Libsyn Directory

Natasha Joukovsky — On Recursion, Status Games & Manufactured Nonchalance (EP.268)

Release Date: 05/15/2025

Jesse Michels — American Alchemy (Infinite Loops Classics)

Infinite Loops

Hi everyone, Jim here. We're taking a short pause on new episodes through the end of August. In the meantime, we're digging out some of our favorite conversations from the archive. This one is from February 2023, so a few of the references have aged since (mine included), but the ideas have only gotten better. Enjoy this one with the wonderfully heretical Jesse Michels. Jesse Michels is an investor at Thiel Capital and the creator and host of ‘American Alchemy’, a Youtube channel dedicated to highlighting the most heretical thinkers and ideas of our time. He joins the show to discuss the...

Nat Eliason - The High School That Guarantees You'll Make $1 Million (Ep. 325)

Infinite Loops

Nat Eliason joins guest host Jimmy Soni to discuss Founders School, a new high school for entrepreneurs that guarantees students will generate $1 million in gross profit by graduation or get their tuition refunded. We explore how AI is changing what teenagers can build, why traditional entrepreneurship education falls short, and what happens when we take young people seriously. Important Links: Learn more about Founders School: Read more from Nat here:

Philip Howard - How to Bring Common Sense Back to America (Ep. 324)

Infinite Loops

Philip Howard joins Infinite Loops to explain how America’s legal and regulatory system became too complicated to function effectively—and how we can rebuild it around judgment, accountability, and human agency. We discuss why government has become unmanageable, how thousand-page rulebooks discourage individual judgment, why infrastructure projects can take decades to approve, and how public institutions end up costing more while delivering less.

Sangeet Choudary - How AI Will Reshape the Knowledge Economy (Ep. 323)

Infinite Loops

Sangeet Choudary joins Infinite Loops to explain why AI’s greatest impact will not be automating today’s work, but rebuilding the structures beneath it. They discuss AI-native companies, the future of knowledge work, the American and Chinese AI models, creative “exhaust,” changing career paths, and how to compete when the rules of the game are constantly being rewritten. Important Links: Learn more about Sangeet and Reshuffle here: Read more about the Platform Revolution here:

Jameson Olsen - Becoming the Main Character (Ep. 322)

Infinite Loops

What if the great stories were more than just stories? Jameson Olsen, host of Becoming the Main Character, joins guest host Liberty to explore fiction as a kind of operating system for life — a way to study agency, ambition, empathy, failure, courage, and change without having to live every consequence yourself. Through Hamlet, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, training montages, NPCs, and the Hero’s Journey, they discuss what it means to stop drifting through life and start holding the pen of your own story. Important Links: Listen to Jameson's podcast here:

David Gelles - The Stories that Shape Business (Ep. 321)

Infinite Loops

David Gelles joins guest host Jimmy Soni to discuss his career covering business for The New York Times. They talk about his books - Mindful Work, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, and Dirtbag Billionaire - and the reporting behind major stories on Bernie Madoff, Jack Welch, Boeing's 737 Max crashes, and Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard. David explains how he broke a front-page story five weeks into journalism school, how he convinced Bernie Madoff to grant him a prison interview, and his process for writing books while working full-time. They also discuss raising kids who read for hours every day and...

Gretchen Rubin - How Curiosity Becomes a Calling (Ep. 320)

Infinite Loops

Gretchen Rubin joins guest host and Infinite Books CEO Jimmy Soni to discuss her journey from Supreme Court clerk to bestselling author, the creative obsessions that shaped her career, and the daily habits that fuel her work. They cover her transition from law to writing Power Money Fame Sex, why she often ends up writing the book before the proposal, the art of editing until the final hour (even during pass pages), her 5:30 AM writing routine, and why "know thyself" remains the foundation of all her books - from 40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill to Life in Five Senses. Important Links:...

Ben Cohen - The Hidden Art of Making Things Better (Ep. 319)

Infinite Loops

Wall Street Journal columnist Ben Cohen joins guest host Jimmy Soni, CEO of Infinite Books, to explore the hidden art of making things better. They explore the hot hand phenomenon in basketball, why Moneyball shaped a generation of journalists, the peanut butter and jelly crisis in the Warriors locker room, why ASML is the most important company you’ve never heard of, the strange story of Driscoll's tastiest berries, and the troubled development of The Princess Bride. Important Links: Learn more about Ben here: Read The Science of Success: Read The Hot Hand:

Revan Lazarus - How AI is Rebuilding the Creator Economy (Ep. 318)

Infinite Loops

AI is no longer just a tool creators use to make content faster. It is beginning to reshape the entire creator economy. Revan Lazarus is the founder of Jamie, an AI platform for podcast networks and digital sales teams. He joins Infinite Loops, guest-hosted by Nick Tawil, to discuss how AI is changing podcasting, media sales, audience analytics, creator monetization, brand deals, and the future of content itself. Important Links: Learn more about Jamie AI:

Brian London, Marisa Adler & Eric Stubin - The Hidden Economy of Recycled Clothes (Ep. 317)

Infinite Loops

What actually happens after you donate a bag of clothes? Most people assume it gets sold locally to someone in need, but the reality is much bigger, stranger, and more global. In this episode of Infinite Loops, hosted by OSV’s , we sit down for a roundtable on the hidden global economy of secondhand textiles with , , and , all experts in the field. We discuss how the industry works, why fast fashion has made the problem harder, why 70% of the world uses secondhand clothing, what AI can and can’t solve, and why turning an old shirt into a new shirt is still much harder than it sounds....

More Episodes

Strategy consultant turned writer Natasha Joukovsky joins me to discuss why bourgeois comfort is more conducive to writing than you think, why choice-plots make for better fiction, the eyerolling prevalence of manufactured nonchalance, our shared distaste for Atlantis Bahamas, and MUCH more!

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack.

Important Links:

Show Notes:

“You can do everything, just not at the same time”
It’s Recursion All the Way Down
Pretending to Read vs Actually Reading
Manufactured Nonchalance as a Status Signal
Counter-Signalling, Fake-Famous & Jim’s Cursed Trip to Atlantis Bahamas
On No-Choice Plots & Writing in Service of Beauty
The Self-Deception of Status Hunting
Why Bourgeois Comfort is More Conducive to Art Than You Think
Natasha’s Next Book
“We don’t do auctions”
Natasha as World Empress

Books Mentioned:

The Portrait of a Mirror; by Natasha Joukovsky
The novels of Jane Austen
Status Anxiety; by Alain de Botton
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem); by T.S. Eliot
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System; by Paul Fussell
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Ulysses; by James Joyce
Metamorphosis; by Franz Kafka
Beloved; by Toni Morrison
In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); by Marcel Proust
Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose
The Status Game; by Will Storr
Anna Karenina; by Leo Tolstoy
The Theory of the Leisure Class; by Thorstein Veblen
A Little Life; by Hanya Yanagihara

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