E36: Religion, Canceled Thinkers, LARPing Liberalism, and The End of History

Antonio Garcia Martinez is back from his travels, and joins Dan Romero and Erik Torenberg to dive into his current theory of ‘The End of History’. They also discuss the cancellation of intellectual figures like Richard Hanania, contrast the political situation in Israel with political polarization in the states, and discuss liberalism vs. religion. Towards the end, they talk about social media, crypto, Elon vs Zuck, and Sam Bankman-Fried. If you’re building a business and need compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or HIPAA, head to Vanta.com/zen for $1000 off.

Moment of Zen is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: www.turpentine.co

RECOMMENDED PODCAST:

Check out In The Arena, where entrepreneurs and leaders talk about the biggest crises they've faced. The first few episodes dive into Uber, FTX, BloomTech, and a special extended episode with Martin Shkreli

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-arena/id1691530886

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qmUIJQkuEeyJveFZtrNcl

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InTheArenaPodcast

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Episode Preview

(02:13) Elon Musk vs. Dustin Moskovitz

(05:00) Decarceration in SF

(07:53) What problems should we focus on for the biggest impact?

(12:05) Waiting for Antonio and reflecting on his conversion

(15:30) Moment of Zen: Who’s listening and why? 

(18:00) Behind the scenes at Turpentine network

(19:43) Updates: Spindl and Antonio’s travels to France and Israel

(21:27) Sponsors: Vanta | NetSuite

(26:04) Mapping the left and the right in Israel vs in the US

(34:15) End of history

(37:10) Is Richard Hanania canceled?

(39:50) The new Right

(41:35) Liberalism LARPing

(43:20) LindyMan

(44:50) The movies

(46:40) Why hasn’t there been new religions?

(52:20) Christian vs Jewish narrative

(56:08) Is Modernity a death cult?

(57:10) How do we fix the birth rate?

(01:04:40) Updates: Farcaster and Dan’s take on how we usher in a new era for social media

(01:08:00) Crypto infrastructure companies

(01:13:00) The underrated impact of Apple’s app store 

(01:15:10) What our interest in Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg at the Coliseum reveals about us

(01:18:10) The story about SBF

(01:20:00) Shkreli season (check out In The Arena)

LINKS:

Bruno Maçães, History Has Begun: https://www.amazon.com.au/History-Has-Begun-Bruno-Macaes/dp/1787383016

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Liberalism-Failed-Politics-Culture/dp/0300223447

Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: https://www.amazon.com/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/B09CFYVY3F/

X:

@antoniogm (Antonio)

@dwr (Dan)

@eriktorenberg (Erik)

@MOZ_Podcast

SPONSORS: Vanta | NetSuite

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