Zikigai

In this conversation, I speak with Adrian (as we were having dinner sometime in September, 2023) on Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Nassim Taleb's Antifragility.

In this conversation, I speak with Egorp on the employment statistics of the Nigerian tech startup ecosystem. We also discussed how people could survive the serious competitive environment in Nigeria.

In this conversation in Spanish with German Giralt, we dive into the Spanish startup ecosystem precisely focusing on founders and their practices. 

In this episode, we take a look into the conversation between Roger Penrose and Lex Fridman. We explore Penrose' conception of consciousness and why he thinks Strong AI proponents might not be correct in their believing that we can make computers conscious. 

In this episode, Mariona talks about her Global Studies final thesis on the Circular Economy and its application in Emilia-Romagna in Italy.

En esta nueva entrega, conversamos con Aitor Álvarez Berazaluce, CTO (Chief Technological Officer) de Ghop. Ghop es una start-up española pionera en lo que se denominan las tiendas inteligentes. Su objetivo es impulsar e implementar puntos de venta sin que en ellas sea necesario para su funcionamiento ninguna persona, a la Amazon. El concepto que propone el primer, y hasta la fecha, único punto de venta, situado en Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), es el de facilitar y simplificar la experiencia de compra del consumidor mediante un entramado de antenas y receptores tras bastidores, que detecta y procesa los cambios en el producto.

Today, we spoke with Vladan about Liquid democracy, new economic models and the future of the global economy. 

Today, me and Adrian spoke about leadership. We spoke about Henry VIII & Queen Elizabeth I and many more. We hope you enjoy it!

Yesterday was earth day, did you notice? Did you care? I personally did not know until we (Adrian Arroyo, myself and Virginia) were about to record the podcast yesterday. What does earth day mean asides it being Google's template for the day yesterday? Why does earth have a day? Is that not funny? How can the very thing which contains us be made to have a day as if it was birthday. Is earth ours or are we earth's? Okay, no more question marks. In today's conversation we spoke about the environment and the audacity of human beings. We spoke about money, and the lack thereof. We spoke about love, and the lack of it. We spoke about how the world is working, and how it can work better. If today's conversation should have a thesis, it would be that we are part of our environment, and because we are, the kind of relationship we have with the earth matters.

In today's conversation, Adrian and I watched two movies which guided our conversation. The two movies were Peaceful Warrior and V for Vendetta. The two movies can themselves be individual discussions but for the sake of today's discussion, we decided to use the themes of paradox, humour and change - three things Soc (Socrates) in the Peaceful Warrior identified as essential for life, to be the framework for our conversation. Along the way, we slipped into talking about ideas (as often happens in open ended conversations) ... oops! We hope you enjoy it.

The idea of knowledge differs depending on the context. Knowledge in academia has a particular connotation hinged on peer-reviews and ability to be as well read as possible. Knowledge in traditional (African and Asian) societies, and to an extent today, is termed as wisdom. By seeing knowledge as wisdom, one sees the hierarchy of age and the need for experience to speak before lack of experience. Through this, elders became the gatekeepers through oral communication. Today, academia has gone beyond that and can be accessible to any mind as long as the mind itself is willing and ready to learn.

In Greek, there is no concrete word for truth. The closest is alíthea which means `unveiling or bringing to life´ - a taking off of the veil because there will always be something else we can uncover in knowledge. The unveiling is the exercising of empirical truth. In this case, empirical truth is in the process of finding the outcome. The in between is itself an exercising of the truer thing that research can grant us. In essence, the research paper is not really the point, the process is.

Entertainment has been on the rise in our generation. Its impact cuts across different aspects of life. Micheal Wolff has called the ability for entertainment to transcend industries as the E-Factor (Entertainment Factor). Disney’s ability to understand the impact of `The Little Mermaid´ to increase their sales through toys is one of such examples. This has largely led to coopetition between different businesses, actors and artists. The whole economy of the entertainment world is an interesting one as it really puts to question whether the “medium” is really the “message” in our time.

In the conversation with Pablo Gaston, a Fashion Designer and student of Parsons in Paris, Adrian Arroyo and I went deep into how both the economy and the entertainment world connect.

Justice has not meant the same thing throughout history. It has changed several times, and each time it changed, it was because of several factors including demography, scale of the land and the authority of the person implementing that justice. To be able to understand when doing good can become a hurdle for justice, we need to understand how justice does not really care about beneficence. Sometimes, giving so much importance to doing good can actually truncate the processes of justice, thereby leading to unresolved cases and individuals' whose sentiments have not be addressed.

We are privileged, through history, to learn of people who were able to influence the tides of time. Privileged to read of others' mistakes and visions even from a classroom centuries away. The present reality of Europe, which in turn is partly of the world as this episode came before the full-on colonization of the world, was gradually moulded by specific individuals. The aim of this podcast is to help us see and understand that there are moments in life that are potentially historical and so to influence the future, we must be conscious of those moments. I will be highlighting this thesis through a diplomatic lense for various reasons: one, because our world needs more diplomats (not in the drinking champagne and dinners in expensive lounges/restaurants sense but in the sense of conscious and careful pragmatism), two, some circumstances might require us to see the bigger picture before being overtly zealous. Clemens Metternich of Austria will be used today, even though so many options exist (e.g. Kaunitz-Rietberg, Kissinger e.t.c.). Why Metternich? Because not many people know his story (as opposed to Kissinger, for example) and because his story is actually an interesting one. Metternich touches that part of us that brings to life the reality that we are all really ambassadors/diplomats (what might be today called 'our own brands').