Episode · Lex Fridman Podcast · 2021-10-16
Books mentioned on #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights
Alex Gladstein is the Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Stripe: https://stripe.
Alex Gladstein recommended The Fear by Peter Godwin, The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver, The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, and The Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier, and discussed The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky and others, The man without a face by Masha Gessen and others, and The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Case for Democracy
Discussed“and he wrote a book in which his thesis was essentially the way that you can define a free society is through something called the town square test”
Where to get it
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The man without a face
The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen is a critical biographical work that details Vladimir Putin's rise to power and the authoritarian transformation of modern Russia.
Discussed“masha gessen followed him around in the man without a face it's a great great book about putin”
Where to get it
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The Fear
The Fear by Peter Godwin is a political memoir and journalistic account detailing the systematic dismantling of Zimbabwe and the brutal suppression of opposition voices under the regime of Robert Mugabe.
Recommended“number is the fear the fear had a deep impact on me the fear was written by peter godwin it's about the systematic dismantling of zimbabwe under robert mugabe peter zimbabwean and it is a riveting book”
Where to get it
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The Mandibles
The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver is a dystopian satirical novel that imagines a near-future United States plunged into a catastrophic financial crisis following the collapse of the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Recommended“third one is a fiction book called the mandibles written by lionel shriver this one's good it's a good gift book it's funny it's dark it's witty but it's about the united states losing its status as the reserve currency and going into hyperinflation”
Where to get it
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The Internet of Money
The Internet of Money by Andreas M.
Recommended“and then on the topic of bitcoin because we talked about it a lot i would just say that my portal into bitcoin was the internet of money by andreas antonopoulos and i did it by audiobook and i just think this is an important one for people to start with”
Where to get it
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The Bitcoin Standard
Saifedean Ammous's "The Bitcoin Standard" offers a detailed exploration of the history of money and argues for the economic necessity of a hard, decentralized currency rooted in Austrian economic principles.
Discussed“very different from the bitcoin standard”
Where to get it
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The Blocksize War
The Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier is an analytical deep dive into the intense scaling conflicts and ideological battles that tested the decentralized governance of Bitcoin.
Recommended“as nick said i think you should read the block size war which is a book on that you can get on amazon by jonathan beer really good kind of like really important to understand the the the scaling conflict and the visions over the different visions of what bitcoin should be”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“two years ago i came together with seven other people from around the world and we wrote a book in a book sprint we lived in a house for four days we wrote a book together it was really cool it's like a design sprint but we did it in book format and my co-authors are from nigeria venezuela the”