
Boom
Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
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Narrated by:
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Rob Grannis
About this listen
A timely investigation of the causes of technological and scientific stagnation, and a radical blueprint for accelerating innovation.
From the Moon landing to the dawning of the atomic age, the decades prior to the 1970s were characterized by the routine invention of transformative technologies at breakneck speed. By comparison, ours is an age of stagnation. Median wage growth has slowed, inequality and income concentration are on the rise, and scientific research has become increasingly expensive and incremental.
Why are we unable to replicate the rate of progress of past decades? What can we do to reinvigorate innovation?
In Boom, Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber take an inductive approach to the problem. In a series of case studies tracking some of the most significant breakthroughs of the past 100 years—from the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program to fracking and Bitcoin—they reverse-engineer how transformative progress arises from small groups with a unified vision, vast funding, and surprisingly poor accountability. They conclude that financial bubbles, while often maligned as destructive and destabilizing forces, have in fact been the engine of past breakthroughs and will drive future advances. In other words: Bubbles aren’t all bad.
Integrating insights from economics, philosophy, and history, Boom identifies the root causes of the Great Stagnation and provides a blueprint for accelerating innovation. By decreasing collective risk aversion, overfunding experimental processes, and organizing high-agency individuals around a transcendent mission, bubbles are the key to realizing a future that is radically different from the present. Boom offers a definite and optimistic vision of our future—and a path to unleash a new era of global prosperity.
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nothing new or amazing.
- By Homeowner on 02-05-20
By: Bailey Richardson, and others
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Gambling Man
- The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son
- By: Lionel Barber
- Narrated by: Keong Sim
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. In Gambling Man, the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world’s most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond.
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A deep look into the life of a man who doesn’t quit!
- By JoeShon Monroe on 04-22-25
By: Lionel Barber
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An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
- By: Will Larson
- Narrated by: Tiffany Morgan
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Getting to the good solutions of complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams, and, ultimately, the success or failure of companies. Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle orients around the particular challenges of engineering management - from sizing teams to technical debt to succession planning - and provides a path to the good solutions.
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Terrible narrator
- By Violet on 06-05-19
By: Will Larson
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The Big Score
- The Billion-Dollar Story of Silicon Valley
- By: Michael S. Malone
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past five decades, the tech industry has grown into one of the most important sectors of the global economy, and Silicon Valley - replete with sprawling office parks, sky-high rents, and countless self-made millionaires - is home to many of its key players. But the origins of Silicon Valley and the tech sector are much humbler. At a time when tech companies’ influence continues to grow, The Big Score chronicles how they began.
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Worthwhile and engaging.
- By Materialsguy on 05-12-23
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Scaling People
- Tactics for Management and Company Building
- By: Claire Hughes Johnson
- Narrated by: Claire Hughes Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Scaling People is a practical and empathetic guide to being an effective leader and manager in a high-growth environment. The tactical information it puts forward—including guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms—can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry.
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Comprehensive and practical handbook for operating conpanies
- By J Kuo on 03-16-24
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Where Is My Flying Car?
- By: J. Storrs Hall
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The science fiction of the 1960s promised us a future remade by technological innovation: We’d vacation in geodesic domes on Mars, have meaningful conversations with computers, and drop our children off at school in flying cars. Fast-forward 60 years and we’re still stuck in traffic in gas-guzzling sedans and boarding the same types of planes we flew in over half a century ago. What happened to the future we were promised? In Where Is My Flying Car?, J. Storrs Hall sets out to answer this deceptively simple question.
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More than just flying cars
- By Daniel Fudge on 09-10-23
By: J. Storrs Hall
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The Technological Republic
- Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
- By: Alexander C. Karp, Nicholas W. Zamiska
- Narrated by: Nicholas W. Zamiska
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking treatise, Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition, arguing that in order for the U.S. and its allies to retain their global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. The government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon Valley’s success.
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Incoherent ramblings
- By Not Dick Hausler on 04-02-25
By: Alexander C. Karp, and others
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House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- By: Eva Dou
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
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Enjoyed the book
- By Luke Hacherl on 07-09-25
By: Eva Dou
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There Is No Antimemetics Division
- A Novel
- By: qntm
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight. One could be in the room with you, now, just to your left. You could be seeing it right now—but from this second to the next, you’ll forget that you did. If you managed to jot down a note, the paper would look blank to you afterwards. These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you—and you’ll never even know anything changed. They can turn you into a living ghost—make it so that you’re standing next to your spouse, screaming in their ear, and they won’t know you’re there.
By: qntm
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The Money Trap
- Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble
- By: Alok Sama
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Veteran Morgan Stanley banker Alok Sama thought he'd seen it all. Then he found himself chief dealmaker at the most influential technology investor in the world—SoftBank, the backer of Arm Holdings, Yahoo, Nvidia, TikTok, Uber, T-Mobile, Alibaba and WeWork. The Money Trap is Sama’s thrilling, stranger-than-fiction personal odyssey featuring his experiences alongside SoftBank’s iconic founder, Masayoshi Son, a visionary maverick who wants to be remembered as “the crazy guy who bet on the future” and whose mission is “happiness for everyone.”
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All form, no substance
- By Nadav on 05-24-25
By: Alok Sama
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Supremacy
- AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
- By: Parmy Olson
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In November 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now.
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Author doesn’t understand AI
- By David on 09-30-24
By: Parmy Olson
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Genesis
- Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit
- By: Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie
- Narrated by: Niall Ferguson, Byron Wagner
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe, revolutionize fields as diverse as medicine and architecture, and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen.
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Not as good as I expected
- By @CaffeinatedRunner on 11-21-24
By: Henry A. Kissinger, and others
Inspiring and counter intuitive
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Interesting perspective
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Booms are good, actually
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Great point and arguments
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