Infinite Loops

Hi everyone, Jim here. We're taking a short pause on new episodes through the end of August. In the meantime, we're digging out some of our favorite conversations from the archive. This one is from February 2023, so a few of the references have aged since (mine included), but the ideas have only gotten better. Enjoy this one with the wonderfully heretical Jesse Michels.

Jesse Michels is an investor at Thiel Capital and the creator and host of 'American Alchemy', a Youtube channel dedicated to highlighting the most heretical thinkers and ideas of our time.
He joins the show to discuss the transmission theory of consciousness, whether mushrooms are aliens, the reawakening of the Boomers and MUCH more!
Important Links:
- American Alchemy - https://www.youtube.com/@JesseMichels/about
- Jesse's Twitter - https://twitter.com/alchemyamerican


Books Mentioned:
- The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date; by Samuel Arbesman
- The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size; by Tor Norretranders
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas Hofstadter
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World; by David Deutsch
- The Immortality Key : The Secret History of the Religion with No Name; by Brian C. Muraresku
- The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson
- How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence; by Michael Pollan
- Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties; by Tom O'Neill
- Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream; by David McGowan
- Prometheus Rising; by Robert Anton Wilson
- Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World; by Robert Anton Wilson
- The Cosmic Trigger trilogy; by Robert Anton Wilson
- Communion: A True Story; by Whitley Strieber

Nat Eliason joins guest host Jimmy Soni to discuss Founders School, a new high school for entrepreneurs that guarantees students will generate $1 million in gross profit by graduation or get their tuition refunded.

We explore how AI is changing what teenagers can build, why traditional entrepreneurship education falls short, and what happens when we take young people seriously.

Important Links:

Learn more about Founders School: https://founders.school/

Read more from Nat here: https://www.nateliason.com/

Philip Howard joins Infinite Loops to explain how America's legal and regulatory system became too complicated to function effectively—and how we can rebuild it around judgment, accountability, and human agency.
We discuss why government has become unmanageable, how thousand-page rulebooks discourage individual judgment, why infrastructure projects can take decades to approve, and how public institutions end up costing more while delivering less.

Sangeet Choudary joins Infinite Loops to explain why AI's greatest impact will not be automating today's work, but rebuilding the structures beneath it.
 
They discuss AI-native companies, the future of knowledge work, the American and Chinese AI models, creative "exhaust," changing career paths, and how to compete when the rules of the game are constantly being rewritten.

Important Links:

Learn more about Sangeet and Reshuffle here: https://reshufflebook.com/

Read more about the Platform Revolution here: https://platformthinkinglabs.com/materials/platform-revolution

What if the great stories were more than just stories?
Jameson Olsen, host of Becoming the Main Character, joins guest host Liberty to explore fiction as a kind of operating system for life — a way to study agency, ambition, empathy, failure, courage, and change without having to live every consequence yourself. Through Hamlet, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, training montages, NPCs, and the Hero's Journey, they discuss what it means to stop drifting through life and start holding the pen of your own story.

Important Links:

Listen to Jameson's podcast here: https://www.becomingmain.com/