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Neal Stephenson

Published podcast speaker

Claims
25
Episodes
2
Shows
1
Named items
0

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What Neal said.

10 transcript-backed records

01 / evaluation

The story, for those who don’t know it, is that Stalin said, “I want the world’s biggest steel mill,” and at the time, it was Gary, Indiana. So they just got the numbers on Gary, Indiana, and increased them by, I don’t know, 10 percent, and started working on this huge steel mill in this place called Magnitogorsk, which means magnetic mountain, which is in the Urals out in the middle of nowhere and called magnetic mountain because it’s an incredibly rich load of iron ore.

“The story, for those who don’t know it, is that Stalin said, “I want the world’s biggest steel mill,” and at the time, it was Gary, Indiana. So they just got the numbers on Gary, Indiana, and increased them by, I don’t know, 10 percent, and started working on this huge steel mill in this place called Magnitogorsk, which means magnetic mountain, which is in the Urals out in the middle of nowhere and called magnetic mountain because it’s an incredibly rich load of iron ore.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

02 / evaluation

My position on this, which I put out in a Substack a couple of weeks ago, is that the real purpose of art and the reason we like art is because it exposes us to a very dense package of micro decisions that have been made by the artist.

“My position on this, which I put out in a Substack a couple of weeks ago, is that the real purpose of art and the reason we like art is because it exposes us to a very dense package of micro decisions that have been made by the artist.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / evaluation

There were a lot of, not just Americans, but Westerners in general, who went to the Soviet Union in those years because they thought that this was an opportunity to build something great.

“There were a lot of, not just Americans, but Westerners in general, who went to the Soviet Union in those years because they thought that this was an opportunity to build something great.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / evaluation

I think that was maybe a big part of why a lot of Western leftists thought it was a great place, because there really were a lot of women getting better education, becoming doctors, getting roles in the military.

“I think that was maybe a big part of why a lot of Western leftists thought it was a great place, because there really were a lot of women getting better education, becoming doctors, getting roles in the military.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / evaluation

There are various people who went there in the ’20s and ’30s and wrote memoirs, Americans who wrote memoirs describing their experiences there. And because they were written at the time before people knew about Stalinism and the excesses of Stalinism, it’s written without a full premonition of how bad things were going to get.

“There are various people who went there in the ’20s and ’30s and wrote memoirs, Americans who wrote memoirs describing their experiences there. And because they were written at the time before people knew about Stalinism and the excesses of Stalinism, it’s written without a full premonition of how bad things were going to get.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

07 / evaluation

We think of Victorian novels as a kind of stodgy, old-school way of writing, but he was all over the map in terms of nutty, random things that he would put into his books.

“We think of Victorian novels as a kind of stodgy, old-school way of writing, but he was all over the map in terms of nutty, random things that he would put into his books.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / evaluation

A lot of it, I think, seems to be well intentioned, but somebody was pointing out to me a little while back that the Golden Gate Bridge was built in a shockingly brief period of time compared to almost anything that we try to build today.

“A lot of it, I think, seems to be well intentioned, but somebody was pointing out to me a little while back that the Golden Gate Bridge was built in a shockingly brief period of time compared to almost anything that we try to build today.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / evaluation

I think that part of it begins with empathy because, in order to tell somebody a thing, you need to know and understand what it’s like to not already know that thing, which seems kind of obvious.

“I think that part of it begins with empathy because, in order to tell somebody a thing, you need to know and understand what it’s like to not already know that thing, which seems kind of obvious.”
Speaker
Neal Stephenson
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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