Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
This is a book about where believers in Effective Altruism (EA), a philosophy for maximising the utility a person has, are coming from. If you can earn substantial money by working in finance, runs the argument, then rather than (for example) training as a doctor and benefitting society directly, you […]
How to Buy an Island
How to Buy an Island is the definitive account of the Barclay brothers, charting their incredible journey to power and fortune. Author Jane Martinson unravels previously-buried stories from the brothers’ six-decade long reign at the peak of British business: from their close association with Margaret Thatcher and the massive wealth they […]
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by Michael Lewis From the author of The Big Short and MoneyBall comes the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its centre. When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities and leaders of small countries all […]
Remake the World
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of […]
Rupert Murdoch and the rise and fall of the press barons: how much power do newspapers still have?
Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol Global media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has announced his retirement as chairman of Fox and News Corp, making way for his son Lachlan. He has been demonised as a puppet master who would pull the strings of politicians behind the scenes, as a man with […]
The Age of Unpeace
-Mark Leonard In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world’s economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of […]
Ways to accelerate grassroots innovation and build a more inclusive future
Entrepreneurs can provide mentorship to facilitate development towards a sustainable circular economic framework. Consensus building and collective action is required to convert the ideas and innovations of knowledge-rich but economically poor individuals and communities, into viable means of raising income, addressing social needs and conserving the environment. Unless we build […]
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
By Rebeca Solnit Rebecca Solnit is one of those freelance intellectuals you hardly hear about anymore—unattached to any academic institution, dependent (I’m guessing) on the kindness of publishers. An apprentice to the world at large, she has made a life’s work out of scavenging for connections. Solnit’s offbeat oeuvre veers […]
What is degrowth?
a radical economic theory born in the 1970s. It broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies, to use less of the world’s dwindling resources. Detractors of degrowth say economic growth has given the world everything from cancer treatments to indoor plumbing. Supporters argue that degrowth doesn’t mean “living in caves […]
Elon Musk by Walter Issacson
Walter Isaacson is the author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. This is the intimate story of one of the most fascinating and controversial innovators of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric […]
What makes a good life?
-Oscar Davis, Indigenous Fellow, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and History, Bond University, Australia. How do we live good, fulfilling lives? Aristotle first took on this question in his Nicomachean Ethics – arguably the first time anyone in Western intellectual history had focused on the subject as a standalone question. He formulated a […]
Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto
Jonathan Taplin is director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and author of Move Fast and Break Things, which was nominated for the Financial Times / McKinsey Business Book of the Year. This is a brilliant takedown and exposé of the great con job of the twenty-first century—the metaverse, […]
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
This is a book about where believers in Effective Altruism (EA), a philosophy for maximising the utility a person has, are coming from. If you can earn substantial money by working in finance, runs the argument, then rather than (for example) training as a doctor and benefitting society directly, you should earn the cash and then donate it to hire mutiple doctors. The theory: make safe, reliable money selling shoves and then use it for good works. Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it; celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it; and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”? As he observed this frenzy, Bloomberg investigative reporter, Zeke Faux, had a nagging feeling: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as curiosity—with a dash of FOMO—would morph into a two-year, globe-spanning quest to understand the wizards behind the world’s new financial machinery. Faux’s investigation would lead him to a schlubby, frizzy-haired twenty-nine-year-old named Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF for short) and a host of other crypto scammers, utopians, and overnight billionaires. Faux follows the trail to a luxury resort in the Bahamas, where SBF boldly declares that he will use his crypto fortune to save the world. Faux talks his way onto the yacht of a former child actor turned crypto impresario and gains access to “ApeFest,” an elite party headlined by Snoop Dogg, by purchasing a $20,000 image of a cartoon monkey. In El Salvador, Faux learns what happens when a country wagers its treasury on Bitcoin, and in the Philippines, he stumbles […]