Une Nuit

Oar- Coral Sculpture

War is a violent and bloody business, but it's rarely a no-holds barred free-for-all. Instead, codes of conduct that determine what is and isn't honorable behavior on the battlefield have existed since ancient times.

My guest today explored these various codes in a book she wrote during the decade she spent teaching at the United States Naval Academy. Her name is Shannon French, she's a professor of ethics and philosophy, and her book is The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present. Shannon and I begin our conversation with the pointed questions she used to pose to the cadets she taught as to how being a warrior was different than being a killer or murderer, and when killing is and isn't ethical. She then explains how the warrior codes which developed all around the world arose organically from warriors themselves for their own protection, and how these codes are more about identity than rules. Shannon and I then take a tour of warrior codes across time and culture, starting with the code in Homer's Iliad, and then moving into the strengths and weaknesses of the Stoic philosophy which undergirded the code of the Romans. From there we unpack the code of the medieval knights of Arthurian legend, what American Indians can teach soldiers about the need to make clear transitions between the homefront and the warfront, and how the Bushido code of the samurais sought to balance the influence of four different religions. We end our conversation with the role warrior codes play today in an age of increasingly technologized combat. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/warriorcode.

#625: The Code of the Warrior

Great powers don’t always go great together, often viewing each other as rivals, if not enemies. After the Cold War, the United States was viewed as the last superpower standing. But not only has Russia and its nuclear arsenal stubbornly refused to go away, China has kept on rising. Now, people at the highest levels of government are trying to figure out whether China and the United States can play nice together, but whether the 21st will be the Chinese Century. Joining us to help understand the situation is Matthew Kroenig. Kroenig is both a political scientist and national security strategist at the Atlantic Council.&nbsp; He is also the author of the Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China Matthew Kroenig. <ul><li>Recorded 8/21/20</li><li>The innovators</li><li>Innovating with government money</li><li>Where China’s labor comes from</li><li>China’s soft power strategy</li><li>A coming generational struggle</li></ul> &#10;&nbsp; <hr>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.

Why the U.S. May Come Out on Top Against China

When people start on a self-development journey, they'll sometimes create a bucket list -- all the things, all the typically exciting and pleasurable things, they hope to do before they die. My guest started his own self-improvement journey very differently, by creating an anti-bucket list consisting of things he didn't want to do, and embarking on a "year of adversity."

His name is Ben Aldridge and he's the author of How to Be Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable: 43 Weird & Wonderful Ways to Build a Strong, Resilient Mindset. Ben and I begin our conversation with how his struggle with debilitating panic attacks inspired him to study philosophical and psychological ideas on how to fight back against his anxiety, what he learned that can benefit anyone looking to be more resilient, and how he was particularly inspired by the Stoic idea of intentionally practicing adversity to prepare for adversity. We then talk about the project Ben set for himself of embarking on a year of mental, physical, and skill-based challenges designed to push himself outside his comfort zone, how he decided what kinds of challenges to do, and how doing hard things changed him. From there we get into the specific challenges Ben completed, from taking cold showers to learning Japanese, and what they taught him about self-discipline, facing your fears, and the human potential for growth. We end our conversation with the ways he's continued to push himself after the year of challenges was through, even in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, including climbing Mt. Everest from inside his house.

Get the show notes at aom.is/getuncomfortable.

#640: Weird and Wonderful Ways to Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

In 13 minutes, practice cultivating unconditional friendliness which research has shown to increase happiness, resilience and goal-attainment. As lawyers in training, this meditation can help you be more balanced, rather than needlessly adversarial or aggressive, in your practice.

Lovingkindness - 9-18-20

It's a thought that's crossed many a desk jockey's mind: "Man, I'd love to flee this office, get out from under this fluorescent-lighting, and do something more concrete with my hands. Like, maybe, build a cabin in the woods."

My guests had these thoughts, and unlike most, actually pulled the trigger on their long-standing daydream. Their names are Bryan Schatz and Patrick Hutchison, and in today's episode they share the experience they had as a result and which they wrote about in a recent article for Outside magazine. We begin our conversation with how the idea of quitting their respective jobs as a reporter and copywriter to build a cabin together in the Cascades began as a joke between these two then burned-out 30-something friends, and how it slowly became a real, if still sketchy, plan to make it happen. Bryan and Pat share the idyllic way they thought the project would go, and when the reality of how much harder it would be than they thought set in. We discuss the unexpected challenges that arose, how the tensions of constantly working together affected their relationship, and how they kept an income coming in while on hiatus from full-time employment. We get into how long the cabin, which they originally thought would take two months to build, actually took to finish, the extent to which it went over budget, how they finally felt when it was done, and what they ultimately decided to do with it. We end our conversation with what, despite everything that went wrong, Bryan and Pat gained from the experience, and what they plan to do next.

Get the show notes at aom.is/cabinbuild.

#647: What Happened When Two Friends Left Their Jobs to Build a Cabin Together

What do you imagine when you imagine a terrorist being interrogated by an intelligence officer? The former getting roughed up? The latter yelling, banging his fists on the table, and demanding that the detainee talk?

My guests today argue that using force in this way to get what you want isn't effective when you're dealing with a terrorist, or, for that matter, a teenager. Their names are Laurence and Emily Alison, and they're a married pair of forensic psychologists, as well as the authors of Rapport: The Four Ways to Read People. We begin our conversation with how through their extensive experience in training police, military, and security agencies like the FBI and CIA on how to conduct interrogations of criminals and terrorists, the Alisons discovered that literal and metaphorical browbeating was ineffective in inducing communication and cooperation, and that methods which built rapport were much more successful. We then discuss why building rapport in order to handle conflict, avoid arguments, and create connections is important not only in interrogation rooms but at work and at home. From there we dive into the four elements that make up this model of interpersonal communication, the last of which we demonstrate with some role play. We end our conversation with the idea of the "animal wheel," in which different personality styles are represented by a mouse, lion, T-Rex, and monkey, and the importance of understanding your own interpersonal style and that of the person you're engaging with, so you can predict how they'll react, and adapt accordingly. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/rapport.

#648: Lessons in Building Rapport from Experts in Terrorist Interrogation

Catherine introduces the benefits of doing body scans and leads you in a short practice. Leave feeling relaxed and ever more able to be present for your emotions. (<11 min)

Body Scan 10-1-20

In an age where endless streams of data, options, and information are available, it can feel like every choice -- from what TV show to watch to how to invest our money -- ought to be optimized, and yet making any choice, much less an ideal one, can seem completely overwhelming. How do we figure out what to do? Much of the time, we don't. Instead, we outsource our thinking to technology, experts, and set protocols. This, my guest today says, is where some real problems start.

His name is Dr. Vikram Mansharamani and he's a Harvard lecturer who studies future trends and risks, as well as the author of Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence. Today on the show, Vikram explains how our increasingly complex lives have led us to increasingly rely on algorithms, specialists, and checklists to make decisions, even though experts are best suited to untangling complications rather than complexities. We then discuss the issues that can therefore arise in relying on expert advice, including the siloing of information and the application of misdirected focus. Once we diagnose the problem (and how the problem can, for one thing, muddy medical diagnoses), we turn to the solution, and how we can harness the good that technology and experts can provide, without undermining our ability to still think for ourselves, by doing things like asking experts about their incentives, knowing our own goals, triangulating opinions, and crossing silos. We end our conversation with how the serendipitous discovery of perspectives that can come from flipping through a magazine and browsing a bookstore can be part of restoring self-reliant thinking in the 21st century.

Get the show notes at aom.is/thinkforyourself.

#649: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Outsourced Expertise

Alex Krainer discusses the state of the economy and how the pandemic is an agenda driven by the world’s banking cartel to install a global totalitarian regime, with a cashless society being a core feature of this new order. He believes elites may seek to create diversions such as war with China-Russia-Iran and that what we are currently experiencing is humanity’s defining, existential, and historic struggle between the forces of good and evil.

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Show Notes
Covid 19: the banking cartel is driving the agenda https://thenakedhedgie.com/2020/08/27/covid-19-the-banking-cartel-is-driving-the-agenda
Belarus unwilling to accept additional terms to get foreign loans https://eng.belta.by/president/view/belarus-president-unwilling-to-accept-additional-terms-to-get-foreign-loans-131164-2020/
Rockefeller Global Resilient Cities Network https://www.rockpa.org/project/global-resilient-cities-network
Resilient Cities Concept Paper https://resilientcitiesnetwork.org/downloadable_resources/Programs/ConceptPaper-ResilientCitiesShapingaDigitalWorld-VisaResilientCitiesNetwork.pdf
VISA Cashless Cities Report https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/visa-everywhere/documents/visa-cashless-cities-report.pdf
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on totalitarian pandemic agenda https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=978303295916914&id=100012117577249
Richard Werner - ECB wants to become only bank in town https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdYmdKUiQNw

Websites
The Naked Hedgie https://thenakedhedgie.com
Twitter https://www.twitter.com/NakedHedgie

About Alex Krainer
Alex Krainer is an author and hedge fund manager based in Monaco, born and raised in the former Yugoslavia. As a 17-year old he joined a student exchange program and spent a year in California, ultimately transferring to Switzerland where he completed a degree in Business and Economics. His path led him to Venezuela where he lived for a year and experienced his first banking crisis when 9 of Venezuela’s 16 largest banks failed and brought the country’s economy to a grinding halt.

He returned to Croatia and joined the military where he served through 1995 during the last phases of Croatia’s war of independence. Soon after finishing his military service, Alex took employment at an oil trading company in Monaco.

By the year 2000 he became the firm’s risk manager and originated the firm’s research and development program in market analysis and application of neural networks and artificial intelligence in trading of financial and commodities markets.

By 2007 Alex launched his own investment management business and was among the small minority of managers who generated positive investment returns (+27%) through the GFC. Over the following six years, his fund outperformed the Dow Jones Credit Suisse index of Blue Chip commodities trading funds.

In 2011 Alex joined Altana Wealth with the mandate of managing the firm’s inflation hedging strategy. In recent years, Alex also busied himself as an author. In 2015 he published his first book titled, “Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading.”

Alex wrote his second book, unrelated to trading. “The Killing of William Browder” attempts to deconstruct Bill Browder’s narrative, which has played an important role in the conflict between Russia and the west – a needless conflict that could escalate towards a hot war.

While the future remains to be written, Alex’s endeavors will remain devoted to contributing towards a future endowed with peace, cooperation among nations, prosperity and emancipation of all humanity.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

#648: Lessons in Building Rapport from Experts in Terrorist Interrogation

The Art of Manliness