Why We See Tigers That Aren't There
The illusion of validity. When narrative coherence overrides evidence. Our flagship episode on the podcast's central thesis — from the ancient Chinese fable of three men making a tiger to the Boxer Rebellion to modern FOMO.
📄 Read TranscriptAnchoring Bias Chestnut Trap
How first impressions distort all subsequent judgment. The ancient Chinese fable applied to modern decision-making.
📄 Read TranscriptBlack Swans Antifragile Mindset
Preparing for the unpreparable. How to build systems that gain from disorder.
📄 Read TranscriptCovering Your Ears to Steal the Bell
The ancient idiom of willful ignorance. Self-deception and the mechanisms we use to avoid uncomfortable truths.
📄 Read TranscriptEpistemic Trespassing and the Dead Seabird
Knowing the limits of your knowledge. When experts step outside their domain and the cost of overconfidence.
📄 Read TranscriptHow Complexity Killed the Qin Dynasty
When systems collapse under their own weight. The first unifier of China brought down by overreach.
📄 Read TranscriptI Ching Great Filter
Why intelligence might be self-limiting. The cosmic hurdle that all civilizations face.
📄 Read TranscriptLoving Painted Dragons
Supernormal stimuli. When artificial signals override natural ones and hijack our reward systems.
📄 Read TranscriptMistaking the Tail for the Elephant
Narrative fallacy. How stories distort reality and why coherent explanations aren't always true.
📄 Read TranscriptThe Imaginary Snake in Your Cup
Pattern recognition. Seeing patterns that don't exist and the evolutionary roots of pareidolia.
📄 Read TranscriptThe Man Who Trusted Data Over Feet
Quantification bias. When metrics replace reality and the dangers of over-reliance on numbers.
📄 Read TranscriptThe Stolen Axe and Misplaced Blame
Fundamental attribution error. Blaming character vs. circumstance and the stories we tell about others.
📄 Read TranscriptThe Trap of Getting Old Before Rich
Time preference. Short-term vs. long-term thinking and the marshmallow test of civilization.
📄 Read TranscriptThe Yellow Emperor Cyberneticist
Feedback loops in natural and artificial systems. Cybernetics and the patterns of control.
📄 Read TranscriptWe Are Already Inside the Singularity
Exponential change and human adaptation. Why we might be past the event horizon already.
📄 Read TranscriptWhy Smart People Are Terrible Communicators
The curse of knowledge. The expert's blind spot and why teaching is harder than knowing.
📄 Read TranscriptWhy Copying Billionaire Routines Backfires
Survivorship bias. Learning from failure, not success. Why the winners are the wrong people to study.
📄 Read TranscriptCounter Hacking the Singularity Dopamine Circus
Reflexivity. How observation changes the observed and the feedback loops of modern attention economies.
📄 Read Transcript