Village Global Podcast

Erik is joined on this episode by Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein). He is a biologist and evolutionary theorist. They discuss:- His start in the field of evolutionary biology and how he realized that the big questions everyone thought had been answered actually only seemed that way because the big questions had stopped being asked.- Why two characteristics of a given creature or object cannot be maximized at the same time, and why thinking in terms of trade-offs explains virtually all of biology and society.- Why he says “any utopian is not welcome at the adult table to discuss modern civilization.”- Why we need to get over the idea that we can blueprint a society that works.- Why markets are excellent at telling us how to do things but terrible at telling us what we should want.- Game B and some of the stubs of that idea that exist today that could be built out.- Why “no honorable person would choose to do what natural selection wants us to do.”Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Bill Janeway, a renowned venture capitalist and economist, shares his insights on the intricate relationship between markets and government. He discusses the dangers of financialization and the lessons from past AI hype cycles. Janeway emphasizes the need for disruptors to understand the systems they are challenging, and he advocates for global cooperation on climate change. He also critiques the balance of decentralization in capitalism and the necessity of government support in driving innovation, highlighting historical examples and the importance of regulatory frameworks.

Sarah Perry (@sarahdoingthing), writer and thinker, joins Erik on this episode. They discuss:- Sarah’s writing career and what it means to “work through your politics” early in your career as a writer.- The purpose of rituals and why democracy is itself a form of ritual.- Why ambiguity increases meaning.- What we as a culture don’t understand about meaning.- The narrative illusion in life, that there’s “nothing but time” and that that is the place from which meaning comes.- How to have non-zero-sum status in a society.- What it means to make the “honest decision.”- Why humor is so powerful.- Why people (mistakenly) romanticize the past.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joe Edelman (@edelwax), philosopher, social scientist, designer, and founder of Human Systems, joins Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Why the internet didn’t achieve its promise of connecting people on a deeper level.- Why we’ve become very good at shopping and networking around goals and preferences but not around values, and how this manifests in the differences between Couchsurfing and Airbnb.- Why he says that philosophers and micro-economists have the best ability to figure out how people make choices, and why their approach is better than that of psychology or neuroscience.- How a “meaning economy” or “wisdom economy” could work.- His explanation for what values mean to him, and how his have changed over time.- How he would change Twitter, Facebook, and Tinder, if he was in charge of product at those companies.- Why people who break down all their decisions in complicated spreadsheets are fooling themselves into thinking they’ve made a better decision.- How metrics and values interact, and how to think about metrics in your personal life.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Paul Bohm (@paulsbohm), investor and entrepreneur. They tackle a variety of topics on this wide-ranging episode, including:- How Paul became fascinated with self-perpetuating systems.- Why the European startup scene is problematic, why he is short Silicon Valley, and the idea of importing law from one jurisdiction to another (as companies do with Delaware C Corp designation). - The idea of narrative bias, what a “zombie field” is, and the rule of “Occam’s Bikini.”- Why he thinks that the prospects for AI and its impact on the world are overrated, despite the increasing hype cycle around the field.- His thoughts on collective sense-making and why, if we can’t escape echo chambers, we need a diversity of echo chambers.- Why he looks to youth as harbingers for how society will evolve in the future.- Influencer culture and why he says the impact of it is actually underrated.Remember to apply for the winter vintage of our Network Catalyst accelerator! It is a personalized program that features masterclasses from some of the best in Silicon Valley and a dedicated network leader focused on making the introductions you need to turbocharge your company. You can participate in-person in San Francisco or virtually from anywhere around the world. Find out more and apply at villageglobal.vc/networkcatalyst.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by John Vervaeke (@vervaeke_john), a psychology and cognitive science professor at the University of Toronto.They discuss:- How John has been working on bridging the gap between cognitive science and spirituality.- Why he says that we need to “awaken” from the meaning crisis, not “solve” it.- What he wants people building virtual reality and social media platforms to know.- Why he says that people these days don’t value democracy the way people did in the past.- The biggest questions that he has been wrestling with in his research.- How meaning is distinct from happiness or well-being.- How “we’ve killed God and replaced it with a marketplace.”- Whether we will see the emergence of new religions, or “upgrades” to the existing ones.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined by Charles Eisenstein (@ceisenstein) on this episode. He is the author of Climate: A New Story and The Ascent of Humanity, among others.They discuss:- The main thread that runs throughout Charles’s works.- Why technological utopias and the age of leisure have been widely predicted but have never actually come about.- How humanity shaping its environment has caused problems for humans, and why trying harder and harder to solve those problems has perpetuated them.- Why the happiest people he meets are in less developed countries.- What he sees as the limits to scientific inquiry.- The ideal scale and scope of markets.- What he would change about society if he could wave a wand.- Whether the planet really needs “the economy to get going again” even though that seems to be what virtually every politician calls for.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this episode by Bonnitta Roy (@bonnittaroy), philosopher, author, organizational consultant, and insight guide.They discuss:- The new way of looking at the world that she advocates for.- Why she says that scientific thinking does not serve humanity well in all situations.- Why people take approaches to problems that result in increasingly complex systems over time.- The limitations of systems thinking and determinism.- Insights from cognitive neuroscience about how the body takes in information.- Her learnings from the organizational consulting that she does and how teams can work more effectively.- The “malware” that she says is present in our ways of thinking about the world, and whether it is innate to humans or a result of the influence of society.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Joining Erik on this episode are Laura Deming (@laurademing), creator of Longevity Fund, and Will Eden (@williamaeden), entrepreneur in residence with Errik Anderson at Ulysses and formerly of Thiel Capital. They talk about:- The history of biotech and the big trends and companies in the space over the past several decades.- The breakdown of the different areas within biotech.- The new business model in biotech that’s been driven by VCs.- How the public market in biotech companies is impacting the private market- The history of the FDA and how it has evolved over time, including the fact that in the beginning, the FDA only looked at whether a drug was safe, not whether it was effective.- How they would change the regulatory environment if they could wave a magic wand.- Why Laura says that the most effective individuals in biotech have a determinate worldview.- How longevity has emerged over the past several years, and the future of work in the space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Jordan Hall (@jgreenhall) joins Erik on this episode. He is founder of Neurohacker Collective and an influential thinker about Game B.In this episode they discuss:- His frustrations with Silicon Valley and what he wishes entrepreneurs understood better about the system in which they are working.- Why he thinks Steve Jobs’ talents could have been put to better use.- The relation of software eating the world to topics around Game B.- His explanation of the difference between something with a lot of complexity versus something that is complicated.- The difference between “valley crossing” and “hill climbing” in modern society.- Why he thinks humanity will run into a problem of scale around the middle of the century.- Why he says that “we are all running a lot of malware.”Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg.