The Accent Podcast

Dr. Peter Brand is an ancient historian and Egyptologist specializing in history and culture of ancient Egypt during its imperial age (ca. 1550–1100 BCE). He is author of The Monuments of Seti I and their Historical Significance: Epigraphic, Historical and Art-Historical Analysis (Brill, 2000), and has written numerous articles on Egyptian kingship, monumental art and construction, history, popular religion, warfare, and diplomacy during the late Eighteenth Dynasty and Ramesside period. Since 2001, Dr. Brand has served as director of the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, which is recording, conserving, and interpreting hundreds of scenes and hieroglyphic texts carved on the walls and columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall. Dr. Brand has appeared in over twenty documentaries for the History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic.  GET THE BOOK - Ramesses II, Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh: https://amzn.to/3RufmMS   SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:35 Teaching Egyptology  08:20 How pyramids were built  12:50 Ancient Egypt through 18th Dynasty: Akhenaten, Tutankhamun  26:30 Beginning of 19th Dynasty  31:15 Seti I  35:50 Ancient Egypt's source of wealth  38:25 Egyptian army  40:25 Ramesses II – Childhood  45:05 Prince Ramesses II  49:45 "Female Household" and wives of Ramesses II  01:04:05 Ramesses II takes the throne  01:09:55 Highlights of Ramesses II reign  01:15:05 The Battle of Kadesh  01:21:10 Interpreting Hieroglyphs  01:27:40 Pharaohs or Kings?  01:30:40 Decline of Ancient Egypt 

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy (which we discuss in the interview). SELECT BOOKS BY JEREMI SURI: - Civil War by Other Means: https://amzn.to/3F5DXSC  - The Impossible Presidency: https://amzn.to/3RQTRI1 - Liberty's Surest Guardian: https://amzn.to/3toGe8R  SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:20 The Civil War never ended  03:05 Formation of the Republican Party  07:50 Causes of the Civil War and the reasons for North winning  14:15 South after the Civil War  19:00 Why Abraham Lincoln is the best president in the US history  20:10 John Wilkes Booth  22:55 Andrew Johnson is the worst president  26:20 Alexander Watkins Terrell  29:45 Moving on after wars  31:00 Ulysses S. Grant Presidency  34:45 Disputed 1876 Elections  38:10 Electoral College must go  45:55 Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur  50:45 Grover Cleveland – first President from the Democrat Party  53:50 Republicans and Democrats switching agendas  55:40 Cancers in American institutions  01:00:55 Rating the recent Presidents  01:04:45 Most Overrated and Underrated Presidents  01:07:00 How you should read Jeremi Suri's books

Dr. Konstantin Batygin is a Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. Professor Batygin and his colleague, Michael Brown, have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which they have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the Sun. Support the Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:45 Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg  03:35 Encounter with conspiracists  06:40 Rumors of Alien space crafts  10:15 Where to look for life in the Universe  12:50 Planet Formation  17:20 Discovering planets  25:20 Pluto is no longer a planet  27:40 Planet Nine  34:30 Hypothesis of other cosmic bodies  35:15 Primordial Black Holes  43:15 Music Career  52:25 Scientific awards  57:40 Immigration to Japan and USA  01:01:30 Lex Fridman  01:02:30 Parents influence

Dr. Allen Frances is a Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. He is best known for serving as chair of the American Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the development and revision of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Dr. Frances is the founding editor of two well-known psychiatric journals: the Journal of Personality Disorders and the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. During the development of the current diagnostic manual, DSM-5, Dr. Frances became critical of the expanding boundaries of psychiatry and the medicalization of normal human behavior, problems he contends are leading to the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the "worried well" and the gross undertreatment of the severely ill. Dr. Frances is the author or co-author of multiple books within the fields of psychiatry and psychology. Dr. FRANCES's BOOKs: Saving Normal: https://amzn.to/497dxxq Essentials of Psychiatric Diagnosis: https://amzn.to/494eRBe FOLLOW Dr. FRANCES ON TWITTER:   / allenfrancesmd   SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON:   / theaccentpodcast   TIMESTAMPS  01:25 Changes since Saving Normal  02:30 What is DSM?  06:20 Inflation of diagnosis in children's mental illnesses  14:10 Pharma advertises mental illnesses directly to people  17:00 Nature or Nurture – the root cause of mental illnesses  21:35 Psychotherapy  25:35 Depressions should not be confused with normal mammalian phenomena  29:35 Addiction to medication and drugs  37:45 Selecting psychiatrist 

Brian Fagan is an Archeologist, Author, and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. He has written a number of books on archeology, humans, and, most recently, climate change. We discussed Early Humans, the history of hunting, the most influential civilizations, and the effects of localized climate change, which by the way, has nothing to do with politics but rather the history of the phenomena. TIMESTAMPS  01:10 Did humans evolve from apes  04:25 Hunting of early humans  12:45 Neanderthals  14:40 Humans walked out from Africa  20:50 Most important human tool  22:50 Complexities of archeological discovery  27:25 First Civilizations  32:55 Most influential Civilizations  34:45 Inca Civilization  37:55 Were there lost Civilizations (Atlantis)?  40:50 Why Civilizations Fall  44:35 Localized climate change  50:25 The Future of the human race

James Pan is a former Hedge Fund manager who, a decade ago, returned funds to outside investors and converted his firm into a family office. If you search for CP&E Partners' letters, you will see the phenomenal performance that James has achieved, and he did it as a one-man-shop. In this interview, we discussed James' investment philosophy, investment process, current holdings, and many other things. Books James is Ayn Rand's fan, so don't forget to read Atlas Shrugged: https://amzn.to/3sqGEel Support the Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  02:05 Absorbing information  03:45 Path to a Family Office  09:15 Defining Value Investing  13:30 Looking for investment ideas  15:30 First thing to see in a stock  19:30 Valuing companies  25:10 Concentrated vs Diversified portfolio  31:10 Meta  34:30 Latest investment – U-Haul  43:35 Management assessment  44:50 NOL as part of the valuation  46:20 Rolls-Royce  49:05 Writing Call Options  55:35 Investing with Dyslexia  59:15 Definition of Happiness 

Dr. Scott Aaronson is Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers and computational complexity theory more generally. For the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years, he is on leave to work at OpenAI on the theoretical foundations of AI safety. In this interview, Dr. Aaronson discussed a quantum computer, its comparison to classical computers, and its use cases. He also shared his take on the potential role of quantum computers in Artificial Intelligence. Get Scott Aaronson's Book Quantum Computing since Democritus: https://amzn.to/3E290yb Read Scott Aaronson's blog: https://scottaaronson.blog Support The Accent on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast   TIMESTAMPS  01:45 Misconceptions about Quantum computing  03:00 Quantum Computer vs Classical Computer  08:30 The Schrodinger equation  18:00 What is Quantum Computer good for?  28:45 The look of Quantum computers  43:40 Quantum Error Correction  46:50 Quantum computing in AI  55:25 Would you choose Machin Learning or Quantum Computer for a major  57:50 Take on Michio Kaku's book Quantum Supremacy….(oh, well)

Joby Warrick is a best-selling author and a national security correspondent for The Washington Post. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he served for 24 years with the Post's national and investigative staffs, reporting from Washington and scores of cities around the world. He is the author of three two nonfiction books, including "The Triple Agent", a New York Times best-seller about a CIA operation in Afghanistan; "Red Line", and "Black Flags", a narrative account of the personalities and events that gave rise to the Islamic State. "Black Flags" was listed as one of the best books of 2015 by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other publications, and it was the recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. BOOKs:  Black Flags: https://amzn.to/3QE46NK The Triple Agent: https://amzn.to/49zq5On Red Line: https://amzn.to/3FYaLxo   SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:35 The most surprising thing about ISIS  03:30 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi  06:45 Afghanistan after the Soviet Union  08:00 Zarqawi in al-Jafr prison  10:05 Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi  13:00 Al-Qaida of Iraq, and Zarqawi's weaponization of religion  17:30 Black Flags  20:00 The US invasion of Iraq  28:00 Big pause after Zarqawi  31:50 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the Rise of ISIS  38:00 A typical ISIS Fighter  40:30 New ISIS  43:10 Roots of Islamic Radicalization  47:00 Joby's books 

Tapio Schneider is a climate scientist and a professor of environmental science and engineering at the California Institute of Technology. His research is focused on understanding how the turbulent dynamics of the atmosphere, from clouds to large-scale weather systems, shape Earth's climate. Ultimately, his goal is to develop a set of physical laws that govern climate. SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:20 Climate Change or Global Warming?  04:25 Greenhouses and their effects  07:25 The worst-case scenario  12:30 Genesis of Thoughts on Climate Change  17:35 Melting of Ice Sheets  23:20 Disagreements on the Climate Change  27:50 Main emitters of greenhouses  30:35 Solutions to Climate Change  33:50 Do EVs make a difference  39:00 Why not switch to renewables

Tim Staermose is the founder of the African Lions Fund, which invests in sub-Saharan African "Frontier" economies, excluding South Africa. Tim is also an investment writer, and his website - www.GlobalValueHunter.com - is full of global value investing ideas.  SUPPORT THE ACCENT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/theaccentpodcast TIMESTAMPS  01:10 Perception of Africa (Factfulness book)  08:25 Long or Short-term opportunity: Main Thesis  13:25 Asian model will not work in Africa  16:10 Leading Industries  18:35 Valuations in Africa  21:55 Investment process  29:25 Banking Industry in Africa  32:10 Position sizing  35:10 Hedging  38:50 Taxation of the fund  40:15 Largest position (NMB Bank - Tanzania)  48:45 Recent investments (KCB Bank, Equity Bank, Safaricom – Kenya)  52:40 Selling stocks