Vivek, Crypto, Religion, and More

Reading recommendations from Moment of Zen

Hey MOZarts,

If you’re spending Labor Day catching up with the best of your podcast feed, our recent episodes have featured Mike Solana of

Pirate Wires

talking about Peter Thiel, a crypto episode with Dan Romero, and an episode on Vivek where we offer our analysis of his candidacy and air Erik’s 1:1 interview with the man himself.

You might also want to check out some new podcasts! Highly recommend Run the Numbers, a show for tech operators by the great

CJ Gustafson

of

Mostly metrics

about startup finance and business models.

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Book & Article Recommendations From Recent Episodes

Reflecting on who Moment of Zen serves, we love that our audience is smart, curious, and do work to learn more about the books and articles we reference.

Listeners tell us that they’ve fallen into a Joe Henrich rabbithole, or that MOZ was their introduction to Tom Holland. Others have let us know the show is a way for them to access broader ideas about religion or more granularly understand SF politics. Its come to our attention that compiling the references embedded in each episode might be helpful - so we’ll start to do that here. Let us know if you prefer wikipedia links, Amazon links, or other!

Our latest episode with Vivek Ramaswamy was a bit different than our usual episodes: short on references/ articles, but long on takes. Still you might want to check out:

• Vivek Ramaswamy’s books Woke Inc. and Capitalist Punishment

• SVB debate with Vivek Ramaswamy and David Sacks on Megyn Kelly

• Richard Hanania
  ‘s Review of Woke Inc. in American Affairs Journal (2021)

• “Political Rizz”

Our recent Episode 36 on Religion and Canceled Thinkers cited several books you should check out:

• Bruno Maçães, History Has Begun

• Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option

• Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

• Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews

• Antonio’s article for Tablet Magazine, Among the Protesters
  

E37 Mike Solana’s episode referenced:

• René Gerard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

• Peter Thiel, The New Criterion

• Mike Solana’s headline interview in

  Pirate Wires

Peter Thiel: The Diversity Myth, A Retrospective

E38 on Crypto and IQ covered:

• Jesse Pollock on Bankless explaining the Superchain

• Eugene Wei
  How to Blow Up a Timeline

• Charles Murray, The Bell Curve

• Thomas Sowell

• Sam Harris and Ezra Klein’s IQ Debate, Vox

  • Ezra’s piece in Vox

  • Transcript of the debate
    

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Upcoming guests on Moment of Zen

We have

Balaji

coming on with lots of new stuff :) Count on a long reading list and homework when that goes live.

Til then, have a great week.

Moment of Zen is always evolving and we want to know what is most valuable to you. What do you want us to talk about or share in this newsletter? Leave us a note in the comments