Nassim Taleb on What Bitcoiners, Anti-Vaxxers and Deadlift Maxis All Get Wrong

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:17)

Tracy, welcome back. You've been on vacation. It's so exciting to be recording an episode with you again.

Aw, it's actually really nice. I missed you, for real. I missed you, for real.

Tracy Alloway (0:26)

Thank you. I actually, I think this might be the first time in my life that I've been happy to come back from vacation. Honestly, a lot happened while I was away. It was beautiful, by the way. I went to the Seychelles for two weeks. It's not, I'm not a huge beach vacation person, so it wasn't a place that I would normally go to, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Highly recommend it. I think it's ruined me for all other beaches in the future, but I am happy to be back and recording with you once again. And I missed you too, George.

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

Thank you. It's great to have you back and you sound great. You know what I did this week?

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

I can take a guess, but go ahead.

Joe Weisenthal (1:12)

I've been lifting weights at the gym and I'm not going to say what my PR is.

Tracy Alloway (1:16)

I was about to say, dare I ask you what your deadlift is?

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

I'm still very weak. I'm not going to say what my PR is, my personal record is, but it was very satisfying. I felt good.

And now I'm going to keep doing it. I've been doing weights for a little while.

Tracy Alloway (1:30)

But Joe, is it a real deadlift if you're not bragging about it on Twitter?

Joe Weisenthal (1:36)

When I hit bragging level, I will definitely brag. But I bet everyone can figure out where I am going with that, because we're going to be speaking today with one of the foremost, when I think of this guest, I think of it as many things, but I think of him as one of the foremost deadlift advocates in public.

Tracy Alloway (1:55)

I of course know exactly who you're talking about. This is someone, certainly a personality and a character, especially online, on Twitter. I think we both at various times been blocked by him.

As have quite a few people. Yeah, so I think I tweeted this while I was on vacation actually, but one of the craziest things to me about 2023 is that I find myself not only unblocked by this guest, but also nodding my head vociferously in agreement with him on a variety of topics.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

2023 is a very weird year for that very reason because it's like, oh yeah, totally right. Anyway, we just gotta get right into it. So we are of course speaking with the one and only Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He is a professor at NYU.

He is an advisor at the Taylor Risk Fund, Universa. He is the author of several books, including The Black Swan and Antifragile and Fooled by Randomness. And he is a deadlift advocate.

And he has also gotten into cycling lately, which is interesting. And he is a flaneur. I don't even know where to start. Nassim, thank you so much for joining us. Every time I see the word flaneur, I forget what it means. What does it mean?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (3:13)

Yeah, I have to remember exactly what it means because the original designation is for someone who walks around aimlessly.

And I try to generalize it to someone who does things aimlessly just for the fun of it, without the prescribed plan. And if you find something interesting, then you go with it.

Joe Weisenthal (3:36)

So that's funny because I started off by saying that you, I could think of you as a deadlift advocate, but this year you're getting into road biking, which is interesting because, you know, it's kind of very different type of exercise. It's not the type of exercise I associate you with.

It's a little-

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (3:54)

I was a cyclist.

Joe Weisenthal (3:56)

What's the deal with getting into cycling?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (3:58)

I was a cyclist when we met last, which is about 15 years ago, and I had a near miss with a truck.

And then I switched to a combination of a lot of walking and some intense, but short episodes of weightlifting, full body weightlifting. And then I, you know, I followed the evidence, started reading the literature, and I realized that weightlifting is not good for your heart.

So it's actually, it's not good at all on its own, but it's needed, it's necessary. But you know, that's the evidence. It causes aortic stiffness, a lot of things. You know, there's an adaptation. When you want to lift very heavy objects, your body adapts by doing things that are not helpful for long-term survival. So you need to compensate. And how do you compensate? Instead of just walking, something a little more intense than walking, but not very intense. So here you have a barbell, a lot of aerobic exercise, low grade, and the occasional full-body weight lift. So just a variation on what I was doing, but you got to follow the evidence. I mean, the literature is stark.