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Thanks Matt for helping us to benefit from your great insights. On a minute pedantic matter, the river Thames is pronounced with a hard T (Tems).

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My daughter and I were just talking about how refreshing it is when someone mispronounces a word they've read but haven't heard. Russell Brand does it all the time. It shows we're batting above our conversational circles ;-)

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The English language is full of (intentional?) pitfalls that trap non-verbal learners. I now live in Thailand and conversed with a guy who called it thigh-land - may have been Freudian as he was looking for a wife.

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Hahaha. My friend just came back and said she ate her way out. The hotel food was good but the street food was amazing. Per her. She posed with the spider-on-a-stick but that was one of the few things she didn't eat.

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Thai culture is food focused. The English ask about health when meeting informally (how are you?) whereas the Thais ask have you eaten yet? or what have you eaten? The most popular north Thailand dish is lap, which is finely chopped raw pork with herbs and spices - some end up in hospital, some die.

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That's funny. I always wish I could greet people with "What are you reading?" It would make me less resistant to small talk. I'll ask my friend if she tried it, since she's obviously survived.

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I'm getting a lot done while listening to these! During this one I made tempura zucchini blossoms stuffed with lemony ricotta, fish tacos with homemade tortillas, and prepped the chicken with rhubarb vinaigrette.

I'd never read Malthus before but he's a horror! I'll respond to some of this in a future episode but I wanted to mention Yuval Harari, who I've done three episodes on. The latest, linked below, wonders if he's using his role (consciously or subconsciously) to warn us away and give specific advice on how to resist the GR. There are a couple of especially astute commenters who add some examples of this.

And I completely agree with the disconnect of living in Israel and how that prevents him from thinking clearly about ethics and state identity. In my first episode (linked in the latest) I quote him talking about nations making us behave better to each other and the obvious contradiction in that. Thanks for another great history lesson!

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/yuval-harari-and-the-metawealth-miniverse

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