My notes on a conversation between Bruno Maçães and Erik Torenberg.
https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/2EkgxrQ7sp4liFXkkogVlv
Bruno's (@MacaesBruno) background: Bruno Maçães is a Portuguese politician, political scientist, business strategist, and author. He studied at the University of Lisbon and Harvard University, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation under Harvey Mansfield. He is currently a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute in Washington. He is the author of The Dawn of Eurasia, Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order, and History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America. He was a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.
Eriks**'s (@eriktorenberg) background:** Erik is a co-founder and partner at Village Global, a network-driven VC firm. Erik is also the co-founder of Be On Deck.
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https://mehdiyacoubi.substack.com/embed
1:00 Bruno's backgroundBruno is a polymath, and he has a Ph.D. in political philosophy, political thought, political theory.
It's his default mode in all of his books. Bruno relies on concepts he learned in grad school.
He was fascinated by the history of political thought, and by intellectual giants like Hobbes, Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli.
Bruno doesn't read a lot these days.
He acquired a different perspective of the world because if you're dealing with the history of political thought, you really see it as a succession of revolutions.
I'm always very attracted by how things change, how novelty is introduced in the world, how the past suddenly becomes unintelligible, and you enter a completely different paradigm. — Bruno Maçães
2:54 The Dawn of EurasiaBruno believes that political thinkers should confront their political ideas on the ground, by going in and immerse themselves in the daily life of the countries you're studying.