The Portal
<p>The Portal is an exploration into discovery, including conversations with thought leaders. Host Eric Weinstein, Managing Director of Thiel Capital, brings his unique expertise and diverse roster of guests for a wide range of discussions, including science, culture, business, and capitalism. The show will feature people whose lives demonstrate that portals into what we would normally consider impossible, are indeed possible. Guests include presidential candidate Andrew Yang, NY Times bestselling author Sam Harris, and retired Navy Seal and creator of the hit business podcast Jocko Willink.</p>
42: Cashing Out My Trump & IDW Positions
2 Dec 2020
In this solo episode, Eric shares three related audio essays. In the first essay, Eric admits that he has spent the last four years asserting that Donald Trump represented an Existential Risk, but
41: Douglas Murray - Heroism 2020: Defense of Our Own Civilization
24 Oct 2020
If you don't know Douglas Murray, in the estimation of the The Portal, this may well be the most important voice you will hear from the United Kingdom for some time. In the tradition of De
40: Introducing The Portal Essay Club - What if everyone is simply insane?
12 Aug 2020
If you have ever wondered whether you were crazy when everyone else claims to see things differently than you do, this is the episode for you. Book clubs are everywhere and we are always asked for
39: Admission To Sugar Baby U.
30 Jul 2020
One of the pillars of the American Dream has been that of seeing your children go to college. And, for the many families that can't afford the cost of soaring university tuitions, a new controversial
38: Mass Media, Markets, and Human Malware: A Portal Q&A
10 Jul 2020
With this release, we try something a little different on The Portal. We begin an initiative to search for ways to feature members of the vibrant Portal sub-communities as part of the podcast itself,
37: Andrew Marantz - Surfing the Wake of The Woke
1 Jul 2020
New Yorker writer and book author Andrew Marantz and Eric became friends shortly before the 2016 election when Andrew set off to write the first profile of Eric and Geometric Unity, his theory of
36: Dark Matter, Black Matters and All That Jazz
11 Jun 2020
Stephon Alexander is a first class jazz musician as well as a first rate physicist and a professor at Brown University. As the New President of the National Society of Black Physicists, Eric sits
35: Balaji Srinivasan - The Heretic & The Virus
22 May 2020
Investor Balaji Srinivasan is a highly original thinker in Silicon Valley on Biotech to Blockchain and everything in between. Most recently, he was quite early in warning us about the Corona virus
34: Zev Weinstein - On Parenting, Boys & Generation Z
13 May 2020
This is the first episode of The Portal which was 100% recorded at home, during quarantine, under social isolation. The guest is none other than my own son Zev Weinstein and the recording was timed
33: Josh Wolfe - The Mind Financing The Future
3 May 2020
Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital is a leading mind in the current wave of venture capitalists making waves. While aware of each other for some time, in this episode Josh sits down with Eric for their first
32: J. D. Vance - American Dreams and Nightmares
30 Apr 2020
It is said that there is not one American dream but many, and few have lived more than JD Vance. Growing up in Appalachia on the border between poverty and the lower working class, JD knew economic
31: Ryan Holiday - Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes
23 Apr 2020
Ryan Holiday is a master manipulator with a cool head, and keen eye for social observation and a big heart. Eric sits down with the Author of "Conspiracy" and tries to get a self-confessed former
30: Ross Douthat - The Rave Before the Fall
16 Apr 2020
Just before the great indooring due to the Pandemic of 2020, Eric sat down with conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to discuss his book "The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims
29: Jamie Metzl - The Bio-Hacker will see you now, Ready or Not
12 Apr 2020
Former National Security analyst turned author Jamie Metzel has written a book called Hacking Darwin. The book attempts to use storytelling to explore where we are as the new era of rewriting our
A Portal Special Presentation- Geometric Unity: A First Look
2 Apr 2020
A Portal Special Presentation- Geometric Unity: A First Look See omnystudio.com/listener (https://omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.
28: Eric Lewis - The Singular Genius of Elew
28 Mar 2020
Eric Lewis is an open portal, a wonderful friend and one of the most important pianists in the world by our measure. As such, we will not bother with further notes for this episode. If you love the
27: Daniel Schmachtenberger - On Avoiding Apocalypses
27 Mar 2020
In this second episode of the Portal to be released during shelter-in-place restrictions during the Corona Virus Pandemic, we release an older discussion with Daniel Shmachtenberger on whether there
26: James O’Keefe - What is (and isn't) Journalism in the 21st century
19 Mar 2020
James O'Keefe is a dangerous man. He records people without their knowledge and publishes the results using the full power of our technological toolkit. He is well versed in the details of the law as
25: The Construct - Jeffrey Epstein
7 Mar 2020
Over half a year ago, immediately following the reported death of Jeffrey Epstein, Eric recorded a solo episode that he never released in hopes that its subject matter would be overtaken by
24: Kai Lenny - To Play and Flirt with Giants
29 Feb 2020
In a world which is often slow-moving and even stagnant, there are always sectors and individuals who buck the trends. In this episode of The Portal, Eric sits down with his favorite surfing hero Kai
23: Agnes Callard - Courage, Meta-cognitive detachment and their limits
24 Feb 2020
Philosopher and University of Chicago Professor Agnes Callard sits down with Eric on this episode of the portal. Agnes is a champion of the philosophical tradition of attempting to detach the
22: Ben Greenfield - Wheat From Chaff in Human Fitness
16 Feb 2020
Eric sits down with leading fitness geek, guru, thinker and human guinea-pig Ben Greenfield to learn how one of the world's most highly regarded trainers and fitness experts cuts through the
21: Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) - The mogul and brains behind America's Sweetheart
1 Feb 2020
Historically, fighting obscenity and indecency charges has always been a central part of the free speech movement. Jim Morrison, Mae West, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin have all been arrested for
20: Sir Roger Penrose - Plotting the Twist of Einstein’s Legacy
25 Jan 2020
Roger Penrose is arguably the most important living descendent of Albert Einstein’s school of geometric physics. In this episode of The Portal, we avoid the usual questions put to roger about
19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC
18 Jan 2020
All of our Mice are Broken. On this episode of The Portal, Bret and Eric sit down alone with each other for the first time in public. There was no plan. There was however, a remarkable story of
18: Slipping the DISC: State of The Portal & Chapter 2020
15 Jan 2020
This "housekeeping" (cough cough) episode of The Portal is only for the hard core listeners who launched this experiment with us. This year we begin to take on the idea of the Distributed Idea
17: Anna Khachiyan - Reconstructing The Mystical Feminine From The Ashes Of “The Feminine Mystique”
21 Dec 2019
Somewhere on the road between Stalingrad and Forever21, something essential got misplaced amidst the bathos. Eric works through a bottle of Red wine on air with social, literary and artistic theorist
16: Tyler Cowen - The Revolution Will Not Be Marginalized
17 Dec 2019
In this episode, Eric sits down with Tyler Cowen to discuss how/why a Harvard educated chess prodigy would choose a commuter school to launch a stealth attack on the self-satisfied economic
15: Garrett Lisi - My Arch-nemesis, Myself.
6 Dec 2019
Garrett Lisi, the so called "Surf Bum with a Theory of Everything (or T.O.E.)", is a PhD theoretical physicist who has refused to be captured by the theoretical physics community. By making shrewd
14: London Tsai - The Reclusive Dean of The New Escherians
1 Dec 2019
What happened to the Mathematical and Scientific art movement after MC Escher? It went underground. In this episode of the Portal, Eric begins tracking down the leaders of this hidden movement;
13: Garry Kasparov - Avoiding Zugzwang in AI and Politics
23 Nov 2019
In this cordially combative episode, Eric sits down with Russian chess legend, multiple-year champion and (inarguably) one of the greatest players of all time, Garry Kasparov. The two discuss
12: Vitalik Buterin - The Ethereal Prince and His Virtual Machine
21 Nov 2019
In this episode, Vitalik Buterin sits down with Eric to discuss ethereum, the wider world of crypto and heterodox economics. Taking note of the new development of blockchain in 2010, Eric wrote an
11: Sam Harris - Fighting with Friends
15 Nov 2019
On this episode of The Portal, Eric talks to one of his closest friends, neuroscientist, philosopher and meditation-guru, Sam Harris. When Sam and Eric sit down they generally agree about a large
10: Julie Lindahl: Shaking the poisoned fruit of shame out of the family tree
31 Oct 2019
Eric sits down with Julie Lindahl, author of "The Pendulum". What happens when an ethnically German girl growing up in Brazil gets curious to finally make sense of her family history to stop the
9: Bryan Callen - Cracking Wise
31 Oct 2019
Eric sits down with friend, philosopher, comic, actor and fighter Bryan Callen for a wide ranging conversation on camaraderie, conflict and comedy. Over the course of 2+ hours, the two discuss
8: Andrew Yang - The Dangerously Different Candidate The Media Wants You To Ignore
2 Oct 2019
In this episode of the Portal, Eric checks in with his friend Andrew Yang to discuss the meteoric rise of his candidacy; one that represents an insurgency against a complacent political process that
7: Bret Easton Ellis - The Dark Laureate of Generation X
30 Sep 2019
Eric sits down with Bret Easton Ellis; the two Gen X’ers graduated from rival high schools in a disaffected 1982 Los Angeles that inspired Ellis’ first novel “Less Than Zero”. In this
6: Jocko Willink - The Way of the Violent Intellectual
7 Sep 2019
Jocko Willink is a man who radiates decency. He is also part of a community of warriors drawn to test themselves in the crucible of deadly combat against an evil and implacable foe. Eric sits down
5: Rabbi Wolpe - “So a Rabbi and an atheist walk into a podcast...”
31 Aug 2019
Beyond New Atheism: is a constructive adult relationship possible between atheism and religion? On this episode of the portal, Eric hosts leading conservative rabbi David Wolpe and explores the
4: Timur Kuran - The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception
20 Aug 2019
What if everything we are taught in economics 101 is not only wrong, but may even be setting us up for populism, dictatorship or revolution? On this episode of the Portal, Eric is joined by renegade
3: Werner Herzog
25 Jul 2019
Episode 3 of The Portal is with film director Werner Herzog. See omnystudio.com/listener (https://omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.
2: What Is The Portal?
19 Jul 2019
What is the portal? See omnystudio.com/listener (https://omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.
1: Peter Thiel
17 Jul 2019
Welcome to The Portal. Episode 1 is a conversation with Peter Thiel. Please subscribe to The Portal anywhere you listen to podcasts, and leave us a rating and review in Apple Podcasts. See
Welcome to The Portal
24 Jun 2019
The Portal is hosted by Eric Weinstein. Subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener (https://omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.
