Reviving Forgotten Technologies: How Airships, Supersonic Flight, and Geothermal Energy Could Transform Our World (Eli Dourado, Head of Strategic Investments at Astera Institute)

Speaker A: How did someone who foresaw their career in academia originally find their way through to a supersonic flight company and tech investing? Speaker B: Initially, it was like sort of fear, right? It was fear that I was going to be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. And then when I changed focuses and nobody stopped me, it was really empowering. Speaker A: I think it was maybe in 2016 that you write this paper, Make America Boom Again, about supersonic flight. How did you become interested in that? Speaker B: I was very interested in the Great Stagnation, and supersonics is like the poster child for that.

We had Concorde, it existed. And then now here we are, Concorde is gone. We're all flying at subsonic speeds. It's not just stagnation, it's the great regress. Speaker A: You also are one of the first people in tech and tech adjacent crowds that I think I've seen write about Joseph Tainter and civilizational collapse, which I think now is becoming something that people are thinking about more and talking about more. How are you feeling about the complexity of our society today and how it may jeopardize us in the future? Speaker B: If we can actually get to a point where people really feel like their lives are rapidly improving year to year, that the middle class and lower middle class isn't just suffering while other people are getting rich.

That is the thing that's going to make our society flourish. Having broad-based growth is the answer to the problem. Speaker A: Hey, I'm Mario, and this is The Generalist Podcast. As the saying goes, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. Each week I sit down with the founders, investors, and visionaries who are living in the future. To help you see what's coming next and understand it more clearly. Today I'm speaking with Eli Dorado, the head of strategic investments at Astera Institute. Eli has a remarkable track record of writing ideas into reality.