Dan Romero, Antonio Garcia Martinez, and Erik Torenberg sit down with Professor Walter Russel Mead, an American academic, author, WSJ- and Tablet-contributor, and podcast host to discuss the shape of the next era after our information age. Moment of Zen is part of Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co RECOMMENDED PODCASTS: Founding a business is just the tip of the iceberg; the real complexity comes with scaling it. On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Hear all about the tactical challenges of scaling from the people that built up the world’s leading companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Lattice. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 -- Walter Russell Mead is one of our favorite guests on Moment of Zen, and he also has his own show called What Really Matters, a new podcast from Tablet Magazine (whose editor in chief, Alana Newhouse, was also on our show recently). Every week on What Really Matters, Mead and deputy editor Jeremy Stern analyze the revolutionary changes upending American life and connect them to larger trends. Go to tabletmag.com/podcasts/what-really-matters or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. TIMESTAMPS: (01:00) Episode Preview (03:30) What is the American Crisis right now? (08:00) New social model for the information age (11:24) Sponsors: Vanta | NetSuite (16:30) A(brahamic) bomb and revolutionary change in human society (22:40) Has religion peaked or is the world getting more religious? (28:00) Who believes in happy endings? (30:30) Israel vs. American Jews (33:00) Israeli-Palestinian conflict still matters, just not to Israelis in power (36:40) Characterizing American foreign policy (45:00) Nation states vs Network States h/t Balaji (54:20) Defining the next era of Post Liberalism (1:01:00) Populists, Plutocrats, Technocrats, and the Intelligentsia (1:11:00) Israel’s future and what’s at stake (1:24:00) Could California be Republican again? (1:30:00) Golda Meir and female power (1:33:50) Arafat and a jasmine-scented night in Gaza LINKS: -What Really Matters podcast: https://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/what-really-matters -Walter Russell Mead, The A(braham) Bomb: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/abraham-bomb-via-meadia-walter-russell-mead -Antonio Garcia Martinez, Among the Protestors: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/among-the-protesters-antonio-garcia-martinez -Go back and listen to our Moment of Zen episodes with Tablet’s Editor in Chief Alana Newhouse (E29), Nadia Asparouhova (E26) and Liel Leibovitz (E23) X / TWITTER @wrmead (Walter) @WRMpod (What Really Matters) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @antoniogm (Antonio) @dwr (Dan) @moz_podcast (Moment of Zen) SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite Are you building a business? If you’re looking for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA compliance, head to Vanta. Achieving compliance can actually unlock major growth for your company and build customer loyalty. Vanta automates up to 90% of Compliance work, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving 85% of associated costs. Moment of Zen listeners get $1000 off at https://www.vanta.com/zen NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/ZEN and download your own customized KPI checklist.

Balaji Srinivasan returns to go deeper into his theory of the Social Lens. Balaji, Erik, and Dan discuss the tactics the Gray tribe can use to create, identify, grow, and scale their power, how the tribal lens maps to geopolitics, the Blue playbook through the last several decades of world history, and more. We're proudly sponsored by Vanta. Get $1000 off Vanta with https://www.vanta.com/zen Note: This is an unfiltered discussion that functions as an early draft for an essay and video Balaji plans to release soon. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) - Episode Preview (02:20) - You can found a tribe just like you can found a startup (10:30) - Exit vs Reform (16:42) - Sponsors: Vanta, NetSuite (19:05) - Any statement can be problematized (29:00) - Can you presume societal stability? Not if you’re thinking like a CEO (34:00) - Strength of network effects (52:20) - Inequality has decreased (55:15) - Japanese vs Chinese economic model for innovation (01:07:45) - Asia is rising, the US is in relative decline (01:30:15) - How Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Garry Tan respond to Blue or reform it from within (01:38:00) - The Market for Revolutionaries: Myanmar, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Hong Kong and China (01:48:00) - Blue is a business model (01:57:00) - Charity is dependency. Investment is independence. (02:06:00) - Who defines democracy, and where is the term going? (02:27:00) - Grays attract the smartest defectors (02:36:30) - How the Gray territory gets built on land (02:49:49) - What is the highest belief and ideology of each tribe? (02:56:00) - Parallels with the Soviet Union and India (03:15:00) - Mapping the advantages to Blue and Gray (03:28:50) - How Gray beats Blue for control of cities (03:33:00) - Gray pride parade (03:40:00) - Winning the police (03:50:00) - How the Grays in San Francisco will organize themselves (03:55:30 - The power of Elon renaming Twitter (03:57:00) - Small business owners and the working class (04:00:00) - The CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) in reverse (04:17:00) - AI will help expedite the Gray cause (04:20:00) - Can this really happen? SELECT LINKS: The Network State Conference in Amsterdam on October 30 : https://lu.ma/tnsconf Ronald Brownstein, America is Growing Apart, For Good https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/ 9 dot puzzle: https://edcraft.io/blog/all-articles/9-dots-puzzle-how-to-connect-9-dots-with-4-lines Steve Weinberg, Taking on the Trust - https://a.co/d/4lsaEmi Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State - https://a.co/d/gigQiPJ Sanjana Friedman, San Francisco’s Homeless Ticking Time Bomb https://www.piratewires.com/p/san-francisco-homeless-ticking-time-bomb X / Twitter @balajis (Balaji) @dwr (Dan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @MOZ_Podcast SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite Are you building a business? If you’re looking for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA compliance, head to Vanta. Achieving compliance can actually unlock major growth for your company and build customer loyalty. Vanta automates up to 90% of Compliance work, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving 85% of associated costs. Moment of Zen listeners get $1000 off at https://www.vanta.com/zen NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/ZEN and download your own customized KPI checklist.

Balaji Srinivasan joins Erik Torenberg and Dan Romero on the Moment of Zen podcast to share his new theory of the Tribal Lens, why cognitive territories will gain increasingly more power than land-defined territories, why the US is no longer a beacon in the world, and Balaji strategy to fix San Francisco. Make sure you're subscribed to https://link.chtbl.com/moz to get notified when we release Part 2. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Founding a business is just the tip of the iceberg; the real complexity comes with scaling it. On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Hear all about the tactical challenges of scaling from the people that built up the world’s leading companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Lattice. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 Moment of Zen is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co RECOMMENDED PODCAST: ECON 102 w/ Noah Smith Subscribe: https://link.chtbl.com/Econ102 TOPICS DISCUSSED: (00:00) Episode Preview (07:50) Cloud Cartography: If you don't control the cognitive territory. you don't control the lands (13:30) Sponsors: Vanta, NetSuite (17:30) Why people don't take the internet seriously? (22:30) The US is not a nation state (23:45) A civilization state (25:17) Why Americans should learn about India's history / India and the US are converging (30:50) Why a civil war doesn't seem realistic to people now (38:55) Where else should a talented person move? (41:35) Asia is the new global center, (47:10) Internet first, not America first (01:01:45) Software vs. Hardware (01:05:45) Elon and the Grey Strategy (01:16:40) Israel is looking away from the US for partners (01:19:00) The Tribal lens integrates both domestic and foreign politics (01:21:00) Will blue always win?  (01:23:43) Making sense of the China meltdown story (01:34:55) How to fix San Francisco (01:50:30) Irrationality is an advantage (01:57:00) Building gray turf (02:03:00) Mapping the blues, reds, and grays in San Francisco (02:05:20) Dan and Erik debrief SELECT LINKS * For more shownotes directly to your inbox, subscribe to our Substack: https://momentofzen.substack.com/ Not Too Long Ago Americans Didn't Care About Taiwan, https://x.com/balajis/status/1657852505425063936?s=46 Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz, End US Aid to Israel, Tablet Magazine - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/end-american-aid-israel Louis-Vincent Gave, Making Sense of the China Meltdown Story , Gavekal - https://research.gavekal.com/article/making-sense-of-the-china-meltdown-story/ Beautifultrouble.org - Balaji refers to this as the degrowth handbook X / Twitter @balajis (Balaji) @dwr (Dan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @MOZ_Podcast SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite Are you building a business? If you’re looking for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA compliance, head to Vanta. Achieving compliance can actually unlock major growth for your company and build customer loyalty. Vanta automates up to 90% of Compliance work, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving 85% of associated costs. Moment of Zen listeners get $1000 off at https://www.vanta.com/zen NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/ZEN and download your own customized KPI checklist.

On this episode, Erik Torenberg and Dan Romero analyze what Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise in the polls really means, where he goes from here, and we air Erik’s full interview with Vivek from this spring. Vivek discusses his transformation from founder to candidate, his views on Silicon Valley, his concept of meritocracy, depoliticizing corporations, and lays out his policy proposals. We're proudly sponsored by Vanta. Get $1000 off Vanta with https://www.vanta.com/zen Moment of Zen is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Founding a business is just the tip of the iceberg; the real complexity comes with scaling it. On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Hear all about the tactical challenges of scaling from the people that built up the world’s leading companies like Stripe, Ramp, and Lattice. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 TOPICS DISCUSSED: (00:00) Episode Preview (02:23) What is the excitement about Vivek really about? (05:00) Why don’t democrats nominate business people? (06:28) Who is Vivek’s constituency? (08:18) What happens in a world where Trump doesn’t exist? (10:20) Immigration stance differences between Trump and Vivek (14:57) Vivek’s anti woke platform vs DeSantis’ anti woke legislations (16:50) Vivek as a right wing Elizabeth Warren Civility (19:15) Is there a way for a republican to be cool? (22:45) Republicans want an attack dog (24:00) 2028 and beyond (29:55) Interview: When Vivek set his sights on running for president (36:20) Vivek’s presidential platform: Affirmative action, Climate, Fed, Drug crisis (44:11) Where Vivek overlaps/differs with Silicon Valley: free speech, DEI, SVB (51:20) How Vivek conceptualizes a meritocracy (58:00) How to remove politics from corporations (01:05:32) Silicon Valley should empathize more with the rest of the country? (01:16:35) Defining “woke” (01:22:40) What’s it like to run a presidential campaign X / Twitter @VivekGRamaswamy (Vivek) @dwr (Dan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @MOZ_Podcast SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite Are you building a business? If you’re looking for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA compliance, head to Vanta. Achieving compliance can actually unlock major growth for your company and build customer loyalty. Vanta automates up to 90% of Compliance work, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving 85% of associated costs. Moment of Zen listeners get $1000 off at www.vanta.com/zen NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/ZEN and download your own customized KPI checklist.

Dan Romero and Erik Torenberg discuss what is exciting in Crypto right now, covering friend.tech, Farcaster’s updates, PWAs, superchain 2a, and infrastructure improvements for more use cases. If you’re building a business and need compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA, head to www.vanta.com/zen for $1000 off. RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Founding a business is just the tip of the iceberg; the real complexity comes with scaling it. On 1 to 1000, hosts Jack Altman and Erik Torenberg dig deep into the inevitable twists and turns operators encounter along the journey of turning an idea into a business. Our first episode with Eric Glyman of Ramp is out now: https://link.chtbl.com/1to1000 Moment of Zen is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co TOPICS DISCUSSED: (00:01:36) How Dan is building Farcaster (00:02:39) Using Ethereum is expensive (00:04:14) Crypto and climate change (00:05:38) Moving Farcaster over to the L2 (layer 2) Ethereum ecosystem (00:06:50) Dan's goal to abstract away the complexity of crypto (00:07:49) Dan's take on the buzzy new friend.tech (00:12:27) Friend.tech's smart use of a PWA + impressive growth (00:17:11) Coinbase has its own blockchain now (00:18:23) Debating the crypto has no use case critique (00:21:47) Are SPACs worse than Crypto's scammy retail stuff (00:24:21) Chamath and accountability (00:30:24) How will crypto get to a billion users? (00:39:11) The case for Farcaster and the future of social media (00:47:55) Where will the influential parts of crypto Twitter go? (00:52:25) How much value can be captured by subscaled social networks? (00:56:51) Why we'll see startups move away from venture-backed business models (00:58:24) Billionaires that dominate niches (00:59:26) Most successful media company of the past decade (01:03:59) Crypto's regulations are a gray cloud over financial innovation (01:08:08) Opportunities to expand upside for people, from businesses to UBI (01:09:12) Crypto is not politicized (01:14:40) Genetics and IQ (01:24:04) The Sam Harris + Ezra Klein Charles Murray debate (01:32:48) Why this is the next major culture war issue RELATED EPISODES: Upstream w/ Erik Torenberg ft/ Sam Harris Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DeR2VZOjpnE9pQ9b3Om9S?si=u662cEDUTt6D27D09Jnk0w Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e10-sam-harris-on-populism-polarization-and-his-beef/id1678893467?i=1000614749192 Upstream with Erik Torenberg ft/ Ezra Klein Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/36vTPPcpisMVXSgq9bnj1w?si=WEysQWc4RouTxd1hzNl1iw Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e3-ezra-klein-on-supply-side-progressivism-polarization/id1678893467?i=1000607892890 LINKS: Farcaster: https://www.farcaster.xyz/ friend tech: friend.tech Vox debate and article: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast and https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden-knowledge-podcast-bell-curve X / Twitter @dwr (Dan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @MOZ_Podcast SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite Vanta Are you building a business? If you’re looking for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA compliance, head to Vanta. Achieving compliance can actually unlock major growth for your company and build customer loyalty. Vanta automates up to 90% of Compliance work, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving 85% of associated costs. Moment of Zen listeners get $1000 off at www.vanta.com/zen NetSuite NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you’re looking for an ERP platform, head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/ZEN and download your own customized KPI checklist.