It's a weird time to listen to good folk like yourself. On one hand it's a great reminder of how many intelligent, committed, passionate Americans are there fighting the good fight. On the other hand, I feel on tech and defence, Europe she cut off links with this administration and get real on 🇷🇺

Now I know I'm at risk of being cast out from the Maggs presence, but normally I'm not a big superheroes guy in audio... but this does sound pretty exciting!

Ever more personal relationships have been brokered and broken by remote billionaires, with undefined and unregulated agendas. Its actually a new form of totalitarianism - not controlling, as in the past - but still getting in between each social interaction.

I recently heard a Swede and Dane suggests they should renew their long history of feuds by an annual battle with Minecraft and Lego swords. It honestly seemed like such a fun idea and a proper way of dealing with history.

The thing that blow my mind on a daily basis is just how much Twitter has changed. It's unrecognisable now. Either the world is an irredeemable morass of reactionary opinion and Alice in Wonderland moral relativism or the bots have gone absolutely nuts.

The only thing I think these discussions miss is that nearly all the West is living beyond its means in government finance and this is more acute in Europe due to an older age profile and a dearth of cheap energy. A new world order for Europe must address the miltary, energy and finance crisis.

Great episode. It fascinates me why today's alt-right doesn't much care for defence or in Farage's case why more sovereign control of the nuclear deterrent might not be attractive to an isolationist. It feels like we've replaced former extreme right miltarism with alt right gerontocracy.

This is why people are choosing not to have children.

In an almost Shakespearian twist, without the USSR to embody the authoritarian threat we must strive against, faith in the importance6 of liberalism is hollowed out and we are unable to perceive our own declining institutions, which a bitter and corrupting Russia is keen to accelerate.

I found this a fascinating concept. Maybe, if reframed, the Cold War started with Waterloo and the uneasy Concert of Europe between the liberal Atlantic and authoritarian Continental powers, but also within our minds between traditionalist commutatian impulses and more individual rules based system.

I wonder whose immortality he specifically has in mind.

The sad irony is that the Matrix analogy is correct. We are the feed that enables AI to continually better itself. We have given any geninuely informed consent but we're lulled by the other services the digital revolution offers.

I find it a weird cognitive dissonance. There are so many geninuely great, thoughtful, generous, and committed Americans I read, listen to, and work with, and then there is this mess of a movement which is like the popularist nut jobs elsewhere just turned up to 11 and on steriods.

I think navigation in the audio fiction space is a bit broken. A very low bar to publish is great news for creators but makes it a lottery for listeners.

That is so harsh!

Sadly, it'll probably pay well to bank on exceptionalism in the short term for oil and gas, though maybe less so with coal. Feels like the state is banking a lot on short term gain, though.

It's a hybrid production with multiple narrators/dialogues & sound effects, but noticeably no attempt was made to describe the dragons in sound, despite them being very tangibly present. Over 5 hrs it felt like have listened to a very immersive 20 hr audio book. A really interesting approach.