Subscribe to Chris Arnade's Substack - https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/

Who is Chris Arnade!

He started as a physicist, earning a PHD from Johns Hopkins and then took to Wall St spending two decades on an elite trading desk at CitiGroup before disillusioning his well dressed allies to engage in the photography, walking and writing of the great and forgotten cities of this world.

He is a best selling author, but as well… a best subscribed substacker!

'Chris Arnade Walks The World' is the publications name…

And in it, Chris lives up to the title.

Japan, Europe, China, Australia, The Faroe Islands, Canada, the expansive US of A, Turkey, Korea, Indonesia even Uzbekistan (which gets a special mention in this podcast). Cities within all of these great nations and many more, Chris has trod and documented.

His format is slow and empathetic. Chris will embark on several 20-30km journeys at his location, take photos and then report on his walk.

I can’t remember how long I’ve been subscribed, although it feels like years, but the other day I woke up to an email which detailed Chris’s initial impressions of Sydney! I replied to the email right away, and just a few hours later was guiding him along the Malabar to Bondi trail. Steve and I - guiding Chris from the area I grew up to the most iconic beach in Australia.

That was a special serendipity which came out of no-where and furthermore, led to this podcast today...

• 00:00 Introduction to Chris Arnade — physicist, Wall Street trader, turned global walker/writer.
• 02:00 First impressions of Sydney — “child of LA and London,” with beaches, pubs, suburbs, and good living.

Sydney Observations

• 03:40 Sydney’s trains: efficient, sprawling, but designed to avoid beaches.
• 06:00 Sydney friendliness vs. UK cynicism — “Australians are like puppy dogs, eager to please.”
• 09:30 Suburbs as “democratized manors,” good life for the average person, housing affordability issues.
• 13:00 Housing supply constraints, coastline beauty, and why Sydney isn’t as bad as people think.

Walking & Method

• 16:30 From physics & Wall Street to walking: walks as stress relief, learning, meditation.
• 20:30 Spreadsheet brain → toy models → refining worldview through walking.
• 22:30 Cities that defied expectations: Tashkent & Jakarta.

Global Perspectives

• 25:30 Africa’s challenges: Nigeria & Dakar as examples of dysfunction despite resources.
• 29:00 Australia’s weak ties with Indonesia, lack of Indonesians in Sydney, food culture, overlapping economic models.
• 33:30 Chinese-Indonesian business dominance — parallels to Jews, Lebanese, minorities elsewhere.
• 36:00 High-trust vs. low-trust societies: Japan as the archetype.

Culture & Writing

• 41:30 Why he avoids fame, prefers anonymity, but respects subscribers deeply.
• 44:00 Pressure to deliver as a Substack writer — treating it like a job.
• 47:00 Writing inspiration, uninspired cities (Bangkok), and the challenges of always producing.
• 53:00 Strong opinions drive traffic

Dignity & Underclass

• 55:00 “Dignity” project in the US — underclass and addiction.

Personal Life

• 56:20 Family and frugality
• 58:50 Why he doesn’t read other travel writers

Philosophy & Serendipity

• 01:04:50 Serendipity? “I don’t believe in coincidence.”
• 01:07:00 Country he’s most bullish on
• 01:09:00 Next destinations

Subscribe to Nicholas Gruen's Substack - https://nicholasgruen.substack.com/

I joined the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen recently in his Melbourne home to host his first 'long-form' podcast (although I'm not sure at what hour it goes from short to long)

At the core of Gruen's worldview is the “un-seriousness” he levels at Australian politics, the media landscape, institutions and in a word... bureaucracies.

From his creation of the HALE Index to his decades inside Australia’s public institutions, Nicholas continuously challenges orthodox thinking.

The podcast covers the (in my opinion) radical yet (Nicholas's opinion) ancient idea of citizens’ juries as a second pillar of representation, the reasons bold policy rarely survives bureaucratic reality, and how lessons from the Toyota production system could help governments actually listen to people at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Along the way, Gruen takes us from Australia’s superannuation system to pokies, from the mental health crisis to the subtle erosion of public-spiritedness inside organisations.

To be specific, these are all the topics covered in this chat.

• The HALE Index of Well-being – Why GDP misses the mark, how HALE works, and what it reveals about Australia’s progress.
• Measuring What Matters – The limits of subjective well-being metrics, correlations between indicators, and why faux indexes mislead policymakers.
• Indigenous Policy Contradictions – The tension between material “gap closing” and self-determination, and why policy rarely confronts it.
• Citizens’ Juries & Political Reform – Introducing random selection into governance and how it could act as a check on elected officials.
• Goodhart’s Law in Action – How turning measures into targets corrupts them, and the problem of gaming metrics in education and beyond.
• Internal vs External Goods – Alasdair MacIntyre’s framework and its relevance to public service, corporate culture, and motivation.
• Institutional Stagnation – Why promising initiatives stall, and how bottom-up programs could scale without being crushed by bureaucracy.
• Toyota Production System Lessons – Building respect for frontline workers into systems and how it transforms performance.
• Australia’s Superannuation System – Strengths, inefficiencies, unfair taxation, and misaligned regulation of self-managed super funds.
• Compulsory Voting & Preferential Systems – How they shape Australia’s political centre and guard against extreme populism.
• Universities Today – The shift from idea-driven discourse to metric-chasing careerism, especially in economics.
• Trade-offs vs Synergies – Why economics often overemphasises trade-offs, and examples of where quality and cost improve together.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Nicholas Gruen
05:41 The Limitations of GDP as a Measure
11:08 Inequality and Its Impact on Well-being
16:45 The Role of Metrics in Policy Making
22:10 The Importance of Community Engagement
41:48 Connecting Education to the Real World
47:24 Learning from Toyota's Success
56:52 The Flaws in Superannuation System
01:02:55 Reforming Auditing Practices
01:11:39 The Shift in University Education
01:20:59 Divergent Perspectives in Economics
01:32:49 Rethinking Representation in Democracy
01:48:25 The Role of Elite Consensus in Political Change
02:07:58 Understanding Domestic Violence in Indigenous Communities
02:21:55 The Role of New Media in Political Discourse
02:26:38 The Impact of Gambling on Australian Society
02:36:08 The Nature of Optimism and Serendipity in Life

Geothermal Energy Starter Pack (Geothermal Interviews On A Curious Worldview Podcast)

Curious Worldview Newsletter - https://curiousworldview.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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Quaise are on the other side of the most exciting week in their companies short history. They use millimeter wave energy from a gyrotron to vaporise rock and create boreholes for accessing deep geothermal energy, offering an alternative to costly traditional drilling methods for accessing those critically hot depths.

It is an extremely ambitious, exciting and unique ambition - and Quaise have now proven their technology is applicable outside of theoretical and controlled lab conditions. They have successfully dug to a depth of 100m with their technology at a sight just outside of Austin, Texas - and therefore, move one step closer to realising their goal for adding electrons at scale to the grid.

Matt Houde is the Co-Founder of Quaise. This is the second time he's joined me on the podcast. In this interview today we discussed the success of Texas, the business model of Quaise, serendipity in innovation, politics and finance for Quaise and plenty more in between…