Ep 274 - Bryan Callen and Hunter Maats Save The World With Books: WTF Is Mixed Mental Arts?

·43 min·4 clips

Brian Callen and Hunter Maats announce they'll stop interviewing authors and instead dissect great books to build a mental MMA.

The episode begins with hosts Brian Callen and Hunter Maats announcing a shift in their podcast format: they will no longer primarily interview authors but instead read and discuss great books to extract key ideas. They emphasize the importance of avoiding one-sided narratives, using examples like pharmaceutical cheerleaders and nutrition debates to illustrate the noise in public discourse. The hosts compare their approach to mixed martial arts, aiming to provide a rounded mental game by borrowing the best cultural software from various sources. They introduce the concept of 'MMA for the mind,' where they will plug educational holes and help listeners become more competent than specialized academics. A major focus is Joseph Henrich's book 'The Secret of Our Success,' which Hunter claims answered the fundamental question of human uniqueness last year. The book posits that human success comes from the ability to accumulate culture across generations, unlike animals like chimps. The hosts discuss how this insight applies to societal structures like democracy and capitalism, noting that values and institutions vary globally. Personal anecdotes, such as Hunter's family fleeing Libya and Brian's airport bribery story, highlight cultural differences in trust and rule-following. They explore controversial topics, including which cultural aspects are better for modern prosperity, citing Chinese education values as potentially superior to Western models. The episode critiques simplistic narratives in politics, like those of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, which demonize groups rather than addressing nuanced ideas. References to historical examples, such as the Meiji Restoration, illustrate how societies can selectively adopt beneficial cultural elements. The hosts plan to create a reading list and potentially write a book to synthesize these ideas, inviting listener feedback on topics to cover. They conclude by teasing a future discussion on Henrich's book and possibly interviewing him, emphasizing their goal to build a structured, sequential worldview over time.

As heard by us

Callen and Motz recast their show around books, cultural accumulation and the risk of mistaking one story for the whole.

Brian Callen and Hunter Motz recast the show around a big question: what makes humans successful? Rather than regularly interviewing authors, they plan to discuss great books and use them to examine cultural accumulation, the institutions, technologies, beliefs and values handed…

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Why you'd press play

You get a messy, ambitious argument about why accumulated culture - not one smart person - moves societies forward.

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