ADS: I want to start by asking about the cultural backdrop to your essay.

You’re touching on a few subcultures here. There’s the libertarian / Progress Studies piece, the YIMBY / New Urbanism / NUMTOT piece, and then the burgeoning Palladium-style Governance Futurism view. How do these overlap? How would you even describe Governance Futurism?

Lea Degen: All these subgroups recognize that stagnation is not an option for solving problems that have their roots in scarcity (of which San Francisco housing

Douglas Gray wrote in to tell us that, in Mexico:

dando tres pies al gato means, very roughly “ giving three feet on the cat" – that is, a dangerous or impossible or unnecessarily complicated situation.

Charales Troob informed us that:

"to have a bee in one's bonnet" is derived from the Scottish idiom a head full of

Jim Fruchterman talks about the trajectory of his life from Stanford and rocket science via Silicon Valley to his present role as a "karmic consultant" helping non-profits, charities and communities to develop effective tech-based strategies and solutions in areas such as disability, education, and climate. Jim is a MacArthur fellow, CEO of Tech Matters, and founder of Benetech

Related Links:

Jim Fruchterman on Twitter  

Tech Matters: https://techmatters.org/

Jim's recommended book:  What's the Future, by Tim O'Reilly

WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us: O’Reilly, Tim: 9780062565716: Amazon.com: Books

WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us [O’Reilly, Tim] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

Tim O’Reilly

Uri: I’m delighted today to welcome back Lars Doucet, this time to talk about the economic philosophy called Georgism, which is all about taxing the true value of land.

Lars, like many people I studied economics in college but am now just completely unable to think about it, I know it’s very important but when I see things like a full and rigorous explanation of Georgism I just really struggle to focus.

So, I thought today we could have a conversation about Georgism that just aims to give people like me a basic intuition for the land value tax. And we’ll assume the reader is coming in un-cantakerously, such that you don’t need to prove the claims of Georgism so much as outline what they are and why they’re plausible. (You’ve written extensively about this, so anyone who wants more details can follow up

Sylvia Bishop: Hello, and welcome to Browser Interviews. Today I am overexcited to be here with Mark Smith, The Man in Seat 61 - and his dog Pip, if I heard that right?

Mark Smith: Yeah!

Sylvia Bishop: Mark, thank you so much for coming on. To start with, for our readers who don’t know Seat 61, can you give us a quick overview of what this wonderful project is?

Mark Smith: Well, it’s to help people with train travel. If you want to travel from the UK to just about anywhere in Europe, or around Europe, or indeed by train and ferry around the world, it’s the place to start and have a look at what the options are.

Sylvia Bishop: Yes. I did a quick check and I think you cover every continent except Antarctica, which is reasonable!

Mark Smith: There aren’t many trains

Tom McLaughlan writes in with four suggestions:

​1) You can't buy spaghetti bolognese in Bologna.
2) Austrians created the croissant.
3) Sauerkraut is Chinese.
4) Vindaloo from India was originally Vinha d'alhos from Portugal.​

Buon appetito/Guten appetit/Bon appetit/Desfrute de sua refeição/Buon appetito/请享用​

Basel Kirmani tells this charming tale:

In Hong Kong