Stay ConnectedEvery Thursday, join Jim O’Shaughnessy and his favorite people as they arm you with the tools & fresh perspectives required to upgrade your HumanOS and thrive in our messy, probabilistic world.
Visit our Substack at newsletter.osv.llc for full transcripts, highlights, weekly doses of timeless wisdom, and a bounty of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm that’s interesting!”
Michael Strong has spent decades quietly revolutionizing education by designing innovative schools and programs built around agency, critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity.
He is the founder and CEO of The Socratic Experience, a virtual school that equips students for lifelong happiness and success through Socratic dialogue.
Alongside his work in the US, he has educational consulting experience in multiple developing nations.
And… he's a fellow Minnesotan!
Michael joins the show to discuss whether Socratic education can scale, the benefits of the Mormon model, why high agency is the default, 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.
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Sahil Bloom, a prolific creator, founder and investor, has mastered the art of translating complex ideas about wealth and success into wisdom that resonates with millions. His newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle, grew from just 100 readers to over 800,000 subscribers in three years - a testament to his ability to cut through the noise with clarity and insight. His upcoming book, "The 5 Types of Wealth," challenges our conventional understanding of what it means to be truly wealthy, arguing that financial success is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Here's what makes Sahil fascinating - he's built his empire not through traditional paths (he left his high paying private equity job), but by following his curiosity and sharing what he learns along the way. Today, we'll explore the frameworks that have helped him impact millions, why traditional definitions of success might be holding us back, and how Sahil's relationship with time reshaped the way he thinks about wealth, wisdom, and the pursuit of a meaningful life.
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.
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Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a data scientist and bestselling author, is known for his brilliant use of data to upend conventional wisdom - often with humorous, surprising, and occasionally shocking results. His latest book, Who Makes the NBA, uses data to interrogate some of basketball's biggest questions, consistently yielding unexpected insights. Here's the kicker - he wrote the entire book in just 30 days after discovering Code Interpreter.
Unsurprisingly for a former quant, I had a blast chatting to Seth. Topics discussed include why so many NBA players are called Chris, whether basketball is due for a Moneyball moment, and why so many of us misunderstand the rags-to-riches story.
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.
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Julian Gough sums up his career as follows: "I just sit in my room and write."
Well, I think being an acclaimed children's author, novelist, stage playwright, poet and top-ten Irish musician is a little more impressive than he's letting on…
Oh, and I didn't even mention that he wrote the ending to the computer game Minecraft!
His current project, The Egg and The Rock, puts all of this to shame. This book, which Julian is writing in public on Substack, seeks to do no less than redescribe the universe, arguing that is not some random, dead, purposeless sack of chemicals, but instead a living, evolving organism.
Julian joins me to discuss why the arc of human evolution bends towards man-made black holes, the hidden catastrophe at the heart of materialist science, the strange life of subterranean ice aliens, and MUCH more!
This was such an interesting conversation - I can't wait for you to hear it. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, "Hmm, that's interesting!", check out our Substack.
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Ben Reinhardt is the founder of Speculative Technologies "a nonprofit industrial research lab that's working to unlock a wonderful, abundant future through technologies that don't have a home in other institutions."
He has previously worked at NASA and Bay Area startups/VC firms, founded a startup building robotics for eldercare, and helped entrepreneurs start companies in Singapore. Oh, and he has a Ph.D. in space robotics from Cornell University and is one of the few people with a B.Sc. in history!
Ben, who brings his expertise in emerging technologies to the OSV advisory council, joins the show to discuss why tech people don't do philanthropy, when to trust a credential, why there aren't more government moonshot programs, why academia is beholden to the new, 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.
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My guest on Infinite Loops this week knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur from the time he was buying and selling things on eBay.
Jay Reno claims he didn't know what the word 'arbitrage' meant back then, but if you tug on the colourful threads of his career, you'd reveal the kind of tenacity and resourcefulness that allows special founders like him to repeatedly find value in places that have long been deserted by everybody else.
If you listen in on today's episode, it will become apparent why O'Shaughnessy Ventures invested in Jay and his current venture. Jay is the CEO and Founder of Pointhound, which helps people find amazing deals on flights and travel using their credit card points and miles. He's also a partner at 645 ventures.
Among other fun pursuits, he's spent the last ten years building all sorts of cool things; like a same-day grocery delivery service, a craft coffee company, a restaurant and bar reservation app, and a furniture rental service for city dwellers.
We spent our conversation talking about his advice for first-time founders; his learnings from building Pointhound; the whimsical world of credit card point programmes; his thoughts on consumer psychology; and much more!
For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, "Hmm, that's interesting!", check out our Substack.
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My guest today is Michael Garfield, a paleontologist, futurist, writer, podcast host and strategic advisor whose "mind-jazz" performances — essays, music and fine art — bridge the worlds of art, science and philosophy.
This year, Michael received a $10k O'Shaughnessy Grant for his "Humans On the Loop" discussion series, which explores the nature of agency, power, responsibility and wisdom in the age of automation.
This whirlwind discussion is impossible to sum up in a couple of sentences (just look at the number of books & articles mentioned!) Ultimately, it is a conversation about a subject I think about every day: how we can live curious, collaborative and fulfilling lives in our deeply weird, complex, probabilistic world.
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.
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My guest today is Max Meyer, the proprietor of Arena Magazine, a new quarterly publication exploring technology, capitalism and civilization.
Arena's aim? To "make it okay to dream in public again."
Max and I discuss why he launched a print magazine in 2024, WTF happened to legacy media, the wisdom of Ratatouille 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.
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Parmita Mishra is a computational biologist and the founder & CEO of Precigenetics, a company aiming to become a rocket to precision medicine.
Parmita is deeply knowledgeable about cutting-edge biology, particularly epigenetics — how behavior and environment can affect gene function without altering genetic code. Her passion for advancing our understanding of diseases is inspiring (and contagious: OSV is an investor in Parmita's company!)
In our conversation, Parmita and I discuss everything from the curious case of male baldness to how her parents have saved 50,000 lives.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, highlights, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, "Hmm, that's interesting!", check out our Substack.
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Professor Luis Seco is a mathematician, educator, and investor.
Among many other titles and achievements, he is the Professor of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, Director of the quant research hub Risklab, Chair of the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Fields Institute, and co-founder of the asset management firm Sigma Analysis & Management Ltd.
Got all that?!
This one was really fun, and not just because Luis is a fellow quant. We discuss how maths resembles Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the future of the 'metaversity', the most important lesson Luis gives his students, why investing isn't what it used to be, 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.
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