Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I’m very excited to publish this episode. This is an experimental format, and we are calling it HERESIES.
The objective of this format is to encourage and celebrate independent thinking.
Please enjoy!
Bios of the co-hosts and guests:
Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. You can find my most recent interview with him at tim.blog/kevinkelly.
He is the author of the new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. Other books by Kevin Kelly include Out of Control, the 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems; The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels; What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology; Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia, and The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a New York Times bestseller.
Kevin is currently co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years. He also has a daily blog; a weekly podcast about cool tools; and a weekly newsletter, Recomendo, which is a free, one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. He is also a Senior Maverick at Wired. He lives in Pacifica, California.
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Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) is a Harvard professor, ethical philosopher and advisor, public intellectual, religious scholar and historian, and author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America. You can find my interview with him at tim.blog/noah.
Noah is the founder of Ethical Compass, which helps clients like Facebook and eBay improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. Noah conceived and designed the Facebook Oversight Board and continues to advise Facebook on ethics and governance issues.
Noah is host of the Deep Background podcast, a policy and public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, and a former contributing writer for The New York Times. He served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of Iraq’s interim constitution.
He earned his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard, finishing first in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil from Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Aristotle’s Ethics. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and clerked for Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court.
He is the author of 10 books, including Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem—and What We Should Do About It; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building; Cool War: The United States, China, and the Future of Global Competition; Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices; and The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.
His upcoming book is Bad Jew: A Perplexed Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People, which is currently available for pre-order.
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Maggie Spivey-Faulkner is an anthropological archaeologist and practitioner of Indigenous archaeology, currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. She also serves as an assistant chief of the Upper Georgia tribal town of the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek, a state-recognized Native American group in South Carolina. Her work focuses on using anthropological data to upend harmful misconceptions of Native American peoples embedded in public policy, science, and the public consciousness.
Maggie was raised in a tight-knit extended family in rural Hephzibah, Georgia. She is an international fellow of The Explorers Club, a former junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 and her A.B. from Harvard College in 2008.
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Joshua L. Steiner is a partner at SSW, a private investment firm, and a senior adviser at Bloomberg, L.P., where he was previously Head of Industry Verticals. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Steiner co-founded and was co-president of Quadrangle Group, LLC, a private equity and asset management firm. Before co-founding Quadrangle, he was a managing director at Lazard. From 1993 to 1995 he served as chief of staff for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
He serves on the boards of Yale University, the International Rescue Committee, and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Steiner received a B.A. in history from Yale and an M.St. in modern history from Oxford University.
Please enjoy!
The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
- Heresy Definition & Meaning | Merriam-Webster
- Opinion: Talk Less. Listen More. Here’s How. | The New York Times
- How to Become a Better Listener | Harvard Business Review
- Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly | Amazon
- Utopia by Thomas More | Amazon
- Study Design 101: Randomized Controlled Trial | The Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library
- Strawman | Your Logical Fallacy Is
- Hephzibah, Georgia | Wikipedia
- Why Sharing Stories Brings People Together | Psychology Today
- Constitution of the United States (1787) | National Archives
- Perspectives on the Constitution: Constitutions Around the World | Constitution Center
- Britain’s Unwritten Constitution | The British Library
- The Powerful Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast | Legends of America
- Haudenosaunee Confederacy
- Wampum | Onondaga Nation
- Burning Man
- 1789: Madison, Speech Introducing Proposed Amendments to the Constitution | Online Library of Liberty
- Number of State Constitutional Amendments in Each State | Ballotpedia
- The Rise of the American Dream and the Forces That Made America | Al Jazeera
- How The Post-War Home Reflects the Changing American Dream | The Atlantic
- The Rage of the Incels | The New Yorker
- Violence Has Grown Since California Incel Shooting | Southern Poverty Law Center
- Addiction: Why Is Drug Use in America on the Rise? | Kolmac
- What Are the Cultural Differences between Europe and United States? | Quora
- American Modernism | Wikipedia
- What Should We Understand about Urbanization in China? | Yale Insights
- Indian Migrations: Indians Are Leaving the Country in Droves. Here’s Where They Are Headed and Why | The Economic Times
- Why Does American Culture Have No Rite of Passage? | Quora
- Keeping up with the Joneses (Idiom) | Wikipedia
- A Reminder That College Ranking Is Pretty Much Meaningless | Reddit
- Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari | Amazon
- Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — And the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari | Amazon
- Johann Hari’s Journey of Discovery About Depression | Filter
- Housing, Family, and Life‐Course in Post‐Growth Japan | Japan Architectural Review
- Why More Americans Are Choosing to Live In Multigenerational Housing | On Point
- British Centre for Durkheimian Studies (BCDS) | Faculty of Theology and Religion
- How America Fell into Toxic Individualism | Psychology Today
- SoHo | The Official Guide to New York City
- Is Moving Closer to Work Financially Worth It? | The Christian Science Monitor
- Elections: Why Fascism Still Has a Hold on Italy | Al Jazeera
- Trump Scammed $250 Million from Supporters Over Election Fraud Claims | Rolling Stone
- How Americans Say Their Priorities Changed during COVID-19 | Pew Research Center
- What Is a Right-to-Work Law, and How Does It Work? | Investopedia
- Opinion: SC Auto Industry Is Rolling into the Future | Greenville Online
- Boeing South Carolina
- Why Aza Raskin Is Building AI to Talk to Animals | Time
- Decoding Non-Human Communication with AI | Earth Species Project
- How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals by Tom Mustill | Amazon
- Are We on the Verge of Chatting with Whales? | Hakai Magazine
- Could This Futuristic Vest Give Us a Sixth Sense? | Smithsonian Magazine
- I Feel Love: MDMA for Autism and Social Anxiety by Rachel Nuwer | Tim Ferriss
- Dog Tips and Training with Tim Ferriss | YouTube
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by Thomas Nagel | The Philosophical Review
- Chimps Have Own ‘Dialects’ But Can Learn Others | ABC Science
- Can Artificial Intelligence Really Help Us Talk to the Animals? | The Guardian
- Killer Whales Can Learn to “Speak Dolphin” | Discover Magazine
- How Bunny the Dog Is Pushing Scientists’ Buttons | The Verge
- Koko the Gorilla’s Best Moments: From Sign Language to Meeting Mister Rogers | Inside Edition
- Chiribiquete National Park: “The Maloca of the Jaguar” | UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- The Persuasive Power of the Wolf Lady | The New Yorker
- Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species | The Tim Ferriss Show #383
- How Can Animal Communicators NOT be Vegan? | Listen To Your Horse
- Why Am I, An Animal Communicator, Not Vegetarian? | InnerSelf.com
- Multispecies Constitution Project | Berggruen Institute
- Logic and Ontology | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Strengthening Animal-Human Relationships as a Doorway to Indigenous Holistic Wellness | Ecopsychology
- Is This Monkey the Inspiration for Dr. Seuss’ Lorax? | Science
- The Lorax by Dr. Seuss | Amazon
- The Intelligent Plant | The New Yorker
- Opinion: The Lost Cultures of Whales | The New York Times
- Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge by Robert Burns | Robert Burns Country
- World’s Worst Genocides | Borgen Magazine
- How the Fijians Cook and Eat “Long Pig” | Pilot (1882)
- We Already Have Human Clones: Identical Twins | Because Science
- 20 Years after Dolly the Sheep’s Debut, Americans Remain Skeptical of Cloning | Pew Research Center
- Public Perspectives on Human Cloning | The Wellcome Trust
- Op-Ed: The Dangers of Cloning | Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership
- Gattaca | Prime Video
- They Went to a Renowned Fertility Doctor. He Secretly Impregnated Them with His Own Sperm | CBC Documentaries
- H. Rept. 108-18 – Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003 | Library of Congress
- Understanding the Risks of IVF Twins and Multiples | Fertility Institute
- The Distinctive ‘Habsburg Jaw’ Was Likely the Result of the Royal Family’s Inbreeding | Smithsonian Magazine
- Inbred Family: The Whittakers | Soft White Underbelly
- Eugenics and Scientific Racism | National Human Genome Research Center
- The Matrix | Prime Video
SHOW NOTES
- [11:34] Defining “heresy.”
- [14:22] Josh’s heresy: We need to teach listening over talking.
- [32:48] Noah’s heresy: Constitutions are overrated.
- [55:01] Maggie’s heresy: American middle-class culture is ruining everything.
- [1:14:54] Tim’s heresy: We’re on the cusp of meaningfully communicating with animals.
- [1:35:23] Kevin’s heresy: Human cloning is OK.
PEOPLE MENTIONED
- Antoinette Delruelle
- Thomas More
- James Madison
- Billy Crystal
- Elon Musk
- Johann Hari
- Émile Durkheim
- Don Draper
- Silvio Berlusconi
- Giorgia Meloni
- Donald Trump
- Aza Raskin
- Tom Mustill
- David Eagleman
- Rachel Nuwer
- Thomas Nagel
- B.F. Skinner
- Bunny
- Koko
- Michael Pollan
- Albert Einstein
- Usain Bolt
- House of Habsburg