Monthly Rewind: May 2024
viral music, the scenius canon, and the death of comedy?
News & Updates 🗞️
OSV Book Club
Come join us on 31 May for a deep dive into Ariel and Will Durant’s seminal The Lessons of History (yes, we included this book in the Infinite Loops Canon).
To join our book club (for free), head on over to our Discord using this link.
Our Second and Third 2024 Fellowship
Justh
In April, we awarded an O’Shaughnessy Fellowship to Justh, a singer-songwriter who creates original Hindi songs and who has experienced a spectacular rise to fame in recent months.
Justh, who received a $10,000 O'Shaughnessy Grant in 2023, independently released his song Chor in December 2023 (OSV is an executive producer). Defined by Justh's mysterious but memorable lyrics, the multi-layered song has rocketed to 20 million YouTube views and over 19 million Spotify listens (!!).
In February this year, "Chor" reached the summit of Spotify's "Viral 50 – Global" playlist and was featured on Instagram by Spotify India. Justh has appeared on multiple Indian news channels in connection with the song's success, while several Indian celebrities have performed their own versions on Instagram.
Following the success of Chor, Justh received several significant financial offers from Indian music labels. Wishing to retain artistic control over his future, he rejected these offers and will continue to produce music independently, with OSV's support.
Curt Jaimungal
Congratulations to our third 2024 fellow, Curt Jaimungal!
Curt will continue to build his podcast, Theories of Everything, which fuses rigorous scientific analysis with profound philosophical inquiry. He will also advance AI, consciousness, and theoretical physics research by expanding Theories of Everything into an interdisciplinary research platform and educational hub. This platform will foster collaboration within and between disciplines by producing specialized video series, initiating collaborative research projects with experts and institutions, and hosting events and conferences.
Curt, who holds a degree in mathematical physics from the University of Toronto, launched Theories of Everything in 2020. The podcast explores the frontiers of conventional knowledge by engaging with theories across quantum mechanics, consciousness, artificial intelligence, and cosmology. It demystifies complex scientific ideas while maintaining a high degree of technical rigor. Past guests include Noam Chomsky, Bryan Johnson, and Scott Aaronson.
Like Justh, we sense that Curt is just getting started…
Applications for the 2024 Fellowships are now closed and will reopen on January 1, 2025. You can learn more via our website.
Thoughts 💭
"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living."
- Gail Sheehy
"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."
- Madeleine L'Engle
"Don't promise twice what you can do at once."
- Cato the Younger
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
- Shunryu Suzuki
"There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden."
- Gene Wolfe
Explore our Two Thoughts series: doses of wisdom delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday. Warning: may trigger incurable curiosity.
Conversations 🗣️
Arjun Khemani — The Hunt for Better Problems (Ep. 213)
The 17-year-old writer and podcaster argues that education should be voluntary, it’s moral to be selfish and ultimacy is pessimistic.
“I think every utopia is a dystopia, right? An ultimate anything, however good, is sort of pessimistic because then it's, you're not imagining that things could be even better, that you could explore more. That the universe, for all we know practically is infinite right now. And there's so much that we could explore and transform and build out in the universe and terraform the entire universe and make it habitable for us. Because this Earth does not… it definitely is special, but it's not our life support system. We humans live in places on Earth that we wouldn't be able to without knowledge creation, without technology.”
Jimmy Soni — The Courage of Creative Risk (Ep. 214)
Friend-of-the-show Jimmy Soni joins us for a deep dive into the publishing industry.
“[E]very single person you think is successful, also believes they are the imposter. That is totally, it's a fact of life. When you go and really peer into the lives of the people who are the greats and the people who thought they've... You think they've got it all figured out, maybe not now, but at some point in their lives they thought they were gigantic imposters, and some of them still do, and they still do it anyway.”
Grant Mitchell — The Potential of AI Drug Repurposing (Ep. 215)
The Every Cure co-founder explains how the organisation is using AI to “unlock the full potential of existing medicines”
“I think there's one idea is this notion that you are they. And what I mean by that is when David and I first started thinking about Castleman disease and whether we could solve it or not, whether we could cure his own rare disease, we first said, “well, surely they must be working on this?” And we did a little research and we said, "Oh my God, there's really no one out there. So, where are they?” And then we looked at it, "Could we be they?" And there's no reason, whatever problem you're thinking about, whatever it is, that you can't be they. Don't assume that they's out there in a little factory tinkering, working on all the problems and just the way you think they should be. They're not. You can be they.”
Porter Braswell — Building the Future of Leadership (Ep. 216)
The 2045 Studio founder joins us to discuss how he is harnessing community to empower professionals of color to succeed, how to establish trust within a community, and what he learned from Magic Johnson’s mentorship.
““So part of the conversation with him [Ed: Magic Johnson] was […] ‘Listen, never let somebody put down what it means to be an athlete. Being an athlete, you are the perfect individual to do anything in this world. You understand communication, you understand what it means to be a team player. You understand execution, you're competitive, you can multitask, you stick it through, you go through journeys. You are somebody that you would want to be in the trenches with. That's who you want on your team. That's somebody you want to be working alongside you. That's what an athlete brings to the table. So don't let somebody take that away from you.’ And I needed to hear that from him. Because he's one of the best of all time in basketball, one of the greatest business people as well. And he has only that because he can leverage both.”
Bridget Phetasy — Comedy is Dead, Long Live Comedy (Ep. 217)
“PHETASY IS a movement disguised as a company. We just want to make you laugh while the world burns.”
“I think that this is your role as someone who's doing comedy. It's not to punch up or punch down or speak truth to power. That's all part of it, but really it's like to kind of explore whatever hidden paradigms and the things we're taking for granted, the obvious water that we're swimming in, to point that out. It's not just to take down power. It's also to just observe reality and how absurd it is. Life is absurd. No matter what generation of humanity you've lived through, it is always and forever absurd.”
For root access to your humanOS, dig into our back catalogue of 217 episodes (and counting).
Words ✍️
The Infinite Loops Guide to… Happiness | “Physical, observable things are true. Everything else is just a perspective that you can choose to take.” (Derek Sivers)
Manners as an Edge: The Selfish Case for Being a Good Reply Guy | “In an era of rude and brutish behavior, having good manners provides you with an asymmetric advantage over those who don't.”
Anatomy of a Scenius | (i) The Canon | “Firstly, scenius, whatever it is, appears to be a real phenomenon. From competitive Rubix cube playing to the atomic bomb1, tightly knit social groups bound around a common set of interests and talents have time and again been responsible for unprecedented social, technical, and cultural advancements.”
The Infinite Loops Guide to… Creativity | “[Y]ou'll be a better artist if you just embrace the steal.” (Eric Jorgenson)