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The Portal

The Portal

Kast Media

The Portal is an exploration into discovery, including conversations with thought leaders. Host Eric Weinstein, Managing Director of Thiel Capital, brings his unique expertise and diverse roster of guests for a wide range of discussions, including science, culture, business, and capitalism. The show will feature people whose lives demonstrate that portals into what we would normally consider impossible, are indeed possible. Guests include presidential candidate Andrew Yang, NY Times bestselling author Sam Harris, and retired Navy Seal and creator of the hit business podcast Jocko Willink.

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Top 10 The Portal Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Portal episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Portal for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Portal episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

The Portal - 33: Josh Wolfe - The Mind Financing The Future
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05/03/20 • 103 min

Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital is a leading mind in the current wave of venture capitalists making waves. While aware of each other for some time, in this episode Josh sits down with Eric for their first meeting. Together the two explore various topics from comparing notes on their encounters with Jim Watson of DNA fame, to talking about what society gets wrong and how to see that as a source of opportunity.

It is frequently asked what makes a great venture capitalist. This conversation reveals that it is likely not one thing but a combination of rigor, breath, flexibility of mind, openness, self-skepticism and mental courage to take on the unknown. That is because the myriad concerns that arise in any early stage attempt to grab the future by the tail from only the information available to us in the present will easily overwhelm those with narrow specializations. As the conversation takes many twists and turns, Josh's flexibility is put to the test as he freely doles out numerous wise observations from his wealth of experience.

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James O'Keefe is a dangerous man. He records people without their knowledge and publishes the results using the full power of our technological toolkit. He is well versed in the details of the law as to what can and cannot be legally recorded and/or published without the consent or even awareness of his targets. He is willing to risk prison to capture his stories and he has developed a policy of not settling out of court, even when it would be financially advantageous to do so. Clearly, he is willing to risk ruin and hatred for what he is doing, and is therefore not a man to be lightly trifled with.

In this episode, Eric sits down with James to try to understand the mutant future of journalism as it reckons with the power of new technology, while continuing to move away from traditional newspapers and reporting. Eric tries to discover what is truly motivating O'keefe and why he would want to come on a show that has been so openly critical of his organization.

James has many who see him as a crusading hero. He has also been accused of unethical deception, trespassing, entrapment, selective editing, and an entire litany of ethics complaints from traditional media. Oddly, however, more standard reporters working for traditional news desks openly discuss among themselves the professional need to deceive their targets in order to get the truth, or at least the story. Such strategies include using disingenuous flattery, pretending to be the source's friend, threats, the lure of fame, and a host of other edgy techniques to get people to say things that the reporter knows will likely be personally disastrous for the person being quoted.

This raises the question of just what it is that makes James O'Keefe different from a more mainstream reporter. Is it his method, more than his chosen targets? Is it that he really doctors his footage or instead that he has revived older journalistic techniques to hunt new journalists? This interview may not answer all of these questions, but we hope it may prove to be a conversation unlike any you have previously heard on this topic.

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Eric sits down with leading fitness geek, guru, thinker and human guinea-pig Ben Greenfield to learn how one of the world's most highly regarded trainers and fitness experts cuts through the nightmare that is our medical literature.

The academic and medical literature in health and medicine is a disaster. Studies are performed and reported in non-standard and idiosyncratic ways which are then further distorted by a press often looking more for headlines and scoops than facts and rigor. In this episode we get to ask one of the most sought after fitness optimizers how ordinary people can better understand their own minds, brains and bodies in light of the cacophony of 'expert' opinion. Ben, here in his role of master pedagogue, gives detailed implementable answers as well as simple to follow priorities that sum up his years of study and training for the mere mortals who wish to better everything in their lives by tackling health at the fundamental level.

Our Sponsors

Pitney Bowes: Special offer for a FREE 30-day trial PLUS a FREE 10-pound scale using PB.com/PORTAL

Blinkist: Try it FREE for 7 days AND save 25% off your new subscription using Blinkist.com/PORTAL

Athletic Greens: 20 FREE travel packs valued at $79 with your first purchase using Athleticgreens.com/PORTAL

SkillShare: Two whole months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free Skillshare.com/PORTAL

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If you don't know Douglas Murray, in the estimation of the The Portal, this may well be the most important voice you will hear from the United Kingdom for some time. In the tradition of De Tocqueville and Alistair Cook's famous "Letter from America," Douglas Murray is America's true friend. He is not the man who tells you that you look great and laughs at all your jokes, but the one who pulls the big mac out of your mouth, flushes your cigarettes down the toilet, locks your liquor cabinet and personally drives you to rehab until you straighten yourself out.

I have met many men who train in combat sports, or extoll the virtues of masculinity. However, I know of none braver than Douglas Murray. In our time, this is one voice of relentless reason that everyone needs to hear.

Thank you to our sponsors:

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Skillshare.com/ThePortal for a free trial of premium membership

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Indeed.com/Portal free $75 credit

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Netsuite.com/Portal for a free product tour

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Investor Balaji Srinivasan is a highly original thinker in Silicon Valley on Biotech to Blockchain and everything in between. Most recently, he was quite early in warning us about the Corona virus and was ridiculed for his efforts by many in the world of institutional sense-making. That is before people realized he was not wrong, but simply early.

In this episode Eric talks to Balaji on the topic of what it was like to see the future before it arrived and what his crystal ball suggests about what is likely to happen next. As Balaji understands our world, the Corona virus presents a complex set of challenges that will strongly discriminate between those who can pass it's tests and those who will fail them. He sees this resulting in functional Green Zones which will become dominant in the future and Red Zones which will be characterized by dysfunctional responses. Presumably this new divide will then be expected to take over from the "North-South" divide between industrialized and developing nations.

Thank You to Our Sponsors:

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Four Sigmatic: foursigmatic.com/PORTAL for 15% discount

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The Portal - 25: The Construct - Jeffrey Epstein
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03/07/20 • 70 min

Over half a year ago, immediately following the reported death of Jeffrey Epstein, Eric recorded a solo episode that he never released in hopes that its subject matter would be overtaken by investigative journalism. As this has not happened, it is being released with some trepidation in March of 2020 due to the issue of state involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

Eric discusses his memories of his single bizarre meeting (circa 2004?) with Jeffrey Epstein in Epstein's 71st St townhouse in Manhattan. While at that meeting, Eric was surprised by Epstein's strange behaviors and came to the conclusion that it was highly unlikely that Epstein was likely to be the money manager he claimed. Instead, Eric came to the conclusion that the person with whom he was sitting was more probably a construction of one or more intelligence agencies, interested alternatively in powerful actors and scientists.

This 15 year hypothesis and Epstein's mysterious death lead to Eric's four questions:

A) Where are the newspaper stories tracking the financial records from the Villard House offices on Madison Avenue of Jeffrey Epstein's hedge fund and financial management firm J. Epstein & Co.? Who holds these records? What trades do they show? Who were the prime brokers? Where are any former employees who executed trades? Was there never a hedge fund at all? If not, is the inexplicable Epstein fortune and the missing Robert Maxwell fortune actually one and the same fortune?

B) Where are the newspaper stories detailing the known border crossings where Ghislaine Maxwell's passports were last presented to the immigration agents of any government? Where was her last known social engagement? Is she continuing to file and pay taxes? Why is she not being sought by law enforcement and where is the government request for any information as to her last whereabouts? How did this person simply vanish in a world where Tech tracks everyone at all times? Where did her digital trail run cold?

C) Where are the newspaper stories asking whether Jeffrey Epstein was known to be connected to any US or foreign intelligence agencies? Where are the on-the-record stories asking if the US and its allies categorically deny refusing to work with any known child sex traffickers? Why has have such questions not terminated in at least a categorical denial or "no comment" response or even a refusal to discuss "sources and methods"?

D) Why is there no routine call from Journalists, Senators, Congressmen and women, Academics, Clergy or Business leaders for hearings into the intelligence communities in the wake of Epstein and related affairs, as there was during the 1970s when the Church and Pike committees uncovered dirty tricks campaigns against lawful citizens? Why are these agencies now protected and immune in a way that they were not previously?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This "housekeeping" (cough cough) episode of The Portal is only for the hard core listeners who launched this experiment with us. This year we begin to take on the idea of the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex or "DISC".

From "Terms of Service" changes, to selective enforcement of rules, peer review, "Strategic Silence", 'authoritative sources only', deboosting, shadow banning, down ranking, "unbiasing", "Good Censorship", 'diversity and inclusion' oaths, 'cancel culture', no-platforming, mob shaming, certification requirements, "trust and safety" and quality control, we are surrounded by others interested in various forms of idea suppression who would prefer to work in private. Obviously some, but not all, of those ideas are truly dangerous. But many of those ideas never reached us because they threatened institutional players rather than public safety.

This is the year we begin to do the unthinkable: attempt to fully reveal and slip the DISC. Stay tuned to the Portal for 2020. Or feel free to unsubscribe right now before we change it up...hope to see you soon.

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All of our Mice are Broken. On this episode of The Portal, Bret and Eric sit down alone with each other for the first time in public. There was no plan.

There was however, a remarkable story of science at its both best and worst that had not been told in years. After an initial tussle, we dusted off the cobwebs and decided to reconstruct it raw and share it with you, our Portal audience, for the first time. I don't think it will be the last as we are now again looking for our old notes to tighten it up for the next telling. We hope you find it interesting, and that it inspires you younger and less established scientists to tell your stories using this new medium of long form podcasting. We hope the next place you hear this story will be in a biology department seminar room in perhaps Cambridge, Chicago, Princeton, the Bay Area or elsewhere. Until then, be well and have a listen to this initial and raw version.

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Indeed: Indeed.com/portal

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The Portal - 39: Admission To Sugar Baby U.
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07/30/20 • 111 min

One of the pillars of the American Dream has been that of seeing your children go to college. And, for the many families that can't afford the cost of soaring university tuitions, a new controversial institution has arisen to address the problem. That institution is Sugar Baby University, a tuition assistance campaign that attempts to allow attractive young women, and a smaller number of handsome young men, find generous older men to date in the quest to complete a new version of the American Dream by graduating debt free in an era which has made it all but impossible to discharge student debt even in personal bankruptcy since 2005.

This year, Sugar Baby University is 'graduating' it's fifth class with thousands of alumni in its network that stretches from coast to coast and includes institutions of higher education from local community colleges to research universities and ivy league colleges. If you know many young graduates, the chances have been increasing that one of them has quietly matriculated in response to the crisis of crushing debt payments. Yet despite widespread awareness of the program on campuses by students and financial aid advisors via word of mouth, the world of Universities and mainstream media news outlets have tacitly given their approval to the campaign by remaining strangely silent as tuitions have continued to climb an unbelievable average of 8-9% per year.

In this episode we do not pass judgement on Sugar Baby University, it's parent company 'Seeking Arrangement' or it's spokesperson Kimberly De La Cruz, who is our guest. Rather, we celebrate their openness to discuss the situation, and question, instead, the universities, politicians, media, and the lending industry, who have quietly created the desperate need for this program which they do not openly discuss and prefer not to address at all.

We also note that Kimberly is approximately 15 years from the date she took on her own student loans which leaves her still approximately $50,000.00 in debt. We have asked her to start a GoFundMe campaign so that we could make a contribution of $1000 dollars to let her know that we appreciate her honesty in being willing to talk openly about the terrible crisis on which her very business and livelihood now depends. I ask my listeners, who can easily afford it, to simply donate $10 dollars as a simple show of appreciation and solidarity with a woman who I have no doubt would, if it were possible with the wave of a wand, put her own company out of business by making attending college the beginning of a new American Dream, rather than the start of a familiar financial nightmare. If $10.00 is too much, pledge the minimum you can just to send a message of solidarity. The show now gets hundreds of thousands of listens per episode. A small number of contributions will go a long way.

Lastly: She's not the one asking for this. I am. And thank you.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/em369-no-more-student-loans

Thank you to our Sponsors

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Blinkist: start your FREE 7 day trial AND get 25% off a Premium Membership and up to 65% off audiobooks https://blinkist.com/portal

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Philosopher and University of Chicago Professor Agnes Callard sits down with Eric on this episode of the portal. Agnes is a champion of the philosophical tradition of attempting to detach the capacity for inquiry and reason from the fog of feelings and societal taboos that often keep us from delving deeper into the questions that animate our lives.

Agnes began this unusual back and forth by writing an article about status negotiation in first meetings shortly after the pair first met. Eric and Agnes then use the opportunity of this episode to continue this line of thought by exploring the limits of courage and meta-cognition within the examined life of a modern Philosopher. This results in a real-time exploration by two people who mutually respect each other as to whether they can actually negotiate a detached discussion in real time on the very issues of status, feeling, and taboo that may divide them and/or arise between them.

As Agnes has written thoughtfully about the many layers of anger, the conversation culminates by exploring dyadic feelings of hurt and indignation with which we all struggle and suffer in our relationships. Ultimately the two finish this experimental conversation with good cheer, together with a wish to continue the discussion at a later date under continuing mutual fondness and admiration.

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Post your job today at Indeed.com/PORTAL

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FAQ

How many episodes does The Portal have?

The Portal currently has 44 episodes available.

What topics does The Portal cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts and Education.

What is the most popular episode on The Portal?

The episode title '33: Josh Wolfe - The Mind Financing The Future' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on The Portal?

The average episode length on The Portal is 122 minutes.

How often are episodes of The Portal released?

Episodes of The Portal are typically released every 8 days, 3 hours.

When was the first episode of The Portal?

The first episode of The Portal was released on Jun 24, 2019.

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