth is to create a debris removal programme. The UK’s Outsize Ambitions in Space The UK has been a particularly active participant in international debates around space governance, sustainability and security. Last year, it released a national space strategy and in February of 2022, it published a defence space strategy. It was an early signatory of the US-led Artemis Accords that seeks to lay out ground rules for lunar exploration and commercial use. The UK was also a key driver behind the setting up of an Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on space threats, which completed its first meeting in May. Commercial concerns are at the heart of the UK’s activism. Freeman’s own remarks at the Space Sustainability Summit made clear the UK’s ambitions: “As it was with shipping in the 17th century and cars in the 20th, the key will be regulation which enforces good industry standards and reduces the cost of insurance and finance for a satellite launch which can show it is compliant. With London as a global capital of insurance and venture financing, we have an opportunity to use our historic role in space science to now harness responsible finance for sustainable space.” While Freeman’s comments implicitly evoked the legacy of the UK’s historic maritime power, they are in line with the goals of the national space strategy, which set out five goals:“Grow and level up our space economyPromote the values of Global BritainLead pioneering scientific discovery and inspire the nationProtect and defend our national interests in and through spaceUse space to deliver for UK citizens and the world”The UK’s own space industry is small but growing. According to a report commissioned by the UK government, space-related companies and organisations generated income of £16.5 billion in 2019-2020, a third of which came from exports. Space applications constituted the biggest share of this income, at £12.2 billion, followed by space manufacturing which accounted for £2.27 billion. The UK evidently hopes to see this industry grow much larger, but there will be some challenges ahead. While the UK will benefit from its special relationship with the US and traditional ties with Europe, it will face commercial competition from both geopolitical friends and foes. Its ambitions to set regulatory and legal standards are also likely to be contested by China and Russia. And even small-sized rivals like Luxembourg could market themselves as more attractive destinations for the registration of space companies. Notwithstanding these challenges, the UK’s activism also offers a model for other states like India. Freeman is yet to provide details of the proposals he outlined, but there’s no reason India cannot develop proposals of its own, outline a national space strategy, or actively participate in ongoing talks on space security.Our Reading Menu[Opinion] How India Can Take a Leaf Out of China’s Playbook on Battery Swapping to Form a Robust EV Ecosystem by Rohan Pai.[Report] Boost-Phase Missile Defense: Interrogating the Assumptions by Ian Williams, Masao Dahlgren, Thomas G. Roberts and Tom Karako.[Research Article] Echo Chambers, Rabbit Holes, and Algorithmic Bias: How YouTube Recommends Content to Real Users by Megan A. Brown, James Bisbee, Angela Lai et. al. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hightechir.substack.com

How to get started as a Food Photographer, how to get work and what you could expect to be paid.With London-based Food Photographer, Safia Shakarchi.This week's episode should also be useful if you're considering hiring a Food Photographer . It will help you understand what a Food Photographer does, how much they cost, what you're paying for and how to find a good one.This week's episode is also on YouTube: https://bit.ly/howtobecomeafoodphotographeronyoutubeAnd you'll find all the links to equipment and sites mentioned here: https://thenextdeliciousthing.com/how-to-become-a-food-photographerSafia and Jen discuss all things food photography:(Timings here are for YouTube, the podcast has a 2 minute introduction!)0:00       Introduction and Safia's story6:30       How you can get started as a Food Photographer10:30    What does a photographer's assistant do.12:00    Potential earnings21:00    Photography Equipment28:00    Editing Software30:00    Top tip to get better photographs34:00    What type of people are best suited to becoming a Food Photographer36:30    The number one tip to make your photographs better37:00    How to find a Food Photographer and how to get work as a Food Photographer.42:00   What does a typical day as a Food Photographer look like.About the host:Jennifer Earle is the founder of London's first food tour business and former food buyer and food developer. She walks the streets of London searching for delicious food and spends far too much time on Instagram.About the guest:Safia Shakarchi is a British-Iraqi recipe developer, food stylist and food photographer. She has worked for small businesses and restaurants across London and beyond and her photographer and recipes have been featured in multiple magazines and newspapers. Here latest project is Another Pantry launched in 2022. A resource to bring together the food community and provide anyone who loves food with seasonal, thoughtful recipes four times a year and events and other products.For more details and links to all of the things they discuss (including camera lenses, software and tripodI'm still sending an email each week sharing the most interesting things I'm tasting in London and beyond. Sign up at https://jenniferearle.substack.comAbout this London food podcast host:Jennifer Earle is the founder of London's first food tour business - Chocolate Ecstasy Tours - and a former Food Buyer and Food Developer at major UK food retailers. She walks the streets of London searching for delicious food and spends far too much time on Instagram (@jennifer.earle)Stay up to date with the latest London Food:Follow @thenextdeliciousthing on Instagram.Receive the weekly list via newsletter at https://jenniferearle.substack.com See the blog at thenextdeliciousthing.comAbout this food podcast:The Next Delicious Thing is hosted, produced and edited by Jennifer Earle.This podcast sharing the best of London food is a passion project designed to help people who love food find out what's worth spending their money on and also help out the businesses that are producing delicious things, many of them are small businesses. I'd be so grateful if you could... Get full access to The Next Delicious Thing at jenniferearle.substack.com/subscribe

Siddy Holloway's work is centered around getting the public engaged in mobility through various forms of creative storytelling. With London being home to the world's oldest underground transit network there is a lot of history and knowledge to reveal. Learn more about how London is sharing its public transit stories and how you may be able to engage with your community on the topic of mobility. Featured government: Transport for London (Transport Authority for the city of London, UK)Episode guests: Siddy Holloway, Engagement Manager at the London Transport Museum and co-presenter of UKTV's 'Secrets of the London Underground'Visit govlaunch.com for more stories and examples of local government innovation.

ROBERT J LLOYD chats to Paul Burke about his philosophical historical crime novel BLOODLESS BOY, scientist/detective Robert Hooke and getting published with a helping hand from Christopher Fowler.BLOODLESS BOY: The City of London, 1678. New Year's Day. The body of a young boy, drained of his blood and with a sequence of numbers inscribed on his skin, is discovered on the snowy bank of the Fleet River. With London gripped by hysteria, where rumors of Catholic plots and sinister foreign assassins abound, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, the powerful Justice of Peace for Westminster, is certain of Catholic guilt in the crime. He enlists Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society, and his assistant, Harry Hunt, to help his enquiry. Sir Edmund confides to Hooke that the bloodless boy is not the first to have been discovered. He also presents Hooke with a cipher that was left on the body. That same morning Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, blows his brains out. A disgraced Earl is released from the Tower of London, bent on revenge against the King, Charles II. Wary of the political hornet's nest they are walking into - and using evidence rather than paranoia in their pursuit of truth - Hooke and Hunt must discover why the boy was murdered, and why his blood was taken. Moreover, what does the cipher mean?Robert Lloyd is the son of parents who worked in the British Foreign Office, grew up in South London, Innsbruck, and Kinshasa. He studied for a Fine Art degree, starting as a landscape painter, but it was while studying for his MA degree in The History of Ideas that he first read Robert Hooke's diary, detailing the life and experiments of this extraordinary man. After a 20-year career as a secondary school teacher, he has now returned to painting and writing. The Bloodless Boy is his debut novel. He is at work on a sequel.Recommended:Lisa Jardine - Ingenious Pursuits (biography/history)Leonora Nattrass - The Black Drop (novel)Produced by Junkyard DogMusic courtesy of Southgate & LeighCrime TimePaul Burke writes for Crime Time, Crime Fiction Lover, NB Magazine and the European Literature Network and edits/presents Crime Time FM.

Just as Scrooge wandered London's streets on a cold Christmas night, Dan Snow follows the ghosts of Charles Dickens' past to discover the city that inspired his greatest works. With London-born tour guide David Charnick, they slip down hidden alleyways to find the old debtor's prison that the Dicken's family once called home; a place that haunted a young Charles for the rest of his life. They overlook the Thames to tell the tales of Victorian scavengers who searched the murky waters for bodies to turn over for profit. They find the old counting houses and graveyards that inspired the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge. They walk down the very street that Bob Cratchit 'went down a slide on Cornhill twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve'. With David's masterful guidance and atmospheric readings, this immersive episode takes you to the fireside of a London coaching inn as the sun sets outside on a late December afternoon. A warning: this episode contains references to historical suicides. Dickens' extracts are read by Robyn Wilson. 'Roger de Coverley' and 'Durang's Hornpipe' performed by Vivian and Phil Williams. You can join David for a variety of historical London tours here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/david-charnick-footprints-of-london-7320403619Please vote for us! Dan Snow's History Hit has been nominated for a Podbible award in the 'informative' category: https://bit.ly/3pykkdsIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Just as Scrooge wandered London's streets on a cold Christmas night, Dan Snow follows the ghosts of Charles Dickens' past to discover the city that inspired his greatest works. With London-born tour guide David Charnick, they slip down hidden alleyways to find the old debtor's prison that the Dicken's family once called home; a place that haunted a young Charles for the rest of his life. They overlook the Thames to tell the tales of Victorian scavengers who searched the murky waters for bodies to turn over for profit. They find the old counting houses and graveyards that inspired the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge. They walk down the very street that Bob Cratchit 'went down a slide on Cornhill twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve'. With David's masterful guidance and atmospheric readings, this immersive episode takes you to the fireside of a London coaching inn as the sun sets outside on a late December afternoon. A warning: this episode contains references to historical suicides. Dickens' extracts are read by Robyn Wilson. 'Roger de Coverley' and 'Durang's Hornpipe' performed by Vivian and Phil Williams. You can join David for a variety of historical London tours here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/david-charnick-footprints-of-london-7320403619Please vote for us! Dan Snow's History Hit has been nominated for a Podbible award in the 'informative' category: https://bit.ly/3pykkdsIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With London, Brighton and Manchester marathons fast approaching, we turn our attention to the dreaded marathon "wall". In the company of James Poole, serial marathoner and founder of Advent Running, we discuss what the wall feels like, where it lurks and crucially, how it can be avoided.Follow James Poole on Instagram: @jamesdpoole See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Many people with autoimmune illnesses face varied challenges. With London at 29 degrees one has to have a military plan to survive the heat wave. Here are some tips to survive the heat. Enjoy.

If 2020 wasn't enough, here comes 2021: with the ongoing burden of the pandemic further complicated by Brexit agreements. In the week that CPP launches new analysis on the productivity potential of places across the UK, this event explores the role of London and the regions in making Britain fit for Brexit.This past year has placed our cities and regions under enormous pressure as central and local leaders sought to manage the fallout from the pandemic. In 2021 the UK's places will continue to be shaped by the ongoing impact of Covid-19 as well as by the future trade relationships with our European neighbours and the rest of the world.With the risk of unemployment in the country coming close to the 1980s levels after furlough ends and threatening to derail the government's levelling up project, the pressure on cities and regions as engines of our economy is higher than ever before if they are to ‘build back better' in a globalised world. With London potentially at risk of 'levelling down' due to its labour market being hit hardest the capital is also at a crucial crossroads.We will be looking at what this new conjuncture means for global Britain and its place in a post-Brexit and post-pandemic world. Key questions include: What impact will Brexit have on the UK's levelling up agenda? What is London's new role in relation to the rest of the UK and as a major player in the global economy? What is the role of the regions and how can they best be empowered to boost Britain's global agenda?PanellistsStefanie Bolzen, UK and Ireland Correspondent, Die WeltRichard Brown, Deputy Director, Centre for LondonBen Franklin, Head of Research, Centre for Progressive PolicyProfessor Richard Jones, Chair in Materials Physics and Innovation Policy & Associate Vice-President for Innovation and Regional Economic Development at University of ManchesterChairLinda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Economics, London Business School. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To get a perspective on how the data center industry is faring in European markets during the pandemic, host Raymond Hawkins tapped Andrew Jay, Head of EMEA Data Centre Solutions, Advisory & Transaction Services for CBRE, to help him unpack what's happening. The need for co-location space is growing in Europe, as demands for data storage are at unprecedented levels and have been for several years. Specifically, London is one of the largest areas of need. “There's an absolute feeding frenzy at the moment of developer operators trying to secure land. And then there are the usual issues around power, planning, fiber and risks. The prices of these sites are going through the roof at the moment," Jay said. Due to the lack of real estate around London and the high demand, there is intense competition for sites. And Jay said he's seen deals around London going north of six million pounds per acre. With London pricing many out of the market, what's the next area of opportunity for data centers? Jay said North London, where there's a lot of land interest. “What we haven't seen is East London yet, and we have a couple of really good quality data center builds there, but the demand hasn't quite got there yet,” he said. As for the state of data centers in other European markets, Jay cited Milan as an example. “For years, there was no demand there. Suddenly, about three to four years ago, we got calls from people asking if we had any land available in Milan," he said. "So, that market's gone from being a 15-megawatt to a 60-65-megawatt market.” And Jay believes that could easily double shortly.

To get a perspective on how the data center industry is faring in European markets during the pandemic, host Raymond Hawkins tapped Andrew Jay, Head of EMEA Data Centre Solutions, Advisory & Transaction Services for CBRE, to help him unpack what’s happening.The need for co-location space is growing in Europe, as demands for data storage are at unprecedented levels and have been for several years. Specifically, London is one of the largest areas of need.“There’s an absolute feeding frenzy at the moment of developer operators trying to secure land. And then there are the usual issues around power, planning, fiber and risks. The prices of these sites are going through the roof at the moment," Jay said.Due to the lack of real estate around London and the high demand, there is intense competition for sites. And Jay said he’s seen deals around London going north of six million pounds per acre.With London pricing many out of the market, what’s the next area of opportunity for data centers? Jay said North London, where there’s a lot of land interest. “What we haven’t seen is East London yet, and we have a couple of really good quality data center builds there, but the demand hasn’t quite got there yet,” he said. As for the state of data centers in other European markets, Jay cited Milan as an example. “For years, there was no demand there. Suddenly, about three to four years ago, we got calls from people asking if we had any land available in Milan," he said. "So, that market’s gone from being a 15-megawatt to a 60-65-megawatt market.” And Jay believes that could easily double shortly.

*)New York struggles with coronavirus as US deaths top 1,000 More than 1,000 people have died of the coronavirus disease in the US with infections at almost 70,000. The US has the third-highest number of cases behind China and Italy. Senate has also approved a $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package designed to boost the economy. New York is one of the hardest-hit states with 280 deaths. *)Italy’s Covid-19 death toll rises Italy still has the world's highest coronavirus death toll. In the latest figures, another 683 deaths were reported, pushing the country's count to over 7,500. The total number of infections is almost at 75,000, with 9,362 recoveries. *)Far-right terrorist pleads guilty to NZ terror attacks A far-right gunman accused of terror attacks on mosques in New Zealand a year ago has pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder. The terrorist had previously denied all charges and was set to go on trial in June. He also pleaded guilty to 40 charges of attempted murder and one terrorism charge. *)Turkey indicts Saudi suspects in Khashoggi’s murder Turkish prosecutors are seeking life sentences for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s two former top aides for murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He was killed in 2018 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Another 18 Saudi citizens have also been indicted. All 20 suspects left Turkey after the murder, and Saudi Arabia refuses to extradite them. And finally... *)Time running out for Wimbledon Wimbledon has so far survived the cull of the world’s most prestigious sporting events due to the coronavirus pandemic. But it's only a matter of time before the tennis championships are either postponed or cancelled, which will be a first since 1945. With London in its first week of lockdown, the All England Lawn Tennis Club are weighing up their limited options.

Oneida water is not fit to drink with Brendan Doxtator, a youth leader at Oneida. The impact of the coloured hockey league with Craig Smith, President of the black cultural society of Nova Scotia. Could Conestoga Huts help London's homeless population? With London's manger of homeless prevention Craig Cooper.

Professor Rob Copeland is Director of The Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) in Sheffield and Professor of Physical Activity and Health at Sheffield Hallam University. Rob is a keen cyclist. He says “if it's going to be a good day, it'll start with a bike ride…” He arrived at the studio having just played host to Andy Anson, the new CEO of the British Olympic Association. That meeting focused on the work that Rob and colleagues across the city have been doing on the Olympic legacy, supporting the population to be more physically active. Rob graduated in Sport and Exercise Science from Newcastle University. He studied for a Masters at the University of Sheffield before working for two years as a Community Health and Fitness Officer in Mansfield, supporting people with chronic health conditions into physical activity. That laid the groundwork for an academic career that started at Sheffield Hallam University, where Rob took a PhD in ‘Psychology and Childhood Obesity.' Over the past 18 years Rob has worked on over 100 projects supporting people into a healthier lifestyle. The story of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre conventionally starts with the 2012 Olympic Games, but before then Professor Steve Hake had a project called ‘Sports Pulse', which was about how academia and elite sport, particularly sports engineering, could support local companies to advance their technologies. With London 2012, Sheffield was awarded foundation partner status in the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine and received £10m of investment from the then Department of Health. Sheffield established a city-wide partnership with representation from every aspect of civic life, led by Sir Andrew Cash and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. The money was used to collocate NHS clinics with leisure centres. Three leisure centres in Sheffield now host 80,000 clinical appointments per year. This in turn became part of a much bigger programme called ‘Move More', Sheffield's physical activity strategy. The ambition of that programme was to transform Sheffield into the most active city in the UK. Rob led that programme and Steve Hake became the Research Director. That programme morphed into the AWRC. At its heart is the vision of transforming lives through innovations that help people move. The AWRC is located in Darnall, a ward of 22,000 people, a neighbourhood of 90,000 people, where there is “huge health inequality”, so the centre has a contextual local vision, “it's not just a grand vision.” The £14m funding for the building came from an application to the Department of Health and Social Care. The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) provided just under £1m for the equipment. The research work of the AWRC is coordinated around three themes: Healthy and Active 100, which looks at how someone born in Darnall today could expect to live 100 years of healthy and active life; Living Well with Chronic Disease, which considers physical activity as a treatment for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke etc; Technological and Digital Innovations to promote independent lives, which talks to the NHS 10-year plan. The centre has a programme of engagement with the private sector, including new start-ups and SMEs. Deputy Director Dr Chris Lowe secured a grant of £850k from Research England to create a ‘Wellbeing Accelerator', which supports the private sector with academic expertise. To be remotely successful the AWRC will have to have tackle the 38% of the population who, according to the latest NHS report, average less than 15 minutes per day of vigorous activity. In relation to this, Rob is “wholly convinced by the power of people.” All communities have assets, talents, and drive, and the AWRC is concerned with creating the conditions within which they can thrive. But the social, economic, and environmental conditions are not the same across all communities. Therefore, this has to be a conversation about empowerment and not...

Rob Sadler, Tom Mellows, Ollie Fursdon and James Dexter join Guy Ruddle to discuss what other UK cities can learn from Cambridge when it comes to the life sciences sector. Cambridge has one of the largest life sciences and bio-tech clusters in Europe and continues to compete on a global level in this field. What then is the magic formula and how can other locations emulate its success? With London, in particular, well placed to capitalise on this increasing demand, the experts discuss why these businesses are attracted to the capital, their unique requirements, retrofitting laboratory space into conventional office buildings and, looking ahead, whether or not we will start to see new developments cater to these firms in the future.

Welcome to the first episode of Infra[un]structured: the podcast that puts the systems that keep the world turning under the spotlight. With London bringing in its Ultra Low Emission Zone, we’re kicking off by looking at air pollution. Charlotte is joined by Annette Jezierska, a fellow member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Young Professionals Panel and co-founder of The Future Fox, a tech startup specialising in planning for more people-friendly cities. Also in the studio is the brilliant Gary Raccuja – the winner of the 2017 Wolfson Economics Prize for his work on road user charging. Tune in to hear why we need to clean up our air and how we can go about doing it. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ You can find out more about Gary's winning entry, 'Miles Better,' here: https://policyexchange.org.uk/wolfson-winner/

With London fashion week coming to a close, the news broke that Karl Lagerfeld, head of Chanel and Fendi had passed away at age 85. Lagerfeld's fashion persona remained a stark antithesis to fashion desingers today. While athleisure continues to grow as a trend, Lagerfeld was famously quoted saying "Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants." In this podcast, Euromonitor examines high fashion brands Chanel, Gucci and Celine among others and talks about the reverberation of Lagerfeld's death in the luxury fashion industry.

With London now home to as many as three times the number of co-working spaces as New York, the influence of WeWork, the Office Group and others is forcing landlords to overhaul their offer – from lease lengths to design. In this EG London round table an expert panel discusses how demanding tenants are forcing change – and how building owners are responding.

With London's population expected to reach 11 million by 2015 and local recycling rates in decline, we need solutions for increasing amounts of waste. The post Restart Radio: Can a circular economy be driven by cities? appeared first on The Restart Project.

While bankers may not top the poll as Britain’s most popular members of society, would we be bankrupt without them? With London’s status as the No 1 financial centre in the world uncertain there are warnings that the knock-on effect could cripple the UK economy. But is this just inflated opinion? One man who has more of a handle on these matters than most is campaigning financial journalist Simon Read. Simon is currently on a round Britain tour filming monet stories for the BBC, but joined Tim after a two-day stint in Halifax to outline just how important financial services are to Britain’s present and future. Agree or disagree with Simon’s views, we’d love to hear your feedback. #Podcast #Brexit #BrexitPodcast #Referendum #EUReferendum #VoteLeave #VoteRemain #VoteIn #EU #UK #TimHeming #JenniferHahn #News #Politics

With London already Europe's biggest metropolitan consumer market and continuing to grow, and the move to ever larger container ships in the Port, what is the future for the River Thames? Will it continue to be an industrial hub, a centre of population with the growth of high-rise blocks, or a focus for recreation?Part of the Mondays at One Maritime London SeriesThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/does-science-rob-nature-of-its-mystery-and-beautyGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Episode 64 Trapped in their house, with Von Stahd inside and a Zombie Lord outside Lord Leigh and his compatriots try and come up with a way to first get the zombie lord alone, and then finish him off. With London overrun by zombies, the fate of the whole metropolis might actually depend on the […]

With London and Lille behind us, we give our final thoughts on the ATP World Tour Finals, Davis Cup Final, and 2014 as a whole. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric Jafari questions 3 leading UK property developers for their opinions on the most important aspects of property investment markets in London. London has seen extensive market activity and growth - which sectors are benefiting most and why? With London as a whole largely regarded as being expensive - Which parts of London still represent value for the investor and why?  Can the growth in London continue? if so, how, why, where and which property types will see the gains? Crossrail - Where can the largest gains in property be made? Hotels and East London - How will the market demography change? Which hotel brands are the movers shakers?

This August, Team Ireland is sending 65 athletes to the Olympic games, 27 of whom are women. Among the athletes covered in the series, there will be Sycerika Mcmahon the 17 year old swimmer and multi gold winning medallist as well as Irelands first ever Olympic qualifier in Modern Pentathlon, Natalya Coyle. Raphoe, Donegals international badminton star; Chloe Magee. Mexican American Irish pole vaulter Tori Pena and long distance marathon runners, Ava Hutchinson and Linda Byrne Winning Women features legendary commentator Jimmy Magee, Olympic silver medalist Sonia O Sullivan and Irish Times athletics correspondent Ian O Riordan, among others. The 8 part series is an Athena Media production, funded through BAI Sound Vision scheme and Broadcast on Newstalk. Producer is Helen Shaw and reporter Lisa Essuman. With London 2012 well under way, we look back at some of the athletes featured in our Winning Women series. Music by Senekah. Long distance runner Fionnuala Britton, Linda Byrne marathon runner, Triathlete Aileen Morrison, Canoeist Hannah Craig and Badminton player Chloe Magee.

This August, Team Ireland is sending 65 athletes to the Olympic games, 27 of whom are women. Among the athletes covered in the series, there will be Sycerika Mcmahon the 17 year old swimmer and multi gold winning medallist as well as Irelands first ever Olympic qualifier in Modern Pentathlon, Natalya Coyle. Raphoe, Donegals international badminton star; Chloe Magee. Mexican American Irish pole vaulter Tori Pena and long distance marathon runners, Ava Hutchinson and Linda Byrne Winning Women features legendary commentator Jimmy Magee, Olympic silver medalist Sonia O Sullivan and Irish Times athletics correspondent Ian O Riordan, among others. The 8 part series is an Athena Media production, funded through BAI Sound Vision scheme and Broadcast on Newstalk. Producer is Helen Shaw and reporter Lisa Essuman. Episode 8. With London 2012 well under way, we look back at some of the athletes featured in our Winning Women series. Music by Senekah. Judo; Lisa Kearney, 100m Breaststroke; Sycerika McMahon, Modern Pentathlon; Natalya Coyle, Rowing; Sanita Puspure, Race Walking; Olive Loughnane.