#608: Signal Over Noise with Noah Feldman — The War in Ukraine (Recap and Predictions), The Machiavelli of Maryland, Best Books to Understand Geopolitics, The Battles for Free Speech on Social Media, Metaverse Challenges, and More

Tim Ferriss and Noah Feldman on The War in Ukraine (Recap
and Predictions), The Machiavelli of Maryland, Best Books to
Understand Geopolitics, The Battles for Free Speech on Social
Media, Metaverse Challenges, and More | Brought to you
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I rarely cover current events on this podcast, but this is a new
experiment.


To avoid overwhelm, I do not track the news 24/7 with doom
scrolling. Rather, I depend on conversations with my smartest
friends to find the signal in the noise. The following
conversation with Noah
Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) is an example of such a
conversation, very similar to what we would have offline, and I
wanted to share it with you. I learned a ton and changed my
thinking a lot, which I always do.


Noah Feldman is a Harvard professor, ethical philosopher and
advisor, public intellectual, religious scholar and historian,
and author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken
Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.
You can find my interview with him at tim.blog/noah.


Noah is the founder of Ethical Compass, which helps clients like
Facebook and eBay improve ethical decision-making by creating and
implementing new governance solutions. Noah conceived and
designed the Facebook Oversight Board and continues to
advise Facebook on ethics and governance issues.


Feldman is host of the Deep Background podcast, a
policy and public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion,
and a former contributing writer for The New York Times. He
served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq and subsequently advised members of
the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of Iraq’s interim
constitution.


He earned his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard, finishing first
in his class. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil
from Oxford University, writing his dissertation on Aristotle’s
Ethics. He received his JD from Yale Law School and clerked for
Justice David Souter of the US Supreme Court.


He is the author of 10 books, including Divided by God:
America’s Church-State Problem — and What We Should Do About
It; What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation
Building; Cool War: The United States, China, and the Future
of Global Competition; Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs
of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices; and The Three Lives
of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.


Please let me know what you think of this experimental
format by sending me feedback on
Twitter @tferriss. Do
you love it? Do you hate it? Have suggestions for improvement?
The usual long-form interviews with evergreen questions will
still be the default and bread and butter of this podcast, but if
you like this, I could see doing more of them, perhaps once a
month or once every two months. It’s just an easy way to get
caught up without drowning in news.


Please enjoy!


NOTE: This episode was recorded on June 22nd.


*


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*


[08:40] Russia vs. Ukraine: why?


[17:31] The first Web3 war?


[25:24] Will punishing Russian oligarchs make Putin blink?


[29:06] Did Putin miscalculate, or is he just playing a longer
game?


[38:19] Could this conflict affect the US dollar’s status as a
reserve currency?


[42:11] Exploring base/best/worst possible outcomes of the
conflict.


[47:56] Recommended reading.


[58:15] Free speech in the age of social media.


[1:14:07] What’s at stake as free speech is legally reevaluated?


[1:23:18] Enforcement, decentralization, and free market
considerations.


[1:31:09] Where Noah sees the free speech conversation in three
years.


[1:35:50] Will the future be colored predominantly in AR or VR?


[1:39:45] Parting thoughts.


*


For show notes and past guests
on The Tim Ferriss Show,
please
visit tim.blog/podcast.


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Ferriss Show, please
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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss
Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh
Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin
Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew
McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth
Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah
Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine
Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary
Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael
Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria
Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de
Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly
Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard
Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael
Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan
Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit
Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim
Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval
Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth
Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard
Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid
Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick
Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many
more.


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