The Curious Mind: What To Make Of This Market, Secrets Of Confident Speaking, The Lost Civilisations, How Will AI Transform Work, The Year Of Stablecoins, Build Things....

June 19, 2025

Jun 19, 2025

You are a smart curious person but short on time and surrounded by noise. The Curious Mind tries to offer the best signal to noise ratio across markets, technology and the good life. We hope to even surprise and inspire you with new beautiful ideas.

If you missed last week’s discussion: Why Are You Anxious?, John Arnold on Energy & Edge, Tudor Jones On FED and AI, US Industrial Policy, How We Beat AI, Your Money vs Your Life, What You Are Missing About Semis....

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Quotes I Am Thinking About:

“A simple rule for life that rarely fails:

Optimise for enthusiasm. Make as many choices as you can that leave you feeling energetic and interested. Pay attention to when you have the urge to pursue or participate in something and do more of it."

- James Clear

“If people only wanted to be happy it would be very easy; but they want to be happier than other people, and this is almost always difficult, because we imagine other people happier than they really are.”

- Charles de Montesquieu

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

- Napoleon Bonaparte

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

- Will Durant

“All appears to change, when we change.”

- Henri-Frederic Amiel

A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out

1. What To Make Of This Market?

My favourite market strategist, Marko Papic shared his June update. Here’s his take on markets:

The "Comeuppance Trade" - America's Fiscal Reckoning: The US faces an unavoidable rebalancing after years of unsustainable fiscal excess. The report argues that America's recent economic "exceptionalism" was built on massive deficit spending - a "house of fiscal cards." As fiscal constraints tighten (driven by bond market pressure and voter sentiment against spending), the US will lose its role as global consumer of last resort. This creates a major structural headwind for US assets, the dollar, and growth relative to the rest of the world. Market Implication: Expect US equities and USD to underperform as the era of fiscal stimulus ends and capital flows reverse.
Trump's Trade War Miscalculation: Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans have become more pro-trade since 2016, not less. Extensive polling data shows trade policy ranks dead last in voter priorities, while Trump's approval ratings are lowest on trade issues. The report suggests Trump is "wasting his political capital" on an unpopular policy that could trigger the very recession that undermines his presidency. Market Implication: Trade war escalation is likely unsustainable politically, creating opportunities for relief rallies when Trump inevitably pivots.
Multipolarity is the New Reality (Not Bipolarity): Unlike most strategists who expect US-China bipolarity, BCA argues the world is becoming genuinely multipolar. Evidence from defense procurement patterns and geopolitical alignments shows countries aren't choosing sides between superpowers. This fundamental shift requires a new "global macro operating system" where no single country dominates global demand and capital flows. Market Implication: Diversification away from US-centric portfolios becomes essential as global economic leadership fragments.

Here are the top 5 slides out of 62.

2. The Secret To Becoming A Confident Speaker

Ever been put on the spot to give a quick speech, only to freeze up with nothing to say?

Speaking with confidence and clarity is a skill, and the good news is, it can be learned.

Matt Abrahams is a communication expert, Stanford lecturer, and podcaster.

He was on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson to share practical tips and tools to help you think faster, speak smarter, and become a more effective communicator.

The 5 BIG IDEAS:

Your Speaking Fear Has Ancient Roots: Speaking anxiety isn't a character flaw—it's evolutionary programming. For millennia, humans lived in groups of roughly 150 people where your social status determined survival. Embarrass yourself publicly and you risked losing access to food, shelter, and reproduction. Your brain still treats speaking situations as potential threats to your social standing, even when the actual consequences are minor. This fear appears across all cultures and typically emerges in early adolescence. Recognizing this helps you understand that anxiety is completely normal, not something wrong with you personally.
Manage Anxiety Through Body and Mind: Effective anxiety control requires attacking both physical symptoms and mental sources simultaneously. For your body: practice deep belly breathing with exhales twice as long as inhales, hold something cold in your palms to regulate body temperature, and get present-focused through conversation or music. For your mind: shift from trying to impress your audience to serving them with valuable information. Remember that communication is "operationalized empathy"—your job is connecting with people, not performing flawlessly for them.
Structure Enables Natural Expression: Avoid memorizing word-for-word scripts, which create cognitive overload and increase choking risk. Instead, use flexible frameworks like "what, so what, now what"—state your point, explain why it matters to your audience, then suggest what they should do with the information. Structure acts like a roadmap that gets you to your destination while allowing multiple routes. This approach frees up mental bandwidth for authentic, in-the-moment responses rather than perfect recitation.
Create "Reverse Charisma" Through Curiosity: The most magnetic people don't dazzle others with their own brilliance—they make others feel brilliant. Focus on being interested rather than interesting. Ask genuine questions, listen deeply to responses, and use "supporting turns" that build on what others say rather than "shifting turns" that redirect attention to yourself. Aim for about 75% supporting turns in conversations. This reverse charisma creates deeper connections because people remember how you made them feel, not how impressive you seemed.
Prioritize Precision Over Perfection: Excellent communication comes from clarity and audience focus, not flawless delivery. Be concise by "telling the time, not building the clock"—give people what they need without taking them through your entire thought process. Use simple language instead of jargon or overly complex terms. Have a clear goal for every interaction: what do you want people to know, feel, and do? There's no single "right" way to express an idea, only better or worse ways for your specific audience and situation.

3. Lost Civilisations & Ancient Human History

Graham Hancock a journalist and author who for over 30 years has explored the controversial possibility that there existed a lost civilization during the last Ice Age, and that it was destroyed in a global cataclysm some 12,000 years ago.

He is the presenter of the Netflix documentary series "Ancient Apocalypse", the 2nd season of which has just been released.

He was on the Lex Fridman show a few months ago discussing his work.

5 BIG IDEAS:

Why Did Civilization Take So Long to Appear? Humans who were physically and mentally identical to us have existed for at least 300,000 years. Yet for almost all of that time, they lived as simple hunter-gatherers. Then suddenly, around 12,000 years ago, complex civilizations with agriculture, cities, and monuments began popping up all over the world at roughly the same time. This is like having all the ingredients for a cake sitting on your counter for 300 years, then suddenly baking dozens of identical cakes on the same day. Something doesn't add up about this timeline.
A Catastrophic Event Reset Human History: Around 12,800 years ago, Earth was hit by what appears to be fragments of a massive comet. This caused global fires, floods, and a sudden return to Ice Age conditions that lasted over 1,000 years. All the large Ice Age animals went extinct, and human populations were devastated worldwide. Strikingly, it's right after this disaster ends that we see the first monuments like Göbekli Tepe being built and civilization beginning to emerge. It's as if this catastrophe forced scattered survivors to come together and share knowledge in ways they never had before.
An Advanced Ice Age Civilization Was Lost to Time: Before the catastrophe, Hancock believes there was a sophisticated seafaring civilization that flourished in areas now underwater or turned to desert. They were master astronomers and navigators who could calculate longitude with remarkable precision and built monuments aligned to the stars. When disaster struck, small groups of survivors scattered worldwide, taking refuge with local hunter-gatherer populations and gradually passing on their advanced knowledge. This would explain why similar ideas about astronomy, mythology, and construction techniques appear in civilizations that supposedly developed independently.
Psychedelic Plants Sparked Human Consciousness: The leap from hunter-gatherer to civilized human may have been triggered by the discovery of consciousness-expanding plants like psychedelic mushrooms and ayahuasca. Ancient shamans were essentially the first scientists, experimenting with these substances and developing profound insights about morality, astronomy, and cooperation. These mind-expanding experiences gave humans the intellectual and spiritual tools needed to work together in large groups and think about abstract concepts like gods, mathematics, and the afterlife—the building blocks of civilization.
Ancient Monuments Are Messages to the Future: Sites like the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and Göbekli Tepe aren't just impressive buildings—they're astronomical calendars carved in stone. They encode specific dates from the distant past using star alignments that any advanced civilization could decode. It's like ancient people created cosmic clocks that say "this is when something important happened" and built them to last tens of thousands of years. These monuments are humanity's oldest time capsules, designed to preserve crucial information about catastrophic events and lost knowledge for future generations to discover.

B. The Science and Technology Section:

1. How Will AI Transform Work?

Nicolai Tangen at NBIM spoke with Prof. Ethan Mollick. They discuss the growing adoption of AI tools across workforces, proven tactics for driving company-wide implementation, the rise of autonomous AI agents, and why traditional training approaches may be missing the mark.

The 5 BIG IDEAS:

Employees Are Secretly Using AI Everywhere: Over 40% of American workers now use AI at work, but most are hiding it from their employers. People fear getting fired either for using AI "wrong" or because bosses might realize they need fewer workers. This creates a huge blind spot for companies who can't see how AI is actually being used in their organization. Smart companies are fixing this by offering rewards for the best AI automation rather than punishing AI use, and by building AI adoption into performance reviews where employees who don't use the tools fall behind.
AI Transformation Must Start at the Top: The biggest mistake companies make is treating AI like a normal IT project or dumping it on the legal department. AI is fundamentally different—you have to experiment with it to figure out what works. This means CEOs and executives need to use AI themselves and champion it throughout the organization. You need both a central lab for experimentation and widespread adoption across every department. The goal isn't building one AI app—it's getting everyone in the company to try AI tools and discover new ways to work.
AI Helps Weak Performers Most, But We Don't Know About Stars: Research consistently shows AI gives the biggest boost to employees who were already struggling, improving their work quality by up to 40%. The AI essentially does the hard parts that bottom performers couldn't handle well, bringing everyone up to a decent standard. But we still don't know if top performers get massive benefits from AI, if everyone improves equally, or if there are special people who are just naturally great with AI. This uncertainty makes it dangerous for companies to immediately start firing people based on productivity gains.
AI Agents Can Already Do Complete Jobs: AI agents—systems you can give a goal and they'll work toward it independently—aren't science fiction anymore. Mollick shows agents that create entire business plans, build functioning websites, and conduct market research from a single sentence request. Instead of learning how to work alongside AI, you can now just tell it "do this job" and it handles multiple steps automatically. While current agents work best on specific tasks, the major AI companies believe general-purpose agents that can replace human workers entirely are coming within the next couple of years.
Everything Is Happening Faster Than Anyone Expected: Both how quickly people are adopting AI and how rapidly the technology is improving have blown past all predictions. Nearly a billion people may now be using ChatGPT, and new "reasoning" models show dramatic capability jumps that surprise even AI experts. The adoption speed is unprecedented for any technology in history. Companies that aren't feeling urgent about AI transformation are making a fatal mistake—competitors getting 20% better every year will destroy businesses that stand still.

2. The Year Of Stablecoins

If you aren’t learning about stablecoins, you are missing the largest financial story of 2025.

I will be writing a deep dive into Stablecoins for brain trust members and paying subscribers.

You can join here, if you’d like to receive the paid deep dives.

3. You Can Just Build Things….

Vibe Coding is a coding / building approach that relies heavily on LLMs to generate code based on just speaking to the models.

Over the last few weekends, I played around with vibe coding. I wanted to see how easily and quickly I could build something.

I tried Claude, it had me download VS Code and within 3 hours we had built useful tools. I then tried using Lovable, which is more integrated and can prototype easier. If you have any knowledge of coding or computers, then Claude / VS Code combo is great, if you are totally new to coding then start with Lovable.

There are no excuses for not building things.

For example this is a good story of what Duolingo did around Chess.