118: Attention is All You Need: The World After Capital
Made You Think
“The amount of human attention in the world is finite. We have 24 hours in the day, some of which we need to spend paying attention to eating, sleeping and meeting our other needs. The attention during the remaining hours of most people in the world is taken up by having to earn an income and by consuming goods and services, leaving relatively little time for attention to be freely allocated. A hard limit on available attention also exists for humanity as a whole—as I argued earlier, we are headed for peak population, at which point we will no longer be increasing the total amount of...
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117: Winning and Losing Millions in Crypto Confidential
Made You Think
“I could hardly form the words. My mouth wasn’t working. My heart hammered in my ears and pins and needles burned my hands and feet. I squeezed my fists as hard as I could to get them to stop hurting as I stumbled into my office and fumbled through my laptop password, pulling up the message that had thrown me out of bed: “Nat, someone found a way to hack us. It sounds bad. All of our funds might be at risk.” This was the absolute worst-case scenario. The one I’d pushed to the back of my mind. The one I pretended was impossible so I could sleep at night. I’d always accepted...
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116: What Was It All For? WWI by Martin Gilbert
Made You Think
“If the war was to be over by Christmas, as many believed, or at the latest by Easter 1915, tens of thousands of soldiers might be killed or wounded before the guns fell silent. Every army believed that it could crush its opponents within a few months.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! Join us as we dive into The First World War by Martin Gilbert. We'll explore the intricate details of WW1, from the seemingly pointless triggers to the significant aftermath that reshaped the world. We'll also touch on intriguing historical anecdotes, like Germany's return in WW2, and the...
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115: Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
Made You Think
"The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, we explore the concept of time through the lens of one of the most imaginative books of our time, Einstein's Dreams. The novel portrays Albert Einstein as a young scientist grappling with his dreams as he works on his theory of relativity. This episode promises to spark...
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114: Book vs. Big Screen: 3 Body Problem on Netflix
Made You Think
"But if science tells you that something’s impossible, and it happens anyway, it means one of two things. Either the science is wrong, or it’s a scam.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! Today, we're exploring the 3 Body Problem TV series on Netflix, inspired by Cixin Liu's acclaimed novel. Listen in as we discuss Season 1's adaptation from book to screen, analyzing character shifts, narrative changes, and the portrayal of scientific concepts. If you enjoyed The Three-Body Problem book series or consider yourself a sci-fi fanatic, this one is for you! We cover a wide...
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113: Too Much of a Good Thing: Bad Therapy
Made You Think
"We’ve never had a generation more focused on its feelings and, frankly, not one more tyrannized by their feelings.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! Today, we're delving into Abigail Shrier's , a thought-provoking book which highlights the impact of therapy on individuals, especially younger generations. Join us as we explore the nuances of therapy, its incentives, and its effects. We cover a wide range of topics including: Challenges of parenting in a therapy-centric culture Unintended consequences of therapeutic incentives The fine line between taking thoughts too...
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112: Thou Mayest: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Made You Think
“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, Nat, Neil and Adil dive into John Steinbeck's masterpiece, East of Eden....
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111: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Made You Think
"All the facts of science aren't enough to understand the world's meaning. For this, you must step outside the world." Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, we're adventuring into the world of Logicomix, a graphic novel that takes us on a journey through the intricate life of mathematician Bertrand Russell. From the quest for precision that borders on madness to the historical events Russell was embroiled in, we'll explore the complexities of logic, philosophy, and mathematics. We cover a wide range of topics including: Why seeking precision in understanding the...
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110: Fear of Oozification
Made You Think
"Oozification is the process of recursively replacing systems based on numerous larger building blocks, governed by many rules, with ones based on fewer, smaller building blocks, governed by fewer rules, thereby increasing the number of evolutionary possibilities and lowering the number of evolutionary certainties." Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, we're discussing Fear of Oozification, an article by Venkatesh Rao. Get ready to explore the concept of ooziness in technology, learn the signs of oozification, and uncover why the ooze should (or should not) be...
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109: The Pursuit of Intelligence: Flowers for Algernon
Made You Think
“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.” Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! Today, we're delving into Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Join us as we take you through the journey of an intellectually disabled man who undergoes a procedure with the hopes of increasing his mental abilities. We'll unpack several themes that resonate deeply with the human experience, and seek to get our questions answered on what it truly means to be intelligent. We cover a wide range of topics...
info_outline“Across the board, dietary advice typically focuses on what and how much to eat, with remarkably little attention paid to how farming practices influence the nutritional quality of food and whether the “right foods” pack the nutrients they once had.”
Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, we're discussing What Your Food Ate by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Exploring the concept of "food chain reactions," the book unveils the hidden connections between our food choices and their environmental, social, and health impacts. Do you really know what you're eating?
We cover a wide range of topics including:
- The revival of physical bookstores fueled by social media
- How the health of our soil essentially corresponds to our health
- Why nutritional diversity is so important
- The relationship between our diets and overall well-being
- What are our food cravings telling us?
And much more. Please enjoy, and make sure to follow Nat, Neil, and Adil on Twitter and share your thoughts on the episode.
Links from the Episode:
Mentioned in the Show:
- Great Book Series (1:04)
- Barnes and Noble open 30 new stores (2:55)
- Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail (19:17)
- Mother Tongue Cooking Club (33:04)
- Force of Nature (57:55)
- Pluck (58:19)
- TrueMed (59:57)
- Rooted (1:09:26)
- Dutch Meadows Farm
Books Mentioned:
- What Your Food Ate
- The Three-Body Problem (5:00) (Nat's Book Notes)
- Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (14:59)
People Mentioned:
- Anthony Gustin (15:40)
- Wendell Berry (15:48)
- Ben Greenfield (26:57)
- Justin Mares (28:21)
- Miles Snyder (33:01)
- Calley Means (1:01:34)
- Gabe Brown (1:04:24)
Show Topics:
(1:35) The revival of Barnes and Noble along with the influence that 'Booktok' has had on physical book stores.
(5:11) How different content performs on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube. Each platform serves a different purpose whether it's for entertainment or educational.
(12:16) Today, we’re discussing What Your Food Ate by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé! Our food is a lot less nutritionally dense than we realize because of way that the food we eat is grown.
(14:55) The co-authors' first book talks about the importance of caring for the soil, as that's the base for everything we grow. The same food can have such different nutritional values depending on how it was grown or raised.
(20:08) Why nutritional diversity is important and how eating as nutrient dense foods as possible is really important too. When it comes to food, it's best to aim for quality over quantity.
(26:13) When we take a look at the foods we're eating, it makes sense that we may need supplements to give us our essential nutrients that may be otherwise lacking in our diet.
(28:01) What does Europe do differently than the US in terms of growing their food? We also talk about glyphosate levels in the things that we eat.
(33:35) We give a brief overview of how the government has subsidized farmers in the US, which plays a role in our food supply and what we eat.
(38:44) Do our food cravings hint to us what we are deficient in? There have been studies done in infants where they chose foods that were beneficial to them when they were sick.
(40:33) It's shown that diet makes a difference in your overall health. Examples: The British WW2 diet and how a study in Japan showed that diet made a difference in mortality rate for those with lung cancer.
(44:45) How we source our food plays a role in our overall health. The nutritional density of the same food can vary just based on how it was raised.
(50:39) We share some of our current eating habits from kimchi to sauerkraut, and what we will be having less of.
(53:20) So, what solutions do we have and are we trending in the right direction when it comes to the food industry?
(59:29) Regenerative farming - can this be seen on a larger scale? Neil talks about the mission of TrueMed.
(1:06:28) Nutrients in animals have changed over time due to their diet and breeding, and it has an effect on the nutrients we receive from them, too.
(1:10:53) That concludes this episode! Catch us next time where we will be discussing The River of Doubt. As episode 100 approaches us, we're excited to hear your suggestions on what we should do for that episode!
If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a review on iTunes and tell a friend. As always, let us know if you have any book recommendations! You can say hi to us on Twitter @TheRealNeilS, @adilmajid, @nateliason and share your thoughts on this episode.
You can now support Made You Think using the Value-for-Value feature of Podcasting 2.0. This means you can directly tip the co-hosts in BTC with minimal transaction fees. To get started, simply download a podcast app (like Fountain or Breez) that supports Value-for-Value and send some BTC to your in-app wallet. You can then use that to support shows who have opted-in, including Made You Think! We’ll be going with this direct support model moving forward, rather than ads.
Thanks for listening. See you next time!