Village Global Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Meaning, Ritual, and Ambiguity with Sarah Perry Oct 10, 2019

Show notes

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.

Values, Social Networks, and The Wisdom Economy with Joe Edelman Oct 08, 2019

Show notes

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.

Narrative Bias, Collective Sense-Making, and AI with Paul Bohm Oct 06, 2019

Show notes

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.

The Meaning Crisis and Silicon Valley with John Vervaeke Oct 03, 2019

Show notes

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.

Sacred Economics and Climate with Charles Eisenstein Oct 01, 2019

Show notes

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.

Complexity, Collective Intelligence, and New Ways of Thinking with Bonnitta Roy Sep 29, 2019

Show notes

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.

The Past, Present, and Future of Biotech and Longevity with Laura Deming and Will Eden Sep 26, 2019

Show notes

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.

Game B in a Silicon Valley Context with Jordan Hall Sep 24, 2019

Show notes

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.

Game B, Liquid Democracy, and Complex Systems with Jim Rutt Sep 22, 2019

Show notes

Jim Rutt (@jim_rutt) joins Erik on this episode. He is an entrepreneur, technologist, research fellow, and host of The Jim Rutt Show.
Note that this episode contains adult language and may not be suitable for listening in all situations.
They discuss:
- The change in the ethos of business over the last several decades, and why it’s now the case in Jim’s opinion that “honesty and good faith is a sucker strategy.”
- Why Jim is no longer an Ayn Randian.
- How to change politics and society via the Game B movement.
- How to design better political systems.
- What liquid democracy entails and how it might be able to solve some of the problems of the current system.
- His argument against the idea of having less voice but more opportunity to exit in political systems.
- The problems he sees with Bitcoin.
- His learnings from his study of cognitive psychology.
- What a “gigantism tax” on huge corporations would look like.
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.

Economic Mobility, The “Experience Economy,” and The Future of Cities with JD Ross and Sean Linehan Sep 19, 2019

Show notes

Erik is joined on this episode by JD Ross (@justindross) and Sean Linehan (@seanlinehan). JD is co-founder of Opendoor and Sean is co-founder of Placement and former VP of Product at Flexport.
They discuss:
- What Sean is doing with Placement and his personal story for where the idea came from.
- How they “navigated the idea maze” and what they learned from the ideating they did.
- What has led to the rise of the ISA and their thoughts on the space.
- How they think about working in spaces that are highly regulated.
- The future of San Francisco as a tech hub.
- Why the next evolution in the US economy will be a shift to an “experience economy.”
- Their thoughts on charter cities, and why JD says there could be a new city built from scratch in the US today.
- The idea of “skills debt” as analogous to technical debt.
- Some of their ideas around new forms of private equity.
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.

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