Startup Geometry Podcast

Claudia Azula Altucher is an idea machine; an accomplished yoga practitioner and teacher; and a popular podcaster, author and YouTuber. Today, she brings all of this to the podcast to help you get your life on the move. She'll teach you what you need to do to clean up your life, how to get your idea muscles sweating, and why she should be the next CEO of Twitter. You canfind her online at claudiayoga.com, through her podcasts, which include Ask Altucher and Claudia Yoga, and through the Claudia Yoga YouTube Channel. Her books, including, Become an Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are the Currency of the 21st Century  are available through Amazon and, as they say, wherever books are sold. From the book's description: HOW DO I TRANSFORM MY LIFE? The answer is simple: come up with ten ideas  a day.  It doesn't matter if they are good or bad the key is to exercise your 'idea muscle', to keep it toned, and in great shape.  People say ideas are cheap and execution is everything but that is NOT true.  Execution is a consequence, a subset of good, brilliant idea.  And good ideas require daily work.  Ideas may be easy if we are only coming up with one or two but if you open this book to any of the pages  and try to produce more than three, you will feel a burn, scratch your head, and you will be sweating, and working hard.   There is a turning point when you reach idea number 6 for the day, you still have four to go, and your mind muscle is getting a workout.  By the time you list those last ideas to make it to ten you will see for yourself what "sweating the idea muscle" means.   As you practice the daily idea generation you become an idea machine.  When we become idea machines we are flooded with lots of bad ideas but also with some that are very good. This happens by the sheer force of the number, because we are coming up with 3,650 ideas per year (at ten a day).   When you are inspired by an extraordinary idea, all of your thoughts break their chains, you go beyond limitations and your capacity to act expands in every direction.  Forces and abilities you did not know you had come to the surface, and you realize you are capable of doing great things.  As you practice with the suggested prompts in this book your ideas will get better, you will be a source of great insight for others, people will find you magnetic, and they will want to hang out with you because you have so much to offer.   When you practice every day your life will transform, in no more than 180 days, because it has no other evolutionary choice.  Life changes for the better when we become the source of positive, insightful, and helpful ideas.  Don't believe a word I say. Instead, challenge yourself to try it  for the 180 days and see your life transform, in magical ways, in front of your very eyes. If you enjoy the show & would like to hear more episodes, please download, rate and subscribe through iTunes, as your enthusiasm for the show means a lot. Please comment below if you have suggestions for future episodes.

Brad DeLong visits Startup Geometry today to talk about economic currents and current economics. He may or may not have confessed to being a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, a historian in disguise as an economist, and/or a Keynesian. He reviews the effects and effectiveness of US economic policies including the 2009 Recovery Act; the Trans-Pacific Partnership; tax, education, infrastructure and other proposals. We discuss the entertainment revolution and the fall of middle class security, and what to do if someone has a bigger yacht than you. If you enjoy the show & would like to hear more episodes, please download, rate and subscribe through iTunes, as your enthusiasm for the show means a lot. Please comment below if you have suggestions for future episodes. Note: I have to apologize for referring to Lois McMaster Bujold a "very competent writer" in the podcast. I tend toward understatement when in interview mode. She's a tremendous writer, and I read everything she publishes greedily, as soon as it comes out. I facepalm myself regularly. Show Notes [0.00.36] Brad DeLong is a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, John Scalzi, Lois McMaster Bujold, gender politics in SF,  Science fiction and economics as worldbuilding exercise. [0.05.48] How economists are made. Jay Forrester's  world dynamics model, education with Roger Wood, Gregg Erickson, Andrei Schleifer, Larry Summers, being an assistant professor applicant in economics vs. history. [0.09.25] Trends in the economic profession, economics considered as the Nile delta. Ulrika Malmendier , Stefano DellaVigna, and Raj Chetty as leading researchers at the behavioral, individual scale. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez at the macro, sociological scale. [0.13.58] Keeping in mind the lessons of the Great Depression. George Osborne and the perpetual budget surplus idea. [0.16.00] Why is Ricardian Equivalence not a thing? Why should the government invest? What's the benefit to putting off our bills? [0.21.19] What about tax cuts as stimulus? [0.23.23] Why transfer payments, tax credits, infrastructure spending, are better than cutting taxes on the rich from either an efficiency and equity standpoint. The effectiveness and politics of the 2009 Recovery Act. Christina Romer, Barack Obama. $600B in stimulus, where we needed $4T. A fire engine intervenes. [0.29.54] Prospects for improving the situation now. Impact of the social safety net on JK Rowling & entrepreneurs. "You get very few tightrope walkers without a powerful safety net." [0.32.40] Hillary Clinton's agenda. Zero debt grads, infrastructure broadly defined. [0.38.20]Costs and benefits, 20th c. vs. 21st c. Losing the secure middle class existence, gaining better entertainment and communication. Who's rich, and what does that mean psychologically? George Romney vs. Mitt Romney. Jann Wenner vs. Paul Allen. Spalding Gray on the Hamptons. The Buddha: "Desire is infinite." [0.43.00] The end of the fundamental problems (fire, flood, famine, marauding Huns & water buffalo) as we climb the Maslow hierarchy. Noah Smith. The entertainment revolution. [0.47.30] The trade deals. How the TPP could be improved, and what its flaws are. How to negotiate a trade agreement that's better in its distributional effects. [0.55.45] One policy recommendation & one personal recommendation for the listeners. Obama's most costly mistake. The R statistical package. Controlling your infinite desires. Read more from and about Brad DeLong at the Equitablog at the Center for Equitable Growth, or at his blog, DeLong's Grasping Reality, and is readily Google-able.    

In this short preview of my interview with economist Brad Delong, we discuss the economic and social impact of the trade deals currently being negotiated by the US Trade Representative, including the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trade Promotion Authority and related bills under consideration in Congress this month. The full interview will be available next week. Please check back regularly.  

Adam Swartzbaugh, founder of the Genesis Network, works to defeat human trafficking and help rebuild local networks to help with disaster recovery. He's not only an active social entrepreneur, he's also a rapid language learner, world traveler and multi-sport athlete. He's also the only man I know who's won in hand-to-hand combat with a hawk. In this episode of the Startup Geometry Podcast, I talk with Adam about: What made him interested in the problem of human trafficking in Southeast Asia How providing educational opportunities in remote locations is the key to interrupting trafficking networks How finding a calling changes your motivational & energy levels Why attending a highly creative university while doing a highly structured ROTC program made for a powerful combination of experiences What adventure sports can do for you Show links Genesis Network Brown University International Relations Providence ROTC Indian Ocean 2004 tsunami Haiti 2010 earthquake Global Rescue    

"Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue." -Werner Herzog. In this episode, I talk with Christoph Rehage, who filmed himself walking more than 5000km across China over the course of a year. Most of you will be familiar with him from the YouTube video  that resulted from the trip: He's also the author of three books, published in German and Chinese, an avid reader of travel books, collector of fine vodkas, filmmaker, photographer and newspaper columnist. We talk about his early travels, what China looks like beyond Beijing and the big cities, what Germany and China have to teach each other, and how travel improves our lives. Show links: ChristophRehage.com, his website. His books, which I hope will be published in English in the near future:    

Welcome to the Startup Geometry podcast, where we talk to the creators, innovators and explorers who make the world what it is. In this episode, I talk with Steven Brust, author of the Vlad Taltos/Dragaera novels. We talk about his writing process, important influences and future plans. I've been a huge fan of Steven's, ever since his first novel, Jhereg, introduced us to wisecracking assassin Vlad Taltos and his sidekick Loiosh back in 1983. His latest books are Hawk and The Incrementalists. You'll notice that I immediately mispronounce his last name (which is pronounced BROOST, though spelled BRUST), despite having pasted a note with the phonetic spelling of his name to the microphone I was using at the time. Podcasting is HARD. This podcast can be found on iTunes and Stitcher, or accessed directly below. Show links: Dreamcafe, Steven Brust's homepage His Twitter account: @stevenbrust At the Tor.com site: An excerpt from Hawk  An excerpt from The Incrementalists An interview with Jo Walton about the Dragaera books A short story set on Dragaera Fritz Leiber Michael Moorcock Roger Zelazny Skyler White Emma Bull The Isaiah Berlin quote I referenced with regard to Incrementalist politics was in an interview with him which was excerpted in The 50 Year Argument, a documentary on the New York Review of Books, where I first saw and heard it. Similar sentiments could be found elsewhere in his work, for example in Crooked Timber, a collection of his essays and lectures.