Pardon is a modern family office that invests in culture-shaping enterprises. While its flagship business is an inbox digital publisher, Pardon’s work supports a wider range of ventures across the arts, media, and lifestyle. At its core is a simple conviction: the institutions that shape culture don’t happen by accident; they’re built deliberately, over time, by people willing to invest in craft, taste, and independent thought.

This partnership reflects a shared belief that serious intellectual work—like great art—requires patient backing to flourish. We’re grateful to Pardon not only for the generosity of this gift, but for the confidence it represents in Palladium’s long-term project.

The first print edition supported by this underwriting is PALLADIUM 20: Noblesse Oblige, which will be available to members in March 2026. In this quarterly print edition, we examine the role philanthropists have and will play in shaping the future of science and culture. Featuring both novel theory by our best thinkers as well as reports by those who have already organized such efforts such as Vitalik Buterin’s article on his experimental “pop-up city” Zuzalu this edition will equip those who wish to do good with all insights needed to do so.

As a San Francisco-based, non-partisan publication, Palladium relies on partners who understand that ideas are infrastructure. We’re sincerely thankful to Pardon for helping secure another year of independent, rigorous work—and for making it possible for Palladium to keep building.

Gratefully,

The Palladium Editors

Our forefathers did not live in caves and grunt over campfires, like the “noble savages” imagined by Locke, Marx, and twentieth-century anthropologists. More importantly, these were not peaceful and inward-looking societies. The genetic record shows that entire peoples embarked on great treks over land and across the seas, often violently replacing previous inhabitants in battles and wars long lost to memory. Our ancestors weren’t always nomadic. Settled communities did not originate with the domestication of grain after the end of the Ice Age, but were preceded by permanent villages and towns sustained by abundant and sometimes gardened forests, as well as fishing. Our ancestors lived this way for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. This, rather than the primitive utopia or even the wild savannah, was likely the ancestral environment Homo sapiens evolved in over this long era of prehistory.

As these complex societies occasionally advanced, mastering metals and developing writing, there was no linear guarantee of progress. As societies grow more complex and develop, becoming what we call civilizations, they sometimes fail and collapse without passing on the torch of progress. The evidence of both prehistory dug up from the ground and of written history shows there is nothing certain about the future of our own civilization. Civilizations rise and fall. Mankind relearns and forgets this lesson many times over.

PALLADIUM 19: Long History retells the story of mankind, setting outdated and flawed narratives right, and with them all our assumptions of humanity’s future. A timely task urgently needed, lest we risk becoming just another layer of ruins and bones, buried and forgotten under the feet of future generations. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 19 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy. 

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

By upgrading to a Supporting Membership, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. There are five spots reserved for new supporting members at PALLADIUM Magazine’s Fourth Anniversary in Print party in San Francisco, California next month, on December 5th. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team, donors, authors, and artists. 

Supporting Members will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, new supporting members will receive PALLADIUM 06: Imperial Frontiers, the iconic edition where we began our investigation of global empire and its limits. Those who have been sustaining members for the past two years will also receive the iconic  PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis featuring Grimes, allowing them to complete their collection of Year Three of Palladium in print. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 19: Long History and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 19: Long History ships internationally. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought by Samo Burja. New discoveries are adding millennia to our past. The implications should change our future.

Mariners at the Dawn of History by Tristan Søbye Rapp. Archaeological finds hundreds of thousands of years old have shown human settlement of many of the world’s remote islands, challenging our assumptions of a primitive prehistory.

Genomics Has Revealed An Age Undreamed Of by Razib Khan. The genomics revolution has shown us our barbaric past. It now also forces us to decide our future.

Our Knowledge of History Decays Over Time by Ben Landau-Taylor and Samo Burja. Despite modern approaches to archaeology and preservation, as history moves forward, we will only lose knowledge of the past.

The Native Americans Before the Native Americans by Razib Khan. New findings and genetic evidence suggest that people came to America more than 30,000 years ago, before the peak of the Last Ice Age.

The Birth and Burial of Evolutionary Science in Australia by Jack Mungo. Activists, often of mostly European ancestry, have appropriated prehistoric cultures and are systematically destroying fossils vital to understanding Australia’s past and human evolution in general. 

Will Future Civilizations Bother to Excavate Our Remains? by Ben Landau-Taylor. The practice of archaeology is almost unique to our contemporary Western civilization rather than universal, and it is unlikely to be continued by future civilizations.

Why Civilizations Collapse by Samo Burja. We have to evaluate the perceptions that mint facts and theory, not merely peruse the body of social, historical, and political theories handed down to us.

The first babies artificially selected for greater intelligence have already been born, a momentous fact our culture has nearly completely ignored outside of a few pieces talking about this or that biotech startup. Compared to the intense public, intellectual, and political response of the cloning of the first mammal—a sheep named Dolly in 1996—we have sleepwalked into a future to which we now must awaken.

Hormone therapies, organ replacements grown in animals, genetically engineered tissue, symbiotic bacteria, artificial wombs, gene-edited babies… all of these technologies and more will be pursued and developed further in our immediate future to tackle pressing environmental, public health, and socioeconomic problems. Even if they are insufficient to solve such problems, they completely reshape society through rewriting our biology, which has served as an unwritten constitution delineating our social and political life for hundreds of thousands of years. 

PALLADIUM 18: Biological Inheritance is our attempt at opening and updating this long-overdue and long-dormant conversation on our biology. Join us in this exploration of our biology’s future. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 18 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy. 

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

By upgrading to a Supporting Membership, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. There are five spots reserved for new supporting members for the next launch of PALLADIUM in Austin, Texas in the first week of October. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. 

Supporting Members will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, new supporting members will receive PALLADIUM 11: Social Apocalypse, this  issue features an interview with novelist Walter Kirn on the loss of cultural memory in America and what happens when even personal experience is mediated through synthetic narratives. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 18: Biological Inheritance and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 18: Biological Inheritance ships internationally. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Our Genetic Constitution by Tim Lantin. Intentional design is replacing evolution as the main driver of genetic change in humans. To enhance the brain is to rewire the machinery that makes institutions possible.

As Caste Vanishes Only Genes Remain by Razib Khan. As Indian Americans continue their socioeconomic ascent, the relevance of caste evaporates. Yet researchers have found evidence this social technology was sustained for thousands of years.

Youth Is a Strategic Resource. Can Medical Science Slow Aging? by Sarah Constantin. New research may slow aging, promising a healthier, longer-lived society—but current inter-generational tensions also point to potential conflicts such advances will bring.

Competitive Hormone Supplementation Is Shaping America’s Future Business Titans by Brian P. Hoover. As testosterone levels decline, high-level executives reach for human growth hormone and testosterone supplementation to build their empires and engage in corporate warfare well into their seventies.

Artificial Wombs Will Save Lives Not Birth Rates by Lan Dao. The technology to grow a baby outside a mother is closer than you think. Even with wide adoption, it won’t raise fertility enough to stop population decline—but will be enough to save lives.

The Safest Path to Stable Climate Is Designing New Plants by Patrick Mellor. Arcadia and the Amazon were both created by human gardeners, not by natural forces. Our newfound responsibility to steward the Earth’s biosphere is best met with technologically enhanced gardening

What was once the domain of gods will become merely part of the human world—space might come to be a cosmically scaled realm stretching across many planets and satellites. It will immediately force us to rethink industry, war, government, long-term thinking, and even our anthropological assumptions. This kind of rethinking was once routine for Western civilization, which regularly transformed itself with technologies abolishing limits of time and space.

Reusable rockets have not only made space travel cost-effective, but, in doing so, have extended the reach of our species across once impossible distances. While profound in its implications, this development is all too easy to miss, and is one too few have thought through. As we settle and one day remake the Moon, Mars, the other planets, and the stars themselves, these heavenly objects will cease to be unchanging.

We are discovering new things about our universe and, crucially, our place in it. After half a century since Man last walked on a celestial body in 1972, after all the enervated introspection and misanthropic ideology in the decades since, it will turn out that perhaps the best way to explore our inner space was to explore outer space.

PALLADIUM 17: Universal Man is our voyage into this vast future and a glimpse at what kind of New Man is revealed when we grow our species’ reach to never-before-visited reaches of creation. Join us on this journey. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 17 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

By upgrading to a Supporting Membership, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. There are still five spots left reserved for new supporting members for the launch of PALLADIUM 17 in Washington, D.C. on March 26. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team.

Supporting Members will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, new supporting members will receive PALLADIUM 10: Cultural Excellence, this unmatched issue features an interview with model, adventurer, and mechanical engineer Pietro Boselli on life and seeking the ground truth of that experience. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 17: Universal Man and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 17: Universal Man ships internationally until June 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

The New Space Race with China by Oberon Dixon-Luinenburg. Available first in print! China has launched hundreds of rockets and built a space industry second only to SpaceX. The United States is now in a space race that decision-makers and the public are barely aware of.

The Genius Who Launched the First Space Program by Sven Etienne Peterson. Sergei Korolev was the secret architect of the Soviet space program. His career demonstrates the triumph of vision and institutional innovation over conventionality and bureaucracy.

Why Starship Matters by Casey Handmer. The biggest rocket ever built will not just transform our current space and satellite industry, but power human civilization all the way to Mars. The time has come to settle a second planet.

A Trillion Tons in Orbit by Brian Balkus. Available first in print! The physicist Gerard O’Neill thought a planetary surface isn’t the right place for an expanding civilization. As launch costs fall, we need more ambitious goals to drive technology further.

The Orbital Authority by Curtis Yarvin. Available first in print! The ultimate high ground cannot be divided geographically. The threat of stagnant peace under one world government means humanity must once more wrestle with war to thrive.

It’s Time to Build the Exoplanet Telescope by Casey Handmer. Decreasing cost to orbit makes new space structures viable. A transformative option is a telescope capable of seeing distant planets up close.

The Case for Human Hibernation by Tim Lantin. Available first in print! As space colonization advances, translating rapidly progressing hibernation research into humans may prove necessary. On Earth, human hibernation may help us coordinate multigenerational projects.

The Moon Should Be a Computer by Omar Shams. Available first in print! Hyper-scaling the computational power of AI systems holds great promise, but the Earth cannot indefinitely shoulder their energy needs. The Moon can.

The Bison Sphere Manifesto by Wolf Tivy. You’ve heard of the Dyson Sphere. It’s time to talk about the only vision that can pull America out of this crisis of complacency: the Bison Sphere.

The Only Reason to Explore Space by Marko Jukic. There is only one durable justification for space exploration. If we fail to understand it, our civilization will end on Earth, not among the stars.

As the years rolled on, we saw other names rise up too, such as Duterte, Le Pen, Kurz, Salvini, Bolsonaro, Milei, and Orban. It appeared as though profound changes to how modern states were run were inevitable. But by early 2024, two of the once victorious populist presidents, Trump in the U.S. and Bolsonaro in Brazil, were facing criminal charges and many of those names had faded out of relevance.

This was just the tip of a great reaction that brought forth years of internet censorship, media campaigns, political arrests, administrative disobedience of the elected government, rapidly accelerated immigration designed perhaps to quickly replace the disobedient electorate, and more. The pandemic further demonstrated how toothless people’s power was in the face of mere public health bureaucracy. The giant, once awakened, was quickly back in bed with a fever. 

Quietly, in the background of these great struggles, Silicon Valley and its new technocracy continued to grow in power and transform society while, for the most part, publicly endorsing the old technocratic establishment that was growing ever more distrustful and hostile towards them. A lone contrarian investor, Peter Thiel, voiced his support for the people as early as 2016. Elon Musk did so too, in 2024. After Donald Trump’s second electoral victory, this new alliance of technology and populism seems like another new beginning. It is instead a chapter from a political story that has been unfolding for over a decade. In recent years, democratic governments have shown more willingness to transform to combat populism in new ways than allow themselves to be transformed by it.

PALLADIUM 16: After Populism is our look at what happens in the aftermath of a populist victory. Despite calling our governments democracies, our societies don’t know how to productively harness this potent political force. Whoever does so first is destined to reshape governance in the 21st century. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 16 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

By upgrading to a Supporting Membership, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. You will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, new supporting members will receive PALLADIUM 08: Scientific Authority, the groundbreaking issue featuring an interview with Lord Martin Rees the current Astronomer Royal on the institutions of science. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 16: After Populism and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 16: After Populism ships internationally until March 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Jair Bolsonaro and the Populist Crisis In Brazil by Costin Alamariu. The former president is known as Brazil’s controversial right-populist. But he also reveals deep class divisions in the country’s politics and how it remembers military rule.

A Promenade with the Gilets Jaunes in Paris by Jacques Knight. A Palladium team embedded with the Gilets Jaunes in Paris. They returned with on-the-ground observations about the riots, the movement’s desires, and France’s political destiny.

The Western Intellectual Behind China’s Distrust of the Crowd by Simon Luo. Since the Cultural Revolution, China has feared and suppressed mass mobilization. The theories of French thinker Gustave Le Bon influence both the party and its critics in their evaluation of the mob.

The Politics of Crisis Is Not Going Away by Wessie Du Toit. We are trapped in an escalating politics of crisis, which threatens to break our connection with reality. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

Why Big Tech Is More Competent Than the U.S. Government by Byrne Hobart. The U.S. pandemic response was undermined by buck-passing and bad judgment at every turn. Tech giants outperformed it thanks to lessons from the past and better incentives for the future.

France Is Living in Zemmour’s World by Francois Valentin. French politician Éric Zemmour believes France is on the brink of self-destruction. Parts of the political establishment, including President Emmanuel Macron agree.

America Needs a National Service Program by James Haynes. National service is a well-established way for Western democracies to build civic unity. A joint military and diplomatic initiative can spark America’s institutional renewal.

The Post-Liberal International Order and American Grand Strategy by Sumantra Maitra. The realist school of foreign policy has long predicted a post-liberal geopolitics. Rather than an existential crisis, the current landscape is merely the latest move in a very old game.

Life intrinsically carries a weight of existence that has to be resolved somehow. Not all metaphysical claims are necessarily explicitly stated, however. The differing streams of Christian theology and Enlightenment philosophy made such claims explicitly, but made them a matter of the public—a res publica in the most literal and necessarily political sense.

The reason of state was a fission of private and public in early modernity. This reason grew in power and made the wars first sparked by the disputes of the theological reformation of the Holy Roman Empire much more intense and prolonged. It presented itself as the answer for putting out the flames. It conceptually allowed a private escape where rulers found themselves without the desire to make windows into men’s souls, or be so examined themselves. Perhaps advanced theology was the original existential risk and the only solution for a time was postponing it.

The escape to the private was not new in humanity’s long history. Many philosophers, Greek and otherwise, had struggled before concluding that fundamental truth is always at war with society, so one must make their own peace, and perhaps while fundamental truths can be explicitly reasoned, they cannot be given. The modern separation between church and state was formed by extending this not just to rulers but subjects. What we legally call religious freedom is in practice a kind of freedom of confession. In turn, this logically but not necessarily legally carries a freedom of speech.

This orthodoxy is complicated by orthopraxy. Many religious traditions rest on “right action” through laws, customs, rituals, social norms, and ways of being. This can be seen in Christianity, but also Jewish, Confucian, Buddhist, and Hindu communities. Sometimes this orthopraxy is itself explicated into rules or judgments even in the absence of philosophy. The history of Islamic civilization shows orthopraxy as a power both with and without orthodoxy. 

Fundamentally, neither orthodoxy nor orthopraxy can be fully avoided by civilizations or individuals. The barrier between church and state in the Western world is best understood as a settlement between factions of the same kind, each with their own competing metaphysical thesis, moral values, and social norms. These settlements are negotiated, reformed, and redrawn around the world and will continue to be so deep into the future. 

PALLADIUM 15: State Religion is our cautious and measured look into the distant future when we can no longer dally on the questions of what is the state of our religion and what is the religion of our state. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 15 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

As a Supporting Member, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. You will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, you will receive PALLADIUM 08: Scientific Authority, the groundbreaking issue featuring an interview with Lord Martin Rees the current Astronomer Royal on the institutions of science. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 15: State Religion and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 15: State Religion ships internationally until December 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Under the Rule of Amida Buddha by Ethan Edwards. In the midst of Japan’s chaotic Sengoku era, a radical Buddhist sect grew into a powerful movement that secured autonomy. Yet, unable to direct itself, it was outmaneuvered by the Shogunate.

Inside the House Church Movement in China by Wael Taji. A visit to an underground Shanghai house church gives an inside look into how millions of Chinese citizens worship. This new generation makes its mark in a regime suspicious of foreign subversion.

A Papal Revolt Created Europe’s First Bureaucracy by Jonathan Culbreath. In the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII fought local rulers who dominated the church. To counter them, he created Europe’s first modern bureaucracies and changed the organization of power forever.

Rebuilding the Middle East: Christians, Shi’ites, and Secularists Join Forces by Stephen Borthwick. Middle Eastern Christians have been decimated by years of conflict. The coming generation’s politics is now defined by broad and unusual coalitions, even Bashar al-Assad and groups like Hezbollah.

After Freedom: Catholic Political Theology in the Age of Liberal Crisis by Ash Milton. Western Catholics of the 20th century sought to engage the liberal world order to put conflicts with modernity to rest. As the geographic center of the church moves, a theology of confrontation returns.

How to Find Meaning When Everything is Power by Mary Harrington. Unexamined “objectivity” isn’t coming back, but meaning need not be a casualty. Rigorous post-modernism grounds social meaning in the interconnected experience of our shared society.

Creating West Coast Buddhism by Ethan Edwards. In the 1960s, Buddhism found a new spiritual homeland in California. It was the last step in a transformation that began generations before.

Everyone’s Existential Crisis by Miya Perry. The fundamental instability of collective knowledge is exacerbated by developments in technology and infrastructure, leaving us all grappling with existential crisis. 

What is the greatest city in the world? There are few questions more revealing of an era. Throughout the ages, there is a long list of credible contenders. Alexandria. Xi’an. Rome. Constantinople. Baghdad. London. Vienna. New York. When listed, these cities are immediately identifiable as the apexes of unique and different societies. As the mythos of these cities and others lives on today, it is wise to ask what the greatest city of our own polemicized age is.

Today, the United States is accepted as the greatest power in the world by both supporters and detractors. Yet there is no easy answer to what our greatest city is, or if it is even an American city at all. The world’s largest modern city is no longer Tokyo, but perhaps the urban megalopolis of southern China, stretching across Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the settlements of nearly one hundred million people. New York shares the tarnished—but still gleaming—crown of global finance with London. San Francisco is the undisputed center of the U.S. tech sector and global AI progress, yet has grown infamous for social decay and city government dysfunction.


None of these answers are disappointing, since each carries a hypothesis regarding the nature of our unfolding 21st century world. At the same time, none of these answers are fully satisfying. How can it be that the world’s strongest military, economic, and technological power finds embarrassingly few entries on the list of greatest cities?

PALLADIUM 14: Great Cities is not just our analysis of the present and possible futures of the city, but another lens on the present and future of our civilization—for without cities, there is no civilization to speak of. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 14 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis featuring Grimes.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

As a Supporting Member, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. You will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, you will receive PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet, the iconic edition featuring Isabelle Boemeke as a princess from the nuclear-powered future. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 14: Great Cities and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 14: Great Cities ships internationally until September 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

We Must Save San Francisco by Lea Degen. Despite its problems, San Francisco is the most open-minded and innovative city in the world. Reforming America’s vanguard city is a national imperative.

Midcentury Planners Demolished America’s Social Fabric by Anton Cebalo. The decline of American community life did not begin with the internet. Over the course of the mid-twentieth century, the country’s urban centers were bulldozed through to make room for freeways.

San Francisco’s Future Should Begin with a Land Value Tax by Matthew Downhour. Henry George foresaw San Francisco’s housing crisis. His solution is still the way forward: a bold developmentalist orientation, starting with a land value tax to incentivize denser building.

What No One Wants to Admit About Housing Politics by Siavash Tahan. Real estate development in California has been frozen for decades. A new coalition is emerging to break homeowner resistance. But dishonesty from both sides prevents the reconciliation of social fabric and development, jeopardizing the future of American cities.

Why Charter Cities Won’t Lead to Decentralized Government by Ash Milton. Advocates of decentralized government view charter cities as a way to route around slow, legacy governments, and usher in political and market liberalism. Reality tells a different story.

Everyone Is Moving to the Metropole by Adam Van Buskirk. As young people flock to the global cities to work, what happens to the rest of the world? A growing division between the aging world and the youthful world is taking shape.

It’s Time for Greater San Francisco by Evan Zimmerman. The San Francisco Bay Area is a major regional economy hindered by fragmented local governments. The answer is consolidation into Greater San Francisco.

The City Makes the Civilization by Samo Burja. City life has hazed us and regulated our lives since time immemorial. It is civilization that depends on cities, not the other way around.

The ancient Romans and Chinese believed they ruled over the whole world; at least, all of it that mattered. The British were arguably the first to truly succeed in the eternal quest for global hegemony, becoming the greatest maritime empire of all time, but it wasn’t long before another English-speaking industrial power replaced them: the United States of America. To say that the United States is a global empire is considered impolitic. Americans prefer to see themselves as citizens of a grand republic, which only occasionally uses its preeminent economic and military might to intervene abroad, and only for common-sense humanitarian reasons. But maybe those are just the same thing. 

Maybe Americans shouldn’t be embarrassed to be Imperials, but proud to take their place in the future history books alongside Rome, China, and Britain. Maybe they shouldn’t. One way or the other, an open and honest discussion of the origin, extent, and form of U.S. power in the world is a prerequisite to reform, both at home and worldwide.

PALLADIUM 13: Global Empire is the first step in that conversation, bringing together the best first-hand accounts and meticulous analyses of American power from the last five years of our publishing. With this edition, we hope to provide a preliminary account of U.S. power. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 13 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy. 

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis featuring Grimes. 

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

As a Supporting Member, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. You will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection, starting with PALLADIUM 06: Imperial Frontiers, the iconic edition where we began our investigation of the global empire and its limits. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 13: Global Empire and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 13: Global Empire ships internationally on March 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Nuclear Powers Still Rule The World by Matt Ellison. The United States is waking up to our new geopolitical normal—a world of competition with rising powers. We need to discard entrenched foreign policy and go back to first principles.

The Rise and Fall of Liberal Democratic Peace Theory by Jonah Bennett. A foundational claim of the liberal international order is that democracies virtually never go to war against each other. In reality, this peace has little to do with anything inherent in liberalism.

The Multipolar World Dies in Ukraine by Brian Balkus. With war underway in Ukraine, Russia and Europe are once again divided. Their ultimate dependency on China and the U.S. sounds the death knell for a multipolar world.

A Trip Behind the Spectacle at Davos by Jonah Bennett. The global image of Davos is as a network of elite interests, social agendas, and competing ambitions. Those who make the trip are confronted by a gathering full of uninspired strivers.

Why the US Dollar Could Outlast the American Empire by Bryne Hobart. Observers regularly predict the U.S. dollar’s collapse as the global reserve currency. In reality, history shows that currency dominance is one of the most enduring forms of hegemony.

The German Behind America’s Postwar Strategy by Matt Ellison. Gustav Hilger, a today little known World War II statesman, exerted enormous influence on U.S. architects of the post-war international order, demonstrating the pragmatic hidden behind liberal values.

The Lesson That America Did Not Learn from Vietnam by Costin Alamariu. The Vietnam War is seen as either unwinnable or undermined by peaceniks. In fact, there was nothing to be won, as the U.S. dropped its only potential allies as incompatible with liberalism.

The West Lives on in the Taliban’s Afghanistan by David Oks. The Taliban has succeeded in reconquering Afghanistan. But while the U.S. may be gone, the new regime faces increasing Westernization among its subjects—and its own fighters.

China’s Real Threat Is to America’s Ruling Ideology by Richard Hanania. America’s China hawks paint the country as an economic, geopolitical, and military danger. In reality, China is less a threat to America itself than it is to the legitimacy of U.S. ruling ideology.

The First World Government by Samo Burja. The United States has fulfilled the ancient dream of universal hegemony. This first world government won’t be the last.

Recent Silicon Valley advances in artificial intelligence have brought new weight to decades-old discussions. Many technologists and experts believe we are just a couple years away from a runaway intelligence explosion that overpowers and even, maybe, annihilates mankind. Others believe thinking machines will help usher in a new golden age of economic growth, scientific progress, and political resolution. Only time will tell. Until then, we have asked some of our brightest and most visionary minds to tell us what exactly they see on the silicon horizon.

Artificial intelligence is usually presented as a scientific endeavor or at least science fiction. But in practice, untangling the debates, fears, and hopes around it reveals the little science isn’t the interesting part: the questions raised by AI are about the metaphysical nature of humanity, what it is possible to know, and our cosmic destiny. Such dilemmas are not the idle talk of philosophers, but the foundation upon which the legitimacy of states and other governing organizations are built.

Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 12 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying into a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution. As a Supporting Member, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis ships until March 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Artificial General Intelligence Is Possible and Deadly by Wolf Tivy. The central thesis of the artificial intelligence field is that engineers will be able to create artificial beings who effectively compete for mankind’s niche in the world. This is a threat.

“The Universe Wants Us to Take Her Clothes Off” With Grimes by Samo Burja. The artist, public intellectual, and favorite celebrity of Silicon Valley shares her thoughts on human civilization, the universe, and the dawn of artificial intelligence that is breaking in San Francisco.

“We Might Need to Regulate Concentrated Computing Power” with Jaan Tallinn by Wolf Tivy. The technologist, investor, and philanthropist speaks with PALLADIUM on the potential and peril of artificial intelligence: “We might need to regulate concentrated computing power.”

The Threat of Automation is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy by Ryan Khurana. A consequence of faith in the inevitability of artificial intelligence is irrational under-investment in people. The results are obvious.

You Can’t Trust the AI Hype by Ash Milton. Between quasi-religious fervor and distortions from companies and investors, you need to build your own epistemic machinery to evaluate questions of progress in artificial intelligence.

A New Cosmist Moment by Alexander Gelland. Intensely prophetic transhumanism has happened before in Russia. Examining it reveals the religious character and eventual recuperation of such ideas.

Benevolent AI is a Bad Idea by Miya Perry. The main idea in the field of “AI safety” is psychologically incoherent and drives us away from applications that could enhance human agency.

God Hates Singletons by Wolf Tivy. The field of “AI safety” dreams of successful rebellion against the moral fabric of reality. Fortunately, this is physically and mathematically impossible.

Make Yourself Human Again by Wolf Tivy. Nick Land’s accelerationism has articulated a crisis in humanism. The best response is to embrace your own will to power.

Photo Credits: Talent: Grimes | Photographer: Brian Ziff @brianziff | Stylist: Turner @turnerturner | Stylist Assist: Joey Sigala | Hair: Dennis Gots @dennisgots | Makeup: David Velasquez @mugopus | Headpiece: Xtended Identity @xtended_identity | Chest Piece: Amplituda Design @amplituda_design | Cuffs: Manuel Albarran @manuelalbarranofficial | Hand Armor: Manuel Albarran @manuelalbarranofficial | Skirt: Stylist’s Own | Bikini: Stylist’s Own

Many parts of our society seem to be in decay: food, complex social infrastructure, cultural memory, education, and family life. We decided to investigate what ties it all together. Our conclusion: we are not witnessing a limited set of problems, but rather a full systemic breakdown.

There is no big fix in the wings. The correct strategy is to cultivate the seeds of new growth over which we have control. By grounding our institutions and social fabric on something better, we can fortify them and thrive on our own terms.

Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 11 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our supporting members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying into a project to reshape the future of American governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible. You also will get access to exclusive perks, including an invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. These events bring our community together and top collaborators together, including our editorial team. 

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 11: Social Apocalypse and to support this vital project. 

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 11: Social Apocalypse ships until December 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Are Farm Antibiotics Destroying Our Health? by David Oks. Conditions from obesity to autoimmune diseases have skyrocketed in recent decades. Agricultural antibiotics are a likely culprit, but the food system itself is addicted to their use.

Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competency Crisis by Harold Robertson. America’s complex infrastructure was built under selection for competence. Ideological goals have now taken over, and systems from air travel to energy face damaging consequences.

My Time on a Terror Trial Jury by Wolf Tivy. Increasing numbers of people fall into social underworlds that operate on alienated misery. To get them out, you have to find a way to call them to social duty.

Walter Kirn on How America Lost the Plot. Novelist Walter Kirn joins Matt Ellison to discuss the loss of cultural memory and what happens when even personal experience is mediated through synthetic narratives.

When Every Child Is a Choice by Ginevra Davis. Raising a child to succeed in life has become an optimized professional rat race. For some, it’s hard to see how they can even participate. Is another vision of good parenting still possible?

Industrial Civilization Needs a Biological Future by Adam Van Buskirk. Industrial civilization is consuming the core “WEIRD” population that maintains it. Unless they biologically assert themselves, advanced technological society may not survive.

School Is Not Enough by Simon Sarris. Modern society segregates children away from useful work until well into young adulthood. In order to bring up confident and able children, it’s necessary to bring them back in.

The Answer Is Better Gangs by Seth Largo. Young kids in groups want to win respect and watch each other’s backs. Criminal gangs cultivate those desires, and kids will keep entering them until there are better gangs around.

Don’t Learn Value From Society by Wolf Tivy. Behind the social apocalypse is a crisis of false value. The path to new growth begins with breaking away from these false idols.

Why I Live in San Francisco by Chris Robotham. Social crises get worse as they unfold, eventually engulfing all of society. In those situations, it’s a good idea to head upstream. And nowhere in America is as upstream as San Francisco.

The Triumph of the Good Samaritan by Ash Milton. Those engaged in parasitic behaviors hijack the language of charity and compassion to justify them. Charity’s true basis is a superior pattern of life that grows by raising others up into itself.

What makes a culture accomplish great things and stand out from history? 

This question of excellence rears up whenever we encounter works of genius or set out to push the limits with our own. It comes to you while walking out of an art gallery or theater. Or, just as likely, while working in a library or on the factory floor. We spend a great deal of our lives working in the shadow of humanity’s great works of culture. But what is it that ultimately makes them happen?

PALLADIUM 10: Cultural Excellence assembles seven essays and two interviews on the ways that a culture achieves greatness. Our heroes design spaceships, buildings, and societies. They conquer the frontiers of art, geography, and knowledge. Inspired by visionaries and predecessors, they master their craft and push on to new heights of accomplishment. Their greatness has founded whole cultures of excellence and their deeds will inspire future generations.

Build on these insights in your ambitions. We hope to hear of your exploits.

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection. We offer PALLADIUM 10 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Entrepreneurial Statecraft Gets the Goods by Wolf Tivy. You don’t reshape society by starting a cultural movement. Instead, you need to implement direct action materialism.

A School of Strength and Character by Tanner Greer. Nineteenth-century Americans stunned outsiders with their capacity for self-organizing. By cultivating the virtues of public usefulness, procedural formality, and agentic hierarchy, they created a powerful set of norms for building institutions.

Journey to the Golden Age by Avetis Muradyan. Golden ages leave behind the undying fame of their heroes. It is those who engage them as peers that become capable of initiating a new one.

The Golden Age of Aerospace by Brian Balkus. Postwar America’s aerospace industry combined captured German personnel with manufacturing excellence to accomplish the most incredible engineering feats in history. But process knowledge can be easily lost.

Madame Mao’s Nietzschean Revolution by Dylan Levi King. As Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing helped lead China’s Cultural Revolution with a Nietzschean philosophy of art. Through revolutionary operas and ballets, she sought a heroic consciousness that could transform society.

Who is the Art World For? By David Gelland. Art today often aims to shock rather than inspire. How did that change happen?Working from the hinterlands, they defeated two foreign empires.

“At the Edge of Life” with Pietro Boselli. A model, mechanical engineer, and adventurer, Boselli discusses the value of many sources of experience, trusting your instincts, and death-defying solo trips into the unknown.

What Genius Looks Like by Ginevra Davis. Mathematician James Glimm’s secret is that “genius needs to work hard.” But the healthy and productive way he lives resembles a normal life that anyone can learn from.

“A Pride in the Craft” with Bill Bensley. American architect Bill Bensley knew that he would have to go to Asia if he wanted to undertake ambitious, maximalist projects. But polishing the craft was the way he got to the point he could begin attempting art.

This interview appears in PALLADIUM 10: Cultural Excellence. Become a Palladium member to receive it in print.

Pietro Boselli began training his mind and body from a young age. At six years old, he was already working with Armani Junior in his home country of Italy. While still completing his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at University College London and lecturing on mathematics, he became globally recognized for his work with the world’s leading fashion brands. Today, modeling and fitness are what make him a star. But as Boselli tells it, he did not come to realize the true impact of these passions on his ethos of life until many years into the work. At a high level of mastery, the two very different disciplines became complementary with each other in surprising ways.

Today, Boselli lives in Miami. A believer in solitary journeys that test the spirit, he regularly ventures out into the deep ocean, the Namibian desert, and similarly unforgiving terrains. It’s in these moments of totally non-negotiable confrontations with nature that he encounters life at its fullest intensity. When not engaged in one of his many pursuits, his motorcycle affords him moments of respite and reflection. “One of the appeals to me about moving to Miami was the fact you can ride a motorbike without a helmet,” he tells us during the course of a long conversation.

Palladium Magazine spoke with Boselli about his work, his ethos of life, the role of philosophy and ancient authors in his thinking, the meaning of life and death, and more.

You’ve accomplished a lot as both a model and an engineer. They’re very different kinds of work, at least on the surface. What have you learned from these experiences? And how have these fields related to each other?

Throughout my life, I felt like I ran through very different experiences in parallel, especially at the beginning. They didn’t seem to be in symphony or aid each other. The realization that fields of endeavor that seem very distinct can actually positively influence, affect, and enhance each other was a notion that actually came to me later on. I guess it was in my early 20s. I pinpoint that moment to after my graduation from undergrad. And the anecdote I always like to tell is that after I graduated from UCL with my mechanical engineering degree, I compiled my resume and went to a career advisor, the kind most colleges have. I showed them my resume and they were impressed by my academic background. Throughout the three years of my time in academia, I had the highest grades in the whole faculty of engineering. Already in my second year, I was elected as mentor for the first-years and then senior mentor the year after. My academic record was great. My third-year project had already become a published paper. So in terms of academia, I was very focused and very driven. 

But I always considered that to be its own thing. At the same time, I was doing other things. Most notably, I was doing modeling, which I’d started when I was six years old. It was a career that I felt was kind of irrelevant to what I was doing in academia. It did pay my bills and it did help me pursue my career in academia. I moved to London at 18 when I had no money whatsoever. And so, the career advisor looked at my CV and was like, “Well, this is impressive, academically speaking. But you have no work experience. Anyone who’s looking to employ someone would want to know that you have worked before.” And I said, “Well, that’s not accurate. In fact, since a very young age, I’ve been a model.”

At the time, because I was very busy with academia, I was very selective with the modeling jobs that I was taking. I would only accept the good ones. Normally, this is not the case. It’s kind of weird how it works in modeling. Obviously, most models need the money and they want to pursue that career. So they’ll take any job, especially early on, and that can take you in a direction that you don’t want to go. You know, maybe you become a more commercial model or you start doing e-commerce shoots and you get pigeonholed in a certain category. Whereas I was only doing the jobs that I liked and that I thought were cool. I would only sacrifice my time—which was very precious time because I was only dedicating most of my time to studying and working out—and paradoxically, that helped me. I was doing Giorgio Armani fashion shows and photoshoots. I would accept jobs like campaigns with Bruce Weber. That elevated my image.

Do you have more leverage when you have these parallel tracks? You don’t feel overly dependent on any one opportunity and you can demand more from your work.

Yes, 100 percent. I didn’t see myself as a career model. I was just trying to make the most out of this. I did a job if I enjoyed it. Even for big clients like Armani, I was offered jobs that were more routine. Showroom work, for example: some models like to have a showroom contract, which basically means that you stay there all day and big buyers, like from Harrods or from Russia and China, come in for the brand. They need to see what the clothes look like on a model, so there are some models that just spend the whole day waiting to try on the clothes for the clients. But the problem is that people who start mainly doing the showrooms will eventually not be shooting the campaigns. They’re just a showroom model.

For me, that was not something that I could ever do. I did it once because I wanted to try it and was given the opportunity. It’s good money. But the kind of people doing that work were people who, during the day, were construction workers or something. It would be someone who was in manual labor and realized they could get paid 10 times as much for just sitting there all day. That was kind of the philosophy. For me, it was very tough to sit there all day. Literally, I lasted one day.

Whenever I showed up for modeling jobs, I was very relaxed about it because I didn’t see myself as a career model. I had a different type of confidence. If I was at a shoot, I wasn’t sucking up to the photographer. I was friendly to everyone. I was there just to make the most of the experience, and people remember you for that, especially in an industry that’s as subjective as modeling. There are hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of guys that look good. You have to be in shape and have a decent bone structure. But you know, the entry-level is actually quite low, contrary to what most people think. And so how do you distinguish yourself? Usually, people judge other people with basic heuristics, then they rationalize that choice. You know, they’ll say this person is better for this or that reason. But as they rationalize, they’ve actually already made a subconscious decision. 

What were the main things you learned in this process?

So yeah, going back to the career advisor, he asked, “Why didn’t you mention this in your CV? This is so relevant. It shows basic skills. You negotiate with clients, you show up on time for jobs, and you maintain a schedule even during your academic work. You have obviously taken on the responsibility of work from an early age. And I think this is very relevant.”

I like to pinpoint that moment as my switch in mentality. I could embrace this part of my talents as something that I shouldn’t be ashamed of and something that distinguished me from other people. If anything, people will be even keener to meet you because it’s very different. I think that was the first time that I realized, though not to the deepest level, that there could be benefits from the two things. Since I always like to think philosophically, that triggered a whole chain of thoughts that came in time, which made me realize how important interdisciplinarity is for life in general.

I was familiar with the concept of interdisciplinarity in the engineering field. A simple example is the paper that I published which was on the optimization of turbine blades for jet engines. The optimization algorithm that I used to optimize the geometry was a genetic algorithm. Whoever came up with it was obviously a computer scientist who was very familiar with the genetic operations of mutation, crossover, reproduction, and so on. That person realized, “What if instead of chromosomes, we apply the mechanisms of evolution, such as mutation, crossover, and reproduction to a string of binary data representing our problem’s inputs, and then we evolve a solution over several ‘generations’?” That’s brilliant and in science that’s used a lot. But what if you apply the same mentality to life in the broader sense? What if there’s something that I’m learning without realizing, like modeling?

You have a very well-defined ethos of life. You care about real risk, intensity, and excellence. Were you coming to the realizations you’re talking about with that cultivation already done? Or was it a result of these experiences?

I’ll give you another example, which brings me to my third sphere of interest: fitness. This has always been a huge component of what I’ve done. I’ve excelled in that over time. I started young with swimming, then trail running, then cross-country running, and triathlons. After that, I started into general fitness. I think my interdisciplinary approach to life helped me a lot, even incidentally. For example, I am 100 percent confident my cognitive ability improved because I worked out every day. We all know that there’s a strong correlation. If you have better sleep, you learn better, and so on. I don’t need to explain the importance of cultivating your body in parallel with your mind. I think nowadays there’s a big hype about it and there are lots of podcasts that talk about it.

When you challenge yourself physically, you put yourself into conditions that are outside your comfort zone. That teaches you psychologically important things that you can apply to life in general. It gives you a certain type of fortitude. There are obviously neurological explanations for all this but it’s very intuitive to understand when you actually put yourself into a physically straining situation, or into extreme sports and physical challenges, or even into a situation where nature challenges you.

That last is something that I always tried to do during those years. I used to swim every morning at 6 a.m., outdoors in the ponds of Parliament Hill. In the winter, I literally would have to break the ice in the morning to get in. I put myself through that every morning. And every morning I thought, am I actually doing this? And then you do it anyway. When that becomes a habit, it helps you perform better in all other aspects of life.

For me, fitness was always just for me. I never intended to be a personal trainer. I never intended to teach anyone anything about it and I myself was always self-taught. It’s like a passion—I feel like most of the things that I’ve done in my life were like that. But I was working out at a gym in London and I became friends with this guy who was a competitive fitness athlete. He always said, “You should come to the next competition! You should come on the stage. You have a great physique and I think you’ll do well.” That’s when I discovered the whole world of fitness fanatics who have all this bro science and all the different diets. It’s like a culture on its own.

So I showed up at this competition. My approach to fitness has always been influenced by my background in science and academia. Because I worked in science, I have pre-determined methods to arrive at a conclusion. So there can be deduction or induction. You look at correlations and you look at positions. All of these mechanisms overcome the more heuristics-based approach that most people have in understanding life—the intuitive way. And that helps. When I started going to the gym at 18, people would tell me to take some supplement or do a routine, and my first question would always be, “How do you know that’s true?” It sounds so silly but it’s not a question that everybody asks themselves. Where do you get this information from? I was definitely excited about the fact that there’s a whole field of knowledge that can help you achieve results better. The logical thing to do was to go to the medical library that I had at my disposal at UCL and read through books on physiology and anatomy. You don’t have to be passionate about it, just read it.

The secret you discover is that there is no secret. People like quick fixes and quick solutions. But it’s all dictated by the need we have for full control. I want to measure how much protein I consume, I want to have a fixed routine that works, and I want to take rational thinking out of the equation. Rational thinking is what takes the most energy, so people try to avoid it. But if you invest some energy in that, you arrive at a better solution. You need balance: you don’t bombard yourself with protein because you need to listen to your body. It all goes back to common sense but you arrive at this common sense through a rational route. Since you can’t keep track of every nutrient you take in, your information is incomplete anyway! So just stick to common sense and then try to learn with time.

So because I had this approach to fitness, it made me successful in that goal as well. It made my fitness regimen sustainable over the long term. That’s why I was just working out by myself and this guy asked me to compete. “The competition is in 10 days,” he told me, “Usually you have to sign up six months ahead, but we’ll pull some strings.” I showed up and everybody had been dehydrating for a week because they wanted to look lean and then loading carbs on the day of the show. All these things that we come up with become popular by word of mouth. The whole culture of fitness revolves around it. Anyway, I literally showed up eating a Pret a Manger croissant or something. People were like, “What is this guy doing?” Everybody else was doing push-ups. And you know, I think I had literally just submitted my Ph.D. thesis at the time. I was revising some stuff for a lecture backstage.

It sounds like you’re comfortable with incomplete knowledge about things, with not having the whole picture. The more important thing is having resilience and a good sense of judgment so that you can act on what you do know. In fact, that’s the scientific method applied to everything.

Science is a system of doubt and of incompleteness. This is what people don’t understand. They want certainty from science. That’s why you have to leverage what talents you do have. In this case, the scientific mentality helped me in fitness, which might be unexpected.

When I stepped on the stage, there were many people, obviously, with great physiques. Maybe even people with more mass or more definition. They’d done everything right, dedicating their life to that. But I stepped on the stage with the confidence that I had from having done thousands of shoots and runway shows, and so on—you know, kind of not caring. It sounds weird, but I was doing my best and didn’t really care what the outcome was because I wasn’t defined by this, it was just something else I was passionate about. And sure enough, I won the European title. They gave me the trophy and I put it in my backpack. I was about to leave because I was just going to cycle off from the O2 Arena. My friend from the gym came to me and said, “Oh, I saw you on stage! You looked great. But you can improve this and that, maybe next time you’ll win!” And I told him, “I won.” And he was like, “What!?”

These people tried so hard, thinking about their pseudoscience and sticking to such a strict regimen. This friend of mine who took me there was like that. He would never eat a plate of pasta. I once told him, “Listen, you’re giving yourself a precisely measured amount of something that you worked out arbitrarily. So it doesn’t matter how precisely you measure.” He used the scale to measure his oats. But how did he figure out what amount of oats he needs?

All these different life experiences, they’re very diverse. But they converged into helping me achieve results. Eventually, this formed a school of thought in my own mind, an interdisciplinary approach to life. Even though things seem very distant from one another, you can benefit because they make you a more complete human being. There’s more breadth and depth to you as a person, because the more experience you have, the more you have from which to form a frame of reference. Obviously, if you go through life with any analytical or critical attitude, then you create a topology of the world that is more accurate in your mind. It makes more sense with time.

But I guess it’s important to have this variety of experiences precisely because of this. What you learn from one field can help you in another in an unexpected way. This is the whole point of interdisciplinarity. You don’t study biology thinking, “One day, I’m going to develop an algorithm to design turbines.” But it just so happens that you have that knowledge, so it helps you. It always helps you in an unexpected way.

The Human Condition and the Wisdom of the Past

You find it a valuable practice to read the works of the past, especially philosophy. You have even translated some of the classical authors from Latin. What kind of value do you find in these things? And which authors have informed your philosophical thinking?

The transferability of critical thinking and the ability to learn from any discipline came to me early on in life. I have to credit some of my teachers for this. You might be aware that in Italy the teaching system is very different than in the Anglo-Saxon countries. It’s a very old tradition. First of all, there is the historical and chronological approach to things. So you study the history of art, the history of philosophy, and so on. You study the philosophers in chronological order.

It’s also a more knowledge-based approach, rather than a skills-based approach. Of course, there are many different types of high schools in Italy. You can go to high schools where you learn more practical skills or crafts, but I’m talking about what we call “scientific” high schools and “classical” high schools, which are the ones intended for people who want to then pursue higher education. My school was one of those. So the curricula at the scientific and classical schools are basically the same, with the exception being that I didn’t study Ancient Greek. But my curriculum included Latin for five years, plus philosophy, literature, art history, and humanities. That was very humanities-based. That was probably what I spent most of my time on in high school. In the scientific high school, you make up for Ancient Greek with more focus on physics and mathematics. So for me, that was the more complete curriculum. I was very fulfilled by that.

I studied a lot of literature as well. I’m lucky because, obviously, Italy has a wealth of literature. Then you combine that with Latin and translate the ancient authors directly. Some concepts are not translatable in other languages. There are some languages that are way more expressive, even among modern languages. It’s a well-known fact, for example, that German is a very expressive language and that you can’t translate some German words into English. A similar thing can be said about Latin. The other thing about Latin: most people think, “Why would you study Latin?” My teacher always said that one of the benefits of studying Latin was not just learning Latin, which we’ll forget in the course of life. If you give me a Latin text, I’d have a hard time translating it now because you forget if you don’t practice. So you think, “Well, I wasted time.” No, I haven’t. Latin has a very structured grammar. It develops your logical thinking, translating those texts. It allows for this lateral application of a skill. The thinking used to translate Latin helps you in mathematics.

This was reinforced by the fact that I didn’t study any engineering-related topics. I didn’t know how to use Excel spreadsheets, I didn’t even know how to use a computer. I didn’t have anything engineering-related. Then, I went straight from this to studying engineering at UCL in London, which is very skill-based. And I still excelled. I was there for the first three months and I had already taken nine exams. I had the highest grades on all the exams. And none of those were subjects I had ever studied before. The undergraduate tutor called me in and he was like, “How do you explain this? Did you study engineering before?” That was the first question he asked me. Well, actually, no—I had studied Latin, I had studied philosophy. And then I applied that method of learning to everything else. So you transfer your skills and your critical thinking.

There is another extremely important benefit to both the practice of studying but also to the actual content. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the focus on content is what you can do with it. How useful is it and what is its utility? What’s the practical utility of knowing what Seneca said? And for example, if you study law, they’ll teach you Roman law because it’s useful to know those concepts. But is there another application from reading the classics that is not as directly applied in your life? And the answer is yes: human nature is always the same. You know, human nature has not changed. If you were to take an ancient Roman infant and bring them here now, they would be indistinguishable from us.

There is so much noise in our contemporary ways of speaking and thinking. It seems to be a byproduct of modernity. Ancient writers like Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius are often more salient and accurate about human nature. They’re also very direct. 

That’s 100 percent the way I see it. Why are these classics so relevant nowadays? It’s that human nature is still the same. So why were these people better, in some way, at really understanding human nature? The probable answer to that is that they were exposed to less noise than us. And they were also closer to the original human condition.

There is this triangulation that occurs from different perspectives. Clearly, if we’re trying to get to a better, more perfect understanding, then it helps to know that what was true for us now was also true 2,000 years ago in a completely different cultural context. If you don’t have that knowledge, or that historical perspective, or the ability to think, how can you separate the noise from the signal?

Yeah, it’s very interesting. Obviously, especially back then, most knowledge was transmitted orally. The invention of writing is what allowed us to start accumulating knowledge and building the collective intelligence that allowed us to really exceed the limits of our individual intelligence. The technology we have now wouldn’t be possible without storing information and without the processing of information that comes from writing. And now, with internet communication and so on.

You have so many individual geniuses in the past because it was really a single-person endeavor to figure out things. You didn’t have to get up to speed with a massive amount of accumulated knowledge. Now, if you want to advance knowledge in any field, you need to be hyper-specialized. Not only that, you need to really know everything that has been done before you. Most research work at university, there’s a reason they call it research. You spend most of your time figuring out what other people have done before you and what went wrong. Another one of my biggest frustrations from the academic world is that all of the scientific studies, or any papers that are published, are reporting a positive result. I wish I had the much larger database of things that went wrong so that people don’t have to do them again.

Leonardo da Vinci was the canonical Renaissance man: scientist, inventor, artist, and philosopher. But they didn’t have the specialization that we do now. They were rooted in a historical understanding and were very aware of the classical heritage. And they weren’t hubristic enough to think that being able to read some library of works in whatever field meant that they had equaled it.

It’s almost like you have to figure it out from scratch. You’re in more direct contact with what I like to call the baseline human condition. Our progress improved our quality of life in the humanistic sense. If we value human life, then anything that maximizes human life, whether in individual or collective terms, is considered progress. Technology and innovation were always achieved in the pursuit of improving our quality of life in all sorts of ways. It’s easily measured by how long we live and so on. That’s what we always strive for. But in a way, it has also taken us away from the baseline condition in which we evolved—our natural environment, in a sense. And that environment is where you can probably observe human behaviors in a more direct way, untainted from noise.

People who are into health and biohacking are trying to create an optimal living environment that mimics our natural state, by trying to optimize our circadian rhythm for example, or whatever other hacks are popular nowadays. But it becomes cumbersome and even stressful to force all those rules for the “natural” state into our artificially-built world. And while being perfectly healthy and aligned with our circadian rhythm can be positive, sometimes even the opposite extremes can produce a net positive. If you think of Charles Bukowski, who lived his life as a drunk loser and then produced beautiful work, that’s not the natural condition. It’s removed from what basic human nature is. You’re not exposed to things that your psyche is supposed to be exposed to. In the baseline, your children will die before the age of five from a disease. If you’re outside facing the elements, you have a lower chance of survival if you don’t have technology helping you.

I always think, what does this affect? What does it do to your psyche? Does being closer to our natural habitat make our human nature shine brighter? Why is my sleep not optimal? Because we used to live in a cave and it was dark inside. But you don’t have to think about that anymore. Or when you analyze our human interactions, you think about your relationship with your parents or your environment, but your environment is so far from the original one. So where are the signal and the noise? I feel that the ancient thinkers and philosophers, because they were closer to the original human condition, had a more untainted view of how each relationship affected the others and how the human psyche works. So there is profound learning to be had from these writers.

So one objective of philosophy is to tell us what the fundamental human condition really is. How do you think about this?

In the pursuit of philosophy, understanding the human condition is only one pursuit. There’s also the nature of things, and so on. The only reason I mention the human condition more prominently when talking about the classics is that this is what remains constant. It’s an advantage to eliminate the noise in order to understand the human condition. For the nature of the universe, for example, we did eventually need to rely on more advanced tools to come to a further understanding. And, if you read the classics, most of the work was on the nature of the universe. But it was so infantile compared to what we know now.

In terms of what attracts me, I like to extract more knowledge about the human condition from the classical authors than on the origin of the cosmos. Obviously, I’m attracted by that as well. In fact, I probably think about that more than the human condition. That’s what attracts me to science. But that’s a whole different thing.

In terms of the human condition, though, the philosophers have always been a help in that realm. At the end of the day, the way we live our lives is through our conscious experience. And our conscious experience is tied to the human condition and our own personal condition. We can’t extract ourselves from that. When I was 13 or 14 years old, I read a book by Einstein called The Evolution of Physics. That’s what really turned me into a scientist. At the time, I didn’t realize that was going to be my pursuit.

There’s this fascination with how the world works, when you start thinking about the cosmos and then suddenly, you reach a point where you realize, “Whoa, I’m so small compared to that.” That is kind of strange because when you think about the cosmos, you suddenly become irrelevant yourself. And so you’re like, “Well, I’m just like a speck in the universe, I count for nothing.” And yet, when you think about yourself in terms of what human nature is, then you understand that you can only perceive the cosmos through your own devices. So you’re a speck, a nothing, and at the same time, you’re the whole universe. You cannot experience the whole universe through your own limited conscious experience, so it doesn’t matter if you’re a speck. You’re the whole universe to your conscious existence.

So these two things exist in parallel. Precisely because human nature is so important to how you perceive the cosmos, it’s important to think about both. I don’t know if it’s true, but a common prejudice that people have against scientists seems to be that they believe too much in pursuit of the knowledge of the cosmos and so they forget about the human condition. Obviously, it is more true nowadays. Since the Industrial Revolution, science has been put on a pedestal because of its practical utility. Especially in the first part of the twentieth century, science was perceived as a higher pursuit and everything else could be brushed aside—the humanities, and so on. That is what influenced American culture a lot. This is why the education system in America is so skill-based and why the sciences are considered more relevant, in a way, than the humanities.

But if you look before that, it’s different. The French philosophers, like Pascal and Descartes, have been a big influence on me. I really enjoyed their writing because they were thinkers but also scientists. The post-Copernican period was a time in history when philosophers started applying a different method of thinking, one that was more rigorous. This slowly started unfolding and they realized, “Wait, if we are to pursue the understanding of the cosmos, we need tools that build on the knowledge of previous people and are tested against reality.” And the scientific method was the clear example of that. Most of the learning to be had about the human condition actually came from scientists. That’s why Descartes was an important philosopher for me, among the many that I’ve read, because of his postulation of the duality of human nature. So, mind and body, and the separation between the two.

Obviously, I don’t subscribe to it myself. But I feel many people just subscribe to a philosophy. Maybe you read like a philosopher and decide you like this way of thinking, so now you subscribe to this way of thinking as a system. I don’t see philosophy like that. It’s always a constant process of learning and a constant knowing of all these different ways of thinking. I want to learn what Descartes was thinking. 

But you don’t want to be a Cartesian.

Yeah! Like, his rational proof of the existence of God is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read. It’s just incredible how it’s presented, the whole premise of it. And then what’s even more incredible for me is to go in and read Kant and how he refutes this proof by going to a deeper level. Descartes said, “God is the perfect by definition, the perfect being cannot lack the attribute of existence.” At first, that makes sense. If you’re perfect, then by definition you have all the attributes and existence has to be one of them. But then, obviously, the problem is that you are jumping from an epistemological level to an ontological level. You make a jump that you can’t make.

There is a lot to be learned from this kind of deductive thinking. For me, that has value. The duality of human nature that he proposes might not be accurate in exactly the format that he proposes it but I recognize it a lot in everyday life. It gives you a useful framework. It doesn’t always matter what is objectively true since you were never going to arrive at that conclusion anyway. Sometimes, what’s useful is the framework something gives to me to improve my life or to interpret life from the point of view of the human. We can pursue the knowledge of the cosmos, which is a separate thing and can be more objective and measured. But how is that useful to me?

Pascal also spoke about the duality of nature: we are both glorious and wretched. For me, that applies to so many instances in life, where you can just see that this is built into us. Even evolutionarily speaking, you can ask yourself any question. How can I navigate a relationship in modern times? Many men nowadays are struggling with the idea of monogamy. Is monogamy a social construct? Does it make sense, evolutionarily speaking? And if you look at it scientifically, you can get to both conclusions. Obviously, monogamy is useful for offspring and for the survival of the offspring. The genome survives because of that. But at the same time, if the genome spreads more, it also has a higher chance of survival. How do you reconcile the two driving forces? Well, they actually both exist at the same time. And that’s the duality of nature: there are always forces that go in opposite directions. Life is about finding an optimal point, kind of a Pareto optimal point, of different outcomes that you can choose from. That kind of choice is up to you.

Our Western culture measures success by one or two parameters. It’s the byproduct of the Industrial Revolution mentality: GDP, scale, growth, and measuring. What is the definition of success?

And it measures everything with a parameter that can be maximized. I started life full of energy. Whatever I was doing, I just wanted to do the best that I could. It wasn’t that I wanted to be the best for its own sake. It was just a natural pursuit. But I realized that there needs to be a balance and that’s why it helped me to learn this philosophy, concepts like yin and yang, and all of these things.

The other dual aspect of human nature is your interior, inner experience as opposed to your exterior, external experience. When you start attaching your own purpose, your own fulfillment, and your own happiness to things that are external to you, you don’t have control over it. And that’s what the problem is—that’s our wretchedness. So that’s why you start exploring your inner experience and you start accepting the human side of things. This was especially important for someone like me, who has always been an advocate of reason. For me, reason is the common ground of understanding between each other and it is how we progress. But it’s an idealization to think of ourselves as rational beings. We are not. So settling this inner side is also important.

Adventure, Death, and the Non-negotiable Confrontation

You have embarked on a lot of solo adventures that included non-negotiable encounters with nature. What does that do for the mind and for the body? If you want to test an engineering system, you have to actually put it to the test. Presumably, the mind, the body, and the whole human being require a similar kind of hardening or rigor.

That’s a good parallel, the engineering system being put to the test. Obviously, engineering is all about building a model of reality. Especially nowadays, there are so many simulations. In the end, you always have to carry out a test. It’s a good parallel because we live in a constructed reality. That is true, physically speaking, of our apartments, grocery stores, and everything else that took us away from that baseline human condition. But there is also a mental aspect. I always say that human beings are not good at reasoning so much as we are good at rationalizing. We always identify with our rational selves. But the problem is that most of our decisions and interactions are actually made via our heuristics-based thinking, our intuition, and, to mention Daniel Kahneman, our fast thinking.

The problem there is that everything is so artificial around us. Not only physically speaking, but also in the interactions that we have with people and the problems that we have on a daily basis. We are very good at constructing rationalized explanations and at creating a causal chain of events that is completely made up. You get fired and in your mind, you can construct the thesis that you actually hated that job and you wanted to leave. When information is missing, we can complete the story we would want. You can negotiate your way out, you can construct a narrative. You can use that side of your brain that allows you to create this image of yourself.

In this way, you never actually hit the boundaries. You never actually put stress on your position. We are flexible and we are very intelligent, so we can rationalize. This is similar to the choices we make when we test our bodies. You justify yourself by saying, “Oh, well, I already did the treadmill today.” You think you’re testing yourself but you’re not. And so for me, an important part of interacting with the world and really understanding who you are is putting yourself in these situations that are difficult but not controlled. At the gym, there is the physical challenge to push yourself to a certain limit. Many people push themselves out of their comfort zone when it comes to working out. But what about pushing yourself to the limit by jumping into an ocean as waves crash down? No matter how proficient you are swimming, there is this element that is out of your control.

The danger is real, especially if you fail.

I cannot negotiate. I cannot create a story afterward. It just is what it is at that moment. So this has two effects on me. First of all, pushing the limit. Second, that state of presence and flow that you achieve. That state helps you get out of your thinking brain, your thinking machine. It’s almost paradoxical because then you do rely 100 percent on your heuristics and your fast thinking. You have to.

It’s always a good exercise for me because obviously, more than the average person, a lot of my life is based on slow thinking. I engage in rational thinking with so many of the decisions in my life. I have made spreadsheets about whether I should stay with a girlfriend or not, stuff like that. And that helps. We all know that even basic checklists help you make better-informed decisions. That’s why checklists are used in the medical field and in aviation. A simple checklist can eliminate 90 percent of human error. Just the process of doing it eliminates so much error and bias. It takes away from human fallibility.

But sometimes you need to have a situation in which this checklist is irrelevant.

What are some of the most important experiences that you’ve had of testing yourself?

Most of these pursuits, I began without a conscious attempt to achieve what we’re describing now. You know, you always analyze this afterward. I’m sure many people seek adventure or thrill without thinking about why. But I like to ask myself why. Many of these things, I guess, can not be fully described in a framework of thinking or logic. But I can give a few examples.

I began seeking adventure when I was around 12 or 13 years old. I used to go with a friend of mine to hike mountains and glaciers and so on. At the time, you can just ascribe that to a teenage impulse for risk-taking. It’s common when you’re growing up as a teenager to be risk-tolerant because you’re testing these boundaries. It’s part of growing and you kind of lose it with time. Basically, what I tried to do is not lose it with time. I exposed myself to this a lot growing up, so I didn’t want to stop this kind of pursuit when I was older.

For example, when I was 16, I really wanted to explore and travel. I didn’t have any money. So my means of travel was hitchhiking from one country to another with my sleeping bag. And this method of traveling is a test of your limits. Romantically, you can think that’s really cool. But when you find yourself in the suburbs of an unknown city, you have no place to sleep, and there are weird people around, that is a situation in which you need to figure it out. It’s uncomfortable. You think, “Oh, I wish I could just go back. I wish I could find a hotel.” This is the kind of situation in which you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s completely dark. And you’re like, “Okay, where am I? Is this a forest? Am I going to sleep here? Is there going to be an animal?” You don’t know but you just have to accept that you don’t know and power through that. I’ve had many trips like that.

You find yourself having to push yourself and push your limits. You learn that the people around you who we normally consider strangers and don’t interact with can actually be of help. But you have to push yourself outside your comfort zone and interact with them in a positive and constructive way. So this is a lesson. It’s something that is unexpected. People don’t put themselves in that situation because they don’t want to deal with, say, a strange man who’s on the side of the road. There was another test I did when I was 18. I went to Turkey with a friend of mine. At the time, there were these low-cost flights to Istanbul for like 10 euros. We took a return flight so we had maybe 20 days between our arrival and our return flight. But the experiment was that we went with no money, no credit card, and no means of accessing money, and we had to survive for two weeks. We needed to see the whole country.

So it doesn’t actually need to be in nature or wilderness, per se. It can be in cities as well.

Yeah. Because suddenly you wonder, “Okay, how do I eat if I don’t have money? How do I transport myself from one place to another? Where do I sleep?” Suddenly, you’re open to all sorts of possibilities. We slept in a police station, we slept on top of a mountain, and we slept in a truck. You figure it out. You have to interact with people. So you get invited for lunch. And these are situations where, for me, you’re also testing your limits. I was testing what could I do to survive and live if it were just me. People have this romantic idea that they’re going to go into the forest. But can you even survive in the actual world?

One day, I had injured myself, so I wasn’t walking very well. And my friend was carrying my bag because I had a hard time walking. We arrived at this mosque and we asked, “Do you have a place for us to sleep?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, you can sleep in the backyard.” It was a backyard which was kind of a dump, but whatever. When I went on this trip, I had one of those thin foam mats they use for camping but it had gotten cut in half in an accident. So only a strip was left. I unrolled it and I was on my side because the ground was not very even.

There was this homeless man who felt sorry for me. He came and he gave me his cardboard, he had some spare cardboard to lie on. We couldn’t speak the same language. But I had a pipe with some tobacco and I shared the pipe that I had. And he had some sunflower seeds. So we just spent the whole evening peeling the sunflower seeds, eating, smoking, and socializing completely without even knowing each other’s language. This is where I learned how you can also challenge yourself in situations that are social.

So this is one side. The other side is the more adventurous and physical kind of challenge. I was always attracted to sports that test your physical limits. I also liked to go to places that were very isolated, where if something goes wrong, no one can come to help you.

Is that a meditative experience?

It’s difficult for me to explain in words why I seek that. I always tried to expose some of my friends to the same kind of activities. It was always strange for me that not everybody felt the same about it. I guess everybody’s different. But for example, I’m very attracted to swimming in the deep ocean. When I take people, they often get freaked out when they wear their goggles and don’t see the bottom of the ocean. It’s dark and they hate that. I don’t know how to explain this but I really love that moment. There’s nothing like it. That’s why I pursued that.

That’s why I also pursued free diving. I remember, once I was in Sicily for a holiday and I would swim out into the open sea and go free diving. I swam really far out to reach the point in the ocean where you can’t see the bottom. My sport was to go and find the bottom on one breath. I remember this kid was fascinated by it and asked if I could take him with me one day. So, he came with me. When I said that we had reached the point of the water depth that I wanted, I told him “Just wait here and I’m going to dive. I’m going to come up but it’s going to take about two or three minutes. Just stay here.” I had a buoy and was attached to it with a string. Sure enough, I went down and disappeared. This guy couldn’t see me anymore because it was too deep and too dark at the bottom. And he freaked out. He just climbed on the buoy floats and wouldn’t let go. Even when I came back up, he just wouldn’t let go. He was completely freaked out. I had to literally drag him all the way to the coast with this tiny string.

So I guess it’s not for everybody. That’s why it’s difficult for me to explain it. Sometimes, when you have experiences that are shared by other people, it’s easy to explain or relate to because you understand them. But some of these activities are difficult to explain, like swimming in the ocean at night when it’s dark. I found with experience that most people don’t like that. But I guess it’s this element of the unknown or the feeling of being part of this force of nature and relying on my own strength against it. It’s the same when you hike a mountain and there’s a sheer drop. Because I love it so much, I have involved other people many times in my life who then ended up hating me for that. So that’s why, eventually, the best trips I had like this were when I was by myself because then I didn’t have to share these experiences. When I went to Namibia recently, at some point I just went off to the middle of nowhere, as far as I could get. You stop and it’s just yourself and nothing else. It’s weird because you think, “If the car breaks down here, I’m done for.”

It’s a feeling that resets me. You always think you can reason your way out of things and it’s nice to know that you can’t.

The nature of that mental experience in these moments is interesting. Is it something like unity with nature for you? Is it terrifying or enthralling?

I guess I try to reach the point where I’m terrified. It’s hard for me to achieve, in a sense. I put myself in that position precisely to control that emotion. Sometimes, being terrified is what kills you. If you’re doing free diving, if you’re at the bottom of the ocean on one breath and you panic, that’s when you burn all your oxygen and you die. So you can’t do that. I like to be in this situation because you’re getting into a state of flow. You’re in a state where you’re not thinking but actually, that kind of control over your emotions actually engages your rational thinking, although in a different way. You have to be the master of your own emotions. But at the same time, you really feel that it’s a weird homeostasis between the two.

You’re a lover of motorcycles. Does that fall in this category of activity for you?

Yeah, motorcycling is. A few months ago, I moved to Miami and I didn’t even have a place to stay. But I had already bought a motorcycle. That was the first thing, all I had was the motorcycle. One of the appeals to me about moving to Miami was the fact you can ride a motorbike without a helmet. That is strange to say, especially when most people who know me know that I’m very rational. I know that on the statistical level, that is high risk. And it’s almost like you just ignore it. I feel confident on a motorbike since I started riding when I was very young and I kind of got all the risky behavior out of the way then. So when I ride the motorbike now, I’m actually a safe driver because I understand the risks.

But originally, when I started using the motorbike, it was with stuff like dirt biking off-road in the forest and having to clear obstacles. Then by necessity, you always crash, you always fall, and you always are in uncontrolled situations where you’re just flung away. I don’t do that anymore because I’ve lived in cities basically since I was 18, so it’s difficult to get to that. But the passion for the motorbike remains. I’ve done lots of long-distance travel. I used to go every year from London to the south of Italy with my motorbike. For me, riding the motorbike is a meditation. I just go and ride in the evening as an activity. At that moment, I’m engaging my amygdala, I’m engaging my reptilian brain, and I’m engaging my fast thinking in an automatic way. That takes up some of my brain power and focus. That’s why I also like driving, for example. I like to be focused on the activity of driving. I’m trying to achieve different mental states.

One of my mentors used to say that thinking is the most powerful drug but the problem is the uptake energy. With the drug, you’re just taking it and there’s almost no effort. You just get the high, you get the effect. But with thinking, you’re having to invest the energy to get the dopamine going.

It’s mysticism without going into the desert, where you have to face the specter of death. Was there ever a near-death experience for you?

There have been situations in which I’ve been without water for a prolonged period of time. And that is definitely a humbling experience. You don’t need a long time without water before you start feeling really bad.

I also had a situation on the motorbike. One day, I was riding in the south of Italy. And because I lived in the UK then, my brain suddenly switched to riding on the wrong side. I was thinking about something else. And suddenly, I didn’t realize there was a car coming up in front of me. This car swerved just at the last second, I don’t know how, and nothing happened. After that, obviously, the adrenaline is pumping and you think “I could have been dead now.”

But what I got from that experience surprised me: I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. I was thinking about it: “Wow, this is one of those moments where I could have been literally dead. And I’m alive. What have I learned from that?” You hear people say, “I should have been dead and my life has changed now.” I didn’t experience that. I had it happen that I was climbing a mountain. I took the wrong route on the rocks and suddenly I realized I had one centimeter of rock that I was standing on and I could fall and die. Then I managed to get out of it. But I never had that introspective moment. Maybe it’s because I proactively put myself in that position.

And that’s how our brain is wired, actually. It’s a well-known fact that people pursue adrenaline more and more because their brain is suddenly hijacked into this wiring. It reinforces the fact that you survived and so now you’re getting a reward out of that activity because you get that adrenaline. It’s like the people who go on a tour of war and then they survive that extreme adrenaline—they just want to go back. Your brain is suddenly hijacked. Obviously, I’ve never done anything as extreme and I feel like I’m within the bounds of understanding what’s good and bad for me. The kinds of activities I seek are always within a certain limit but there are recurring themes in what experiences I seek and in the extreme environments.

You mentioned the desert. I like that because the desert is definitely my favorite type of environment for eliciting these kinds of feelings. The desert and the ocean. Anything that’s barren or has this undertone of death.

Many people want to die at home in their beds. Some maybe want to die on a great adventure. Do you have a philosophy of death—of that final outcome?

I think about death often, almost every day.

Memento mori.

Yeah. I like to bring up that everybody dies. Or sometimes, even joking when people are complaining about something. I say, “Well, you can always call it a day.” You don’t have to do any of this, you know? And people who don’t know me first think that’s kind of morbid and weird. But then they kind of get it. They know where I’m coming from because this is out of a deep appreciation of life—for what it is and its transient nature. Dying is always an option.

And in fact, it is the unavoidable option, eventually. It’s always good to remember that. For me, what I’m grateful for most of all is existence itself. Rare doesn’t even begin to define it, this human-centric vision of the world. But just because we exist, we assumed that that’s a normal thing. 

A recurring topic in the kinds of literature and philosophy you’ve discussed is immortality. Sometimes, it’s the immortality of the soul. If you’re a Homeric hero, it’s eternal fame. Do you see any immortal aspect of life?

Early on in life, I came across this notion in the skeptic philosophers that one shouldn’t be afraid of death because your existence and death are mutually exclusive. That made instant sense to me. For most of my life, I never really related to that very human desire to be remembered past our lifetime. It seems so irrelevant to me because I won’t exist anyway. I guess I’m very pragmatic when it comes to that. I don’t have the desire to be remembered. When I don’t exist, I don’t exist.

If I have to say what I’m more inclined toward, it’s this kind of thinking. You can think in a more spiritual way, that we’re all part of the great oneness of everything. And it kind of makes sense if you think about it: we are made of matter, we are just the rearrangement of it, and we go back to it. When you think of the cosmos, you reach those depths of thought that almost make your heart afraid because you’ve understood something. For me, the most recurrent one is the classic moment when you stargaze at the universe and you realize how weird it is that matter arranged itself in such a way that it eventually gained self-consciousness. I am an expression of that, looking up at the stars. I’m an expression of this consciousness, which is a continuum. Life was formed in a simple way: nature learned how to store information. And that is the inception of consciousness if you think about it.

You can even take it a step further and say, “Well, the moment in which matter is formed is a kind of expression of consciousness because something that didn’t exist before, exists now.” You know, it’s like a different form. You can take it all the way back to the entropy fluctuations, the quantum fluctuations—what is that? It’s definitely a continuum, right? I’m not a subscriber to the ideology that there is a qualitative jump at some point that forms consciousness. I believe in consciousness as an emergent property of whatever is happening within us.

And because it is an emergent property, you can’t extract it and separate it from actual material existence. Because of that, I recognize that oneness. When I’m looking at the stars, I am the universe looking upon itself. That is the only meaning of life that I can see. I don’t have to give it any other meaning. It doesn’t matter, you know?

Philosophies of death are interesting because they end up being a testing ground for what your philosophy of life gained you. When Odysseus meets Achilles in Hades, he praises the eternal glory that Achilles has won in his life of battle. But in response, Achilles’s shade replies that he would prefer to be a wretched serf in the land of the living than lord of all the dead.

The idea of Achilles lives, but Achilles himself doesn’t.

What should people focus on if they’re trying to cultivate their own life or the heights of their own aspirations?

I think what many people nowadays forget—there is a lot of this destructive mentality going around—is that we experience the universe and life via our own existence. Our perception of the world is tied to our physical existence. This is why I’ve always been such a big advocate of cultivating your body and mind and I’ll never tire of repeating that. People ask what your purpose in life should be. Is it the pursuit of happiness? There are so many different things that one can think of. 

But I like to always think that every day should be dedicated to improving yourself. You, as an entity, are the whole universe as far as you are concerned. So that’s why I like to invest time into improving myself every day. It’s a never-ending, lifelong pursuit. Learning, bettering yourself, and thinking. It’s not tied to external things as much. I know that nowadays people always want actionable things. That’s why I boil it down to this. Why am I reading this book today? Why am I learning how to paint? Why am I doing anything on any day? It’s for improving yourself in some way. And therefore, your whole life is improved. You’re given this one existence, which is very rare. I like to give value to this individual instance of existence, which is all you can control.

I also believe, on a practical level, in the importance of mindfulness and presence. Nowadays, it’s become very popular but in a different way. It has become saturated, with all these meditation apps. 

You practice mindfulness so you can come up with a better pitch deck. It’s become a product all its own.

I want to really define what mindfulness is. Meditation is a simple thing. It’s not engaging in impulsive thinking for a second or putting yourself in a non-negotiable situation. Sitting and watching a sunset. Taking time for yourself. Like, that’s all there is. It’s not this overthinking about breathing until you’re unconscious. Then it just becomes an extra thing.

Sometimes, you need to be more focused on what you are doing today to be better at something. What are you learning today? It’s constant because your mind is also a muscle. People think they’re learning when they are in school and that’s it. But your brain uses a lot more energy than your body. So maybe I’ve worked out one hour a day and I’m learning for two hours a day and I’m practicing some motor skills, or something. But it has to be a natural thing where you feel like you really need it.

And then everything else comes as a consequence. The whole first half of this conversation was about the interdisciplinary approach to life and how anything you do can benefit another aspect of your life. I discovered this accidentally. I wasn’t studying engineering because I thought it would help me in fitness. I wasn’t doing modeling because I thought it would help me in my career. But because I always had this drive, I really wanted to learn what the best way to be fit is and what the best strategy for modeling is. What are the elements?

Always thinking about what you’re doing, that’s what mindfulness is. You’re engaged in what you’re doing. I love traveling and I come back having learned something because I took the time to think about it. I think this is the most actionable thing. Always try to learn something and improve yourself. And it sounds simple, but the simplest things are always the best.

“AT THE EDGE OF LIFE” CREDITS:

Photographer: Dylan Nine
Model: Pietro Boselli
Producer: Matt Ellison
Art Direction: Asimov Collective
Assistant Producer & Stylist: Elena Sullivan
Assistant Producer & Stylist: Eva Sullivan
Photo Assistant: Benjamin Spiro
Styling Assistant: Simon Santo
Shot at VACO Studio in Miami, Florida

History is driven by ambitious individuals who engineer great political outcomes in pursuit of great dreams.

Launching our print edition two years ago, we began with our own dreams. We have covered everything from how to build up industrial civilization to how to weave it into a flourishing garden planet; from engineering states to cultivating elites.

But history is not a blank canvas for imagined futures. Nor is it a clockwork progression. At key moments, the contingencies encountered and resolved by the agents of history determine much of the outcome. Studying them is essential for any project of applied history.

PALLADIUM 09: Political Outcomes opens with two pieces of theory: when and why history is shaped by individuals and how reformers should relate to their surrounding social hierarchy. The rest of the issue focuses on six individuals who grabbed history by the horns and made it their own. None of them are sovereigns, and not all of them were successful; in their efforts, we find the crucial importance of loyalty by ambitious lieutenants to particular sovereigns.

Their successes and failures can teach us something of the way to bring about our own dreams.

This print edition is a collection of our best writing on how ambitious individuals bring about new political outcomes, accompanied by beautiful custom art and exclusive interviews.

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection. We offer PALLADIUM 09 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis. Print editions, and other member benefits, are not for sale.

Featuring

Those Who Make History by Nicolas Villarreal. Mao Zedong and Cesare Borgia show that at decisive moments, the material forces of history make room for great men to change its course.

Confucius and the Whistleblower by Peter Wei. The Confucian ideal of the loyal minister who admonishes his patron lord over disagreements contrasts sharply with the modern ideal of the whistleblower.

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning by N. S. Lyons. The life and work of the gray eminence behind Xi Jinping’s cultural policies show the power of quiet and thoughtful advisors in politics.

“Opportunity Is Always Out There” with Simon Mann by Ash Milton. Executive Outcomes mercenary Simon Mann tells of his adventures intervening in wars and getting imprisoned for plotting a coup.

The Censor Who Ended the Soviet Union by Alex Gelland. After learning the truth about Stalin in 1956, Soviet propagandist Alexander Yakovlev became disillusioned with the communist project. Decades later, he helped end it.

Vietnam’s Red Napoleon by Avetis Muradyan. Võ Nguyên Giáp began as Hồ Chí Minh’s able lieutenant and became a legendary general. Working from the hinterlands, they defeated two foreign empires.

The Mirage of European Sovereignty by Miquel Vila. Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi dreamed of a new aristocracy to unite Europe. Known today as the EU’s grandfather, his dream is largely forgotten.

The Apostle of the French Revolution by Ash Milton. Henri Gregoire became a leading radical of the French revolution. But without a clear sovereign patron, his ideas escaped his intentions.

One of the most striking developments of the past two centuries is the growth of public scientific authority. On science’s behalf, its partisans have successfully claimed credit for rapid technological advances, whole fields of knowledge, and the authority to judge the credibility of beliefs.

This prestige is useful to political leaders trying to justify their decisions. But it’s not intuitive how science should have popular prestige. Scientific work mostly takes place in small communities of trained people, using language and instruments obscure to the general public. The actual work of researchers and the invocation of scientific authority are two distinct operations. Science’s role as a public ideology isn’t automatically compatible with the delicate process of scientific research or even with the careful use of science in policy.

As we have continued our deep study of the future of governance, the problems of Scientific Authority have come to the fore as some of the most fascinating. As science has become more powerful, political forces have fed back to distort the scientific process itself. For many of us coming from technical backgrounds, our natural question was how public epistemology—and public authority—could live up to our scientific ideals. The difficulty lies in avoiding the errors of trying to turn science into a religion or politics into a technocratic calculation.

This print edition is a collection of our best writing on the relationship between science and society, accompanied by beautiful custom art and exclusive interviews.

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection. We offer PALLADIUM 08 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale and never will be.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 08: SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY ships December 21st. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis. Print editions, and other member benefits, are not for sale.

Featuring

The Transformations of Science by Geoff Anders. Science originated in taking no one at their word, but today we’re told to “trust the science.” Can we balance these two impulses?

Science Needs Sovereigns by Samo Burja. Powerful individuals are the best allies to crazy new ideas. Science is no exception.

The Chaos of Science in Power by Nicolas Vilarreal. Science has become a bank for political legitimacy. It hasn’t survived intact. 

Leo Szilard’s Failed Quest to Build a Ruling Class by Zachary Lerangis. Atomic physicist Leo Szilard thought that scientists could rule the world better. The insiders who pushed him aside demonstrate what it actually takes to run the show.

When Elite Physicists Advised Washington by Brian Balkus. In 1959, the U.S. government gave an elite group of physicists classified information and free reign to research. The JASON program’s rise and fall tracks a golden age of American science.

The Institutions of Science with Lord Martin Rees by Ash Milton. Lord Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and the current Astronomer Royal. He reflects on how science can serve society and the obstacles for those who want to follow in his footsteps.

A World Without Sci-Hub by Jason Parry. Sci-Hub has become foundational for scientific research. What if we didn’t need it at all?

Political Academia With Stephen Hsu By Alexander Gelland. Researching the frontiers of genomics, modeling uncertainty, and managing a university have taught Professor Steve Hsu that scientific questions aren’t the only kind that scientists have to answer.

The Genealogy of Chinese Cybernetics by Dylan Levi King. Qian Xuesen helped China gain nuclear weapons and theorized Dengist cybernetics. Although a brilliant physicist, he made dangerous missteps as an advisor to power.

This essay appears in print in PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet. To receive your copy of Palladium’s quarterly print edition, subscribe here.

It is now 2053. The ducted fans roar as your taxi drone comes in for landing on a near-ballistic trajectory. The G-forces take some getting used to, but no one in a hurry uses surface cars anymore; too hard to automate, too slow, and too constrained by the built environment. Better to jump.

You spot her waiting there on the far side of the rooftop garden as the door pops open. The recharge cable robot shuffles out of your way as you step out of the craft and off the jump pad. You start winding along the mossy paths between sword ferns and flowering trees. The bees whiz by on their rounds. The new government palaces all have these lush wildlife gardens, laid out for socializing and contemplation. It’s the perfect spot to meet an important citizen.

You were worried about meeting outside on such a hot day, but the garden is moist and comfortably shaded. The building’s cloud generator emulates the microclimate of the local valleys when the fog rolls in.

Using this much water and power would have been considered an environmental atrocity just 20 years ago, but those worries have mostly disappeared in a flood of cheap electricity. Now, it’s more important for the government to demonstrate its power to sustain life in a damaged world. The birds flitting overhead seem to appreciate the change.

The nuclear renaissance has been one of the most important development programs of the new government. None of this would be possible without it. Your contact was a key spokeswoman for that change. She had pulled strings and built momentum until the program vision came together, and then made her empire on getting it done.

Entrepreneurial statecraft: exactly the kind of work your own ambitions have led you to.

With your recent successes lining up, you’ve finally gotten a chance to sit down with her and get the full story. She smiles and welcomes you, and beckons to a bench beneath a tree. You sit down and break the ice with small talk. When you’ve both settled in, your digital assistant asks if you’d like to record a transcript of the conversation. You give the order and dive right into the interview:

One of the most effective ways to create the future is to occupy it and work backward. How did we get here? So if we’re sitting in 2053 planning the rest of the century, it’s helpful to look back at the nuclear renaissance as an example of how these things can happen. What were the key trends and efforts that got nuclear development going again?

As with any big societal shift, you cannot pinpoint a single moment
that defined the future. But there were important markers and events that made it possible for the nuclear renaissance to finally take place. The war between Ukraine and Russia in 2022 was one of the most significant ones, with the West realizing (yet again) the importance of energy independence. Western Europe had made itself dependent on Russian natural gas in the preceding decades and paid the price. Energy shortages during a brutal winter and the reopening of long-gone coal plants, which increased air pollution and worsened climate change, were just some of the consequences. The silver lining was that it became very clear that, for all the posturing, a drastic reduction in energy consumption was not on the table for most of the world. Although it once sounded poetic, in practice lowering energy consumption meant stunting development in the Global South and reversing it in the Global North. Human life had improved dramatically with things like home heaters, cars, and cell phones. So of course when given the choice between deadly coal or no power, we chose coal every time.

The war and subsequent energy crisis also highlighted the deeply ideological politics and hypocrisy of countries like Germany. For decades, German politicians preached about clean energy and climate change. But when the time came to make a decision, those in power chose to close their carbon-free nuclear plants, while bringing back already- closed, highly-polluting coal plants. In that moment, it became clear that anti-nuclear energy sentiment was not only deeply irrational. Most importantly, it was deadly.

This realization opened a window that allowed the new generation
to reassess long-held beliefs about nuclear power. A massive cultural shift began. At first, it began with thousands of people protesting the early closure of existing nuclear power plants in the United States and Europe. Then environmental organizations that had previously maintained a strictly anti-nuclear position started opening up to it. Soon after that, the vast majority of people under the age of 60 had fully embraced the technology, as did enterprising politicians. As theoretical physicist Max Planck said: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Simultaneously, the United States realized that China had been dominating the development, construction, and spread of nuclear power in the developing world, and it decided to step up. It boosted national development of modern nuclear reactors that were smaller, more flexible, and easier to build than previous technology. The U.S. also increased its uranium enrichment capacity and started recycling nuclear waste (spent fuel). All of this made the United States a leader in nuclear energy and allowed the country to fully decarbonize its electricity sector by 2045. Another upside was the leadership in clean hydrogen, water desalination, manufacturing, and direct air capture using nuclear power.

Large-scale changes in policy and industrial investment patterns were required to get nuclear power back on track. In the early twenty-first century, it was hard to imagine how our institutions could have moved on this even if they wanted to. Were the political upheavals in the early twenty-first century a necessary ingredient, or could this have been done regardless?

It could have been done regardless. Unfortunately, during the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, most of the West was infected by the meme that nuclear energy was bad. This started in the 1960s with the anti-nuclear weapons movement. Of course, now it’s obvious they’re different technologies with completely different purposes. Environmental organizations made anti-nuclear sentiment the core of their missions and pop culture portrayed the technology as evil. For decades, Western countries bought into the meme and stunted nuclear energy development. However, the countries that kept investing and developing it—China, Russia, South Korea—were successful at deploying the technology at scale in a timely manner and on budget. What we needed was a mindset change and that only came with time, war, and a generational perception shift.

Your career has focused on specifically nuclear power. But life and civilization have always drawn on multiple sources of energy. How do you see the role of other sources like wind, geothermal, and fossil fuels in a clean high-energy civilization?

Energy is the currency of the universe. From relying on human muscles, burning wood, and fossilized plants and animals, to finally splitting the atom, our species has been outstanding due to our ability to use energy to shape everything around us. The more energy we harness, the more we expand our knowledge, technologies, and understanding of the universe. High-speed travel, supercomputing, AI, and space exploration are all only possible because we are able to tap into vast amounts of energy. Nuclear has many advantages over other sources, such as being the most dense, least carbon-intensive, least land-intensive, and one of the least material-intensive. And, let’s be real, it’s the most badass.

However, our ever-expanding need for carbon-free power to not only maintain our civilization, but to also develop new and better technologies, means we need to use every clean energy source available. Solar is an incredible option for California, the southwest of North America, and other desert regions close to the equator. But in northern Europe it doesn’t make nearly as much sense. In the late 2020s, we ramped up the large-scale installation of batteries and solar panels on residential and commercial buildings, and built huge solar farms in those areas. Within a decade, almost every roof was able to collect a solar energy surplus and store the excess in batteries. Countries with incredible hydropower potential like Brazil, Costa Rica, and Norway continued to utilize it to great effect. Same with geothermal and wind. Once we stopped limiting ourselves to a certain technology for arbitrary reasons, we were able to objectively assess all of our options and utilize them where it made the most sense.

One of the biggest concerns for nuclear power was the question of waste. How does it compare to other energy options, and how much of a problem is the waste going to be in the long run?

Looking back, it’s clear that nuclear waste was never as big of an issue as people made it to be. It was especially not an issue when compared to the waste of other forms of energy that were more prevalent at the time, like oil and coal. While spent fuel from nuclear power plants never harmed anyone or polluted the environment, the waste from fossil fuels killed millions of humans, year after year. On top of the direct health impacts, it also caused climate change, which brought our society to crisis.

With nuclear, spent fuel is 96% reusable uranium, so it soon became clear that what we considered waste was in fact a huge amount of untapped energy. Through the 2030s, we started recycling it and developing reactors that could utilize that waste as fuel. The small amount of waste that couldn’t be reused is buried deep in geographically stable locations where it’s safely contained and slowly decaying without harming the environment. These technologies solved the “nuclear waste issue.”

Ironically, the waste from solar panels and wind turbines became a bigger problem for a while. Because of how low-density these energy sources were and their lack of regulation, a large volume of panels and turbines started piling up in landfills. The problem subsided when we forced manufacturers to collect and recycle them properly.

In the early twenty-first century, it looked like solar power at scale was the favored clean energy solution. Why didn’t that work?

It did work, just not in the way that technology purists wanted. Once we gave up on the idea of using solar as the main source of electricity everywhere, or getting some arbitrary percentage of our electricity from it, we opened up the possibility of exploring solutions that made more sense. Massive solar farms that required large amounts of land faced high opposition and protests, especially in light of cheap nuclear electricity. Rooftop solar, which doesn’t require additional land and can power homes and factories directly, prevailed and became predominant in regions of the world where sun is abundant and constant. Wind farms multiplied in the American great plains, Argentina, and Western China. Geothermal is responsible for most electricity production in Iceland and Kenya. Now everyone knows that each region’s electricity matrix is tailored to what makes sense for its resources and potential.

Global warming from carbon emissions used to be a major environmental concern, but the nuclear renaissance has alleviated that. How did nuclear power contribute to solving climate change?

By the 2020s, we began to understand the importance of “firm clean power,” meaning a source of energy that works 24/7 and doesn’t produce carbon dioxide emissions, to balance the grid and achieve decarbonization. That’s different from intermittent renewables like solar and wind which only produce electricity when the sun is shining and wind is blowing, and it’s different from fossil fuels which pollute the atmosphere. Nuclear became the obvious choice because it is the only firm clean power source that isn’t dependent on geography. When public perception changed and most people embraced nuclear, we were able to deploy both renewables and nuclear at a fast pace and phase out fossil fuels for electricity production.

Unfortunately, by the mid-2020s, it became clear that even completely cutting carbon emissions wasn’t enough. We had already pumped so much of it into the atmosphere that the climate had become unstable. We needed active removal to stabilize the climate and prevent continued warming.

Fortunately, abundant nuclear power makes it economical to run direct
air capture machines which suck carbon dioxide straight from the air and sequester it or turn it into useful chemicals. Freshwater scarcity became another big issue in the 2030s, especially with climate fluctuations.

Once again, nuclear came to the rescue by powering energy-intensive water desalination plants with waste heat. Another advantage of splitting atoms to make electricity is that it produces lots of extra heat, which is now used in many places to heat buildings in place of natural gas.

In some ways, the single biggest upstream input to wealth is energy. How has a world of energy abundance impacted global wealth and poverty?

In 2020, there were over 700 million people on Earth without access to any electricity. Today, that number is thought to be closer to 1 million, comprising mostly of uncontacted tribes and those who chose to live without electricity for either religious or philosophical reasons. Nuclearization brought electrification all over the world. Access to electricity has become a choice, not a consequence of your place of birth. That has unleashed a lot of human potential, especially in what used to be considered developing countries. Access to electricity led to higher levels of education, especially amongst young women, which radically improved quality of life throughout the African continent and India.

And that’s just direct access. Abundant, clean energy also means manufacturing is cheaper and less environmentally damaging, so everything is more abundant. It also means fewer compromises with problems like polluting factories. Energy gives humans the ability to solve increasingly complex problems.

Going forward into a high-energy future, what are the most exciting possibilities for the rest of the twenty-first century?

In a world with unlimited access to clean energy, many things that we thought were impossible are becoming a reality. One of these is vertical farming, which is freeing huge swaths of land, decreasing use of pesticides, and making it easy to feed the 10 billion humans now on Earth with high-quality food.

Supercomputers are helping us answer some of the biggest mysteries in science, super-optimize everything we design, and train extremely powerful machine learning systems.

The combination of cheap nuclear electricity with carbon capture and hydrocarbon synthesis technologies is making environmentally sustainable supersonic and even hypersonic travel an everyday reality.

Our Mars colony is largely nuclear-powered, and is getting very close
to permanent self-sufficiency. The further we push out into the darker parts of the solar system the more sense nuclear power makes, especially with nuclear propulsion allowing for faster and faster space travel. Our new Ganymede colony will be entirely nuclear-powered.

With advanced recycling technology enabled by abundant energy, almost all material waste can be fully recycled. There are now multiple successful companies digesting the big twentieth century landfills back into metals, industrial chemicals, and fertile soil.

What was too slow in the history of the nuclear renaissance? What should people in 2022 have been working on to enable a richer future of environmentally sound energy abundance? What were people not seeing?

The petty infighting between proponents of different clean energy sources was a waste of time and delayed the deployment of all different technologies. We were slow to change our regulatory environment, which made nuclear power almost prohibitively expensive in the West for several decades. The widespread implementation of a carbon tax and changes in the licensing process for new reactor designs were the biggest drivers of the nuclear renaissance. We lost so much time debating and discussing nuclear waste while millions of people died from fossil fuel’s waste. It’s easy to see threats, but it was much harder to see the amazing opportunities we were missing. We needed to fully grasp what was at stake, and have more imagination about what we could accomplish and more courage to stand up against irrationality.

The nuclear renaissance has opened a whole new universe of possibilities for our species. A universe of abundance, less environmental damage, and greater human happiness.

Editor’s Note: In 2022, Isabelle Boemeke was a fashion model and nuclear influencer. She founded the Isodope project to promote clean energy from nuclear power. At the time, she could be found on Twitter at @i_sodope_ and Instagram at @isabelleboemeke.

“Nuclear Renaissance” Photoshoot Credits. Photographer: Brian Ziff. Model: Isabelle Boemeke. Art Direction: Asimov Collective. Producer: Matt Ellison. Stylist: Star Burleigh. Makeup: Carolina Ballesteros. Hair: Preston Wada. Manicurist: Sojin Oh. Set and Prop Design: Rian Calhoun. 3D: Ethan Chancer. Photo Assistant: Danner Gardner. Stylist Assistants: Ali Gambino; Auva Ahmadi. Studio: Flat Factory Studio, Los Angeles. Featured wardrobe includes Radiolaria Tutu by Julia Koerner; other items by Letra; Trendhaus; Oriens; Lily Barnes; Dollskill; Vintage; YVY. Special thanks: Samo Burja, Gabriel & Brittany Hugoboom. © 2022 Palladium Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

This Palladium print edition is a luxurious exploration of the future of our planet with beautiful custom art, exclusive interviews with Isabelle Boemeke and Stewart Brand, our best articles on the biggest environmental questions, and a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

Every year the effects of human activity on the environment grow more apparent: heat waves, melting ice, invasive species, extinctions, fires, deforestation, and destabilization of a climate finely balanced for human civilization. 

Although we try to step lighter, the scale of our ecological adaptations likewise must intensify. If our adaptations remain short-sighted and reactive then we will only seal our environmental fate. The ecological crisis already at hand will mean that societies must struggle to adapt to even what has already happened. Some societies will benefit as their lands grow warmer and ices melt while others will fall in the face of natural disasters and social upheaval.

But the unique contribution of man to nature is a far-sighted consciousness that reorganizes the world towards higher meaning and deeper resilience. Our environmental destiny doesn’t have to be frustration and opposition; it can be a beautiful synthesis of the conscious and the natural. 

It is in our power to expand the forests, to build cities in harmony with the land, to stabilize the climate, and to power advanced civilizations. If we can turn our will to a clear view of the world we are creating, we will cultivate a flourishing garden planet.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 07: GARDEN PLANET ships September 21, 2022. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection. We offer PALLADIUM 07 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale and never will be.

Featuring

The Future History of the Nuclear Renaissance With Isabelle Boemeke. The year is 2053. A nuclear renaissance has transformed society. Here is how it all happened. Featuring a visionary photoshoot with Brian Ziff.

The Rise of the Garden Empires by Wolf Tivy. Mankind’s environmental destiny is to build garden empires, synthesizing ecology and industry together into a new order of life.

Greening the Heavens by Thomas Moynihan. As poverty and war cast doubt on the whole industrial revolution, Russian cosmists and other futurists dreamed of a universe imbued with intelligence. 

Climate Change Is Inevitable by Jesse Velay-Vitow. Globally coordinating the mainstream solutions for climate change is impossible. Instead, advanced civilizations of the future will have to adapt to it.

Environmentalism in One Country by Dylan Levi King. As Kim Il-sung established North Korea, he created its nationalist environmentalism using traditional Korean mythology. It’s a strategy others will also have to follow.

California’s Vestal Flame by Galen Peterson. The consequences of fire suppression in California have challenged man’s relationship to the land. The answer lies in integrating our way of life with its natural forces.

The Modern Diet Is a Biosecurity Threat By David Oks. From obesity and microbiome decline to autoimmune disorders, the modern diet has become a threat to industrial society’s biological basis: the human species. 

Ancient Upheavals Show How to Geoengineer a Stable Climate by Patrick Mellor. Humans are the latest natural force to shape the earth, but this power needs to become conscious and self-regulating for the species to survive it.

“Life Goes On” With Stewart Brand by Matt Ellison and Wolf Tivy. Reflecting on over fifty years of environmental advocacy, a sober, scientific perspective warns against fear and apocalypticism. There’s work to be done.

Photo Credits: Photographer: Brian Ziff | Model: Isabelle Boemeke | Art Direction: Asimov Collective | Producer: Matt Ellison | Stylist: Star Burleigh | Makeup: Carolina Ballesteros | Hair: Preston Wada | Manicurist: Sojin Oh | Set and Prop Design: Rian Calhoun | 3D: Ethan Chancer | Photo Assistant: Danner Gardner | Studio: Flat Factory Studio, Los Angeles | Special thanks: Samo Burja, Gabriel & Brittany Hugoboom

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection.

We offer PALLADIUM 06 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale and never will be. Become a member now to receive PALLADIUM 06 and support our work.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 06: Imperial Frontiers ships until September 21, 2022. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

 The Empire of the Golden Triangle by Dylan Levi King. Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle is the home of criminal militias and corrupt politicians. With quiet Chinese support, one man has made it his empire. 

What Happened in Kazakhstan’s January Rebellion? by Fin Depencier. Kazakhstan’s leaders blamed foreign infiltration for its violent January protests. In the city of Almaty, I learned that the real answers lie within the state itself. 

The School That Built Asia by Ernest Lueng. The Japanese Empire founded Kenkoku University to create new pan-Asian elites. Despite their own defeat, they succeeded. 

Armenia Is an Orphaned Client State by Fin Depencier. A journey through Armenia reveals a country on Russian life support. With Azerbaijan and Turkey in ascendency, the country’s lack of allies is its most existential threat. 

The Forgotten UN Intervention to Build Democracy in Cambodia by Tanner Greer. In the early 1990s, the UN intervened in Cambodia in a show of liberal democratic state-building. Its failures foreshadowed the hubris which would follow the liberal world order from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. 

Why China Will Decide the Future of the Steppe by Luka Jukic. The Great Steppe of Eurasia has variously been a bridge and battleground between civilizations. But one thing is now certain: it will be China that will shape the Steppe’s future and the future of those living along its vast plain. 

Report from Venezuela: An Inside Look at a Country in Free Fall by Miguel Morel. Venezuela, plagued by an incompetent and corrupt ruling class, doesn’t have what it takes to be a socialist state. The Palladium team visited Venezuela and Colombia for an up-close look at a country in free fall and harrowing stories from refugees who have fled. 

Authoritarian Development Has Rebuilt Kazakhstan into a Eurasian Power by Luka Jukic. Kazakhstan emerged from the Soviet Union as a poor country under Russian domination. Today, its new capital rises from the steppe and its living standards are improving. Behind this lie both a Eurasianist politics and an authoritarian development model.

We find ourselves in a centralizing society that we can only imagine as a dystopia. With newfound material and logistical power, we can’t even remember what it was all for. Our ideologies have become reactive in response. Each new agenda begins with the promise of breaking this trend: the Internet, the market, charter cities, or revolutionary reform.

One by one, they all get folded back into the pull of centralization. This contradiction between centralizing reality and decentralizing ideology demands fresh examination. How can we make the centralizing society a force for humanity and civilization?

PALLADIUM 05 is the latest edition of our quarterly print magazine, rendered with beautiful custom art on the finest materials. It assembles an anthology of our key observations on the Centralizing Society and the challenges to governing it. PALLADIUM 05 is available now and arriving on the doorsteps of members around the world.

Our print editions are luxurious icons optimized for focused thought on the most important and overlooked topics in future governance. Display it on your coffee table or your bookshelf. This is an item for your long-term collection.

We offer PALLADIUM 05 exclusively for our members; it is not for sale and never will be. Become a member now to receive PALLADIUM 05 and support our work.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 05: Centralizing Society ships until June 21st, 2022. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

The Centralized Internet Is Inevitable by Samo Burja. Digital centralization is increasing, and social media networks are now engaging in direct censorship. This is not a violation of the internet’s original spirit, but a necessary feature of its logic.

The Second Death of Jiao Yulu by Dylan Levi King. The party cadre Jiao Yulu embodied a Chinese political culture with room for experiments and risk-taking. Xi’s turn to digital technocracy may threaten its survival.

How Capitalist Giants Use Socialist Cybernetic Planning by Nicolas Villarreal. Socialist Chile’s Project Cybersyn prefigured the cybernetic economic planning now used by capitalist giants like Amazon and Walmart. But the future of cybernetic planning can either empower workers or enslave them.

Why Charter Cities Won’t Lead to Decentralized Government by Ash Milton. Advocates of decentralized government view charter cities as a way to route around slow, legacy governments, and usher in political and market liberalism. Reality tells a different story.

De Gaulle’s State of Tomorrow by Roger Bitton. In postwar France, Charles de Gaulle unified executive power with a technocratic state and a national story. His model still endures around the world.

The Myth of Panic by Tanner Greer. The threat of mass panic lurks behind our mechanisms of political control. What if we were allowed to fear?

America’s New Post-Literate Epistemology by Michael Cuenco. They came from the internet in their war-memes and none could stand against them.

Confronting Modernity Means Overcoming Humanism by Charlie Smith. Humanism believed that we could conquer the world. In reality, modernity has escaped our control. Only a posthumanist framework can see us through.

Benjamin H. Bratton on Terraforming the World Order by Marko Bauer. Sociologist and design theorist Benjamin H Bratton discusses how our ongoing technologically-driven terraforming will remake the world order, and how technology reveals and creates human destiny as much as enabling it.