We have suffered a devastating flood in Texas.
I believe an even more devastating Flood is to come.
Now we must build an Ark of story. Now we must build an Ark of love.

My friend’s older brother dubbed us a copy on tape, told us it was cool, and that it was fun to sing along to, so we should start learning the words. We all knew “Fight for your Right” from MTV, and how that was a great jukebox/school dance singalong of an excuse to get rowdy. But the whole tape, it was a portal, and one of many building blocks that shaped my mid-90’s obsession with the mid-80’s burgeoning hip-hop scene.
There’s something about that first phase of hip-hop I keep coming back to when I think about AI. New tools, new sounds, new styles. New art, new culture. New rules – to be made and broken. Let me try to explain one corner of the connection to you and why I think it matters, inspired by a series of Seth Godin posts and me playing Beastie Boys to my nephews in the car recently.
“And on the cool check-in, center-stage on the mic / and we puttin’ it on WAX / It’s the newwwww styyyle”
n 1986, three New York City kids did what teenage best friends do best: they made each other laugh. Now, the trick – and it’s a timeless trick, to getting your friends to laugh – is you have to do this mix of surprising them AND calling back to other shared somethings.
You’ve got to hold it up, or, “hold it now,” and then – “hit it.”
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Nothing Good Ever Happens in Philadelphia, According to Bones
Sometimes the most extraordinary stories come from the most ordinary encounters. Bones’ tale of surviving a race riot in a Philadelphia hotel, being saved by a knife-wielding marine, and hiding in a stopped elevator reveals how strangers can become unlikely heroes in moments of crisis. His story connects to larger themes about urban experience, random kindness, and how single traumatic events can shape our entire worldview about places and people.
Art is Expression, Commerce is Separate
The brutal math of creativity reveals both challenge and opportunity: 86% of Americans say arts improve their communities, 79% attend cultural events, but only 13% of artists earn full-time livings from their work. Rather than crushing creative spirits, this gap should reframe our understanding of success. The quality of human expression has nothing to do with commercial viability, and that separation actually liberates us to create meaningful work regardless of market forces.
Grow Your Network: Bob Seawright Is A Cross-Generational Sports Investment Philosopher
The deeper dive into Bob’s philosophy reveals three crucial frameworks that extend far beyond sports: accountability creates consequences that drive performance, shared live experiences create irreplaceable community bonds, and cross-generational wisdom flows both ways. His love of promotion and relegation systems shows how real consequences eliminate the “idiot owner” problem, while his relationship with his grandchildren demonstrates how the best intergenerational connections involve mutual learning and playful competition.
The Social Cost of Incompetent People
Larry McMurtry’s observation that “incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves” cuts to the heart of why skill development isn’t just personal improvement – it’s social responsibility. When we flip the script, competence becomes a form of kindness that reduces friction and burdens for everyone around us. In a world drowning in unnecessary complexity, choosing to be genuinely good at what we do is an act of community care.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
It’s 9am on a Sunday, and my wife and I are currently 2 hours and 177 miles behind schedule. We’re sitting in a tire shop, with a screw puncturing the side wall on our front, passenger tire, and wondering why they’re blasting old episodes of “Saved by the Bell” so loudly.
There’s a guy directly across from us busy on his phone. He won’t say anything to us for the entirety of our wait. But there’s another guy coming inside, who just finished a cigarette out front, and now that he’s ready to sip his coffee as he sits down at our immediate left and eyes us up.
“Phillies fans, eh” he says. We both have Phillies hats on. This is not an episode of Sherlock Holmes.
“We are!” my wife politely tells him. I can already tell there’s a story here we’re about to get. My wife can too, we both have that weird thing where people look at us and want to overshare, but she’s not exactly in the mood for that and tries to change the subject quickly with, “What about you – who’s your team.”
“I like the Mets.” “Uh-oh,” my wife adds, jokingly. “Yeah, I just couldn’t ever support a team from Philadelphia, nothing good ever happens to me in that city,” he responds.
“Here we go,” I say to myself. My wife taps my leg to echo my thought. Somewhere above us Zack Morris is sweet talking a character named Stacey, that I can’t quite picture but I’ll swear she’s wearing a leather jacket in this scene, and he’s talking her into participating in the 4th of July Miss Liberty pageant. I somehow remember there’s a voting scandal or something in this episode but… ADHD takes back over and I look at the Mets fan who’s about to tell us a story.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Do you know Bob Seawright? He’s a brilliant financial writer, sports enthusiast, and cross-generational community builder who writes “The Better Letter” on Substack.
If not, allow me to introduce you. Bob is someone who sees the deep connections between sports, investment philosophy, and human behavior across generations. He’s been a Manchester United fan since before the Premier League existed and coaches his grandchildren while watching games with them every weekend. I wanted to connect with him because he embodies something I value deeply: the ability to find profound wisdom in everyday shared experiences, whether that’s a soccer match or a family gathering.
Our conversation is LIVE now on the Just Press Record YouTube channel (and this Cultish Creative Playlist). Listen and you’ll hear us dive deep into sports as community assets, the psychology of fandom across generations, and why accountability matters more than talent in building lasting success.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
“When I was a kid” is usually the sign of an incoming bad argument. Well, maybe not bad, but definitely flawed. And the person saying it usually isn’t acknowledging the flaw which is part of the issue.
Bob Seawright isn’t the type to avoid a flaw though. With him, it’s all and always about exposing nuance. So you have to pay extra close attention when he says, but mostly observes, that the shift from three TV stations when he was a kid to infinite streaming options today means way more of life has changed than just what we watch.
Infinite options means less common ground for starters. Not that topics have become uncommon, but with so many topics to choose from, we’ve come a long way from 100 million+ final Mash viewers to me wondering where the water cooler in some obscure corner of twitter is for the 67 people who watched what I otherwise believe to be an incredibly thoughtful Just Press Record solo episode with Matt Reustle.
Bob isn’t opining the death of monocultural experiences. That’s not his style. He is pointing out the nuance of finding new micro-cultural experiences to keep some quality in human existence.
Read more at cultishcreative.com
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
Inflation
What made Bitcoin special is nearly lost, and what remains is a false and constructed narrative that exists in service to Wall Street and Washington rather than in resistance.
The Bitcoin narrative must be renewed. And that will change everything.
This Time Last Year
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Crypto
Recent Notes
Things That Go Bump In The Night
Everyone reading this note has, at one time or another, gotten scared about markets and decided to hedge their professional portfolio or personal account. The Game of Markets is changing. But should we be scared?
Year In Review
We’ve had a heckuva busy year at Epsilon Theory, so to ring out 2017 I thought it might be helpful to distribute a master list of our publications over the past 12 months. We’re long essay writers trying to make our way in a TLDR world, so even the most avid follower may well need a map!
The Three-Body Portfolio
In a two-body market, the interactions of fundamental data and prices are generally predictable. In a three-body market, the epsilon — investor behaviors in response to narratives — exerts a powerful gravitational force which must be considered when building a portfolio.
The Three-Body Problem
What if I told you that the dominant strategies for human investing are, without exception, algorithms and derivatives? I don’t mean computer-driven investing, I mean good old-fashioned human investing … stock-picking and the like. And what if I told you that these algorithms and derivatives might all be broken today? You might want to sit down for Part 9 of the Notes from the Field series.
Wall Street’s Merry Pranks: Things that Matter #4
The libertarian paternalism of a Nudge culture in finance has created an industry of investors who care about fees but have forgotten about taxes, trading costs, slippage and behavioral costs of actively trading passive instruments.
Pecking Order
The pecking order is a social system designed to preserve economic inequality: inequality of food for chickens, inequality of wealth for humans. We are trained and told by Team Elite that the pecking order is not a real and brutal thing in the human species, but this is a lie. It is an intentional lie, formed by two powerful Narratives: trickle-down monetary policy and massive student debt financing. Part 8 of the Notes from the Field series.
The Two Churchills
If you can manage to find a truly independent voice in your personal, political and financial life, pursue it with reckless abandon. Don’t set it to the side so that you can build a brand or make an impact. Get your ass out of the boat, grab your bow, strap on your broadsword and sound the pipes. All that’s left is to decide what song you’re going to play.
Make America Good Again
On episode 26 of the Epsilon Theory podcast, we welcome back Rusty Guinn, our executive vice president of asset management, to talk about political markets — a topic just as important to Ben as capital markets. Be sure to also check out the companion pieces to this podcast: “Always Go To the Funeral,” “Sheep Logic,” and “Before and After the Storm.”
Harvey Weinstein and the Common Knowledge Game
It was no great secret that Weinstein was and is a serial rapist. Apparently everyone in Hollywood was familiar with the stories. It was ubiquitous private knowledge, and pretty darn ubiquitous public knowledge. I mean, if you’re making jokes about it on 30 Rock, it’s not exactly a state secret.
But there was never a Missionary.
The Myth of Market In-Itself: Things That Matter #3, Pt. 2
The behaviors that influence markets must be considered in context of archetypes, the languages and identities which group investors every bit as much as identity politics groups voters.
Clever Hans
Part 7 of Ben’s Notes from the Field series reminds us that you don’t break a wild horse by crushing its spirit. You nudge it into willingly surrendering its autonomy. Because once you’re trained to welcome the saddle, you’re going to take the bit. We are Clever Hans, dutifully hanging on every word or signal from the Nudging Fed and the Nudging Street as we stomp out our investment behavior.
Gandalf, GZA and Granovetter
When we try to define others’ Cartoon, we take away their agency, and strip away their humanity. And we do it with our clients, every time we guess what behavioral box they fit it.
Failure to Inflate
On episode 25 of the Epsilon Theory podcast, we’re joined by Peter Cecchini, Chief Market Strategist, Head of Equity Derivatives and Cross-Asset Strategy at Cantor Fitzgerald, to discuss one of his recent notes, “Failure to Inflate.” As Peter writes, “The theories that guide monetary policy fail to explain why growth and inflation remain so low in developed economies.” Tune in to hear why this is and what might bring about higher inflation.
Massively Fast Compute, AI Algorithms and Blockchain Development (by Silly Rabbit)
I’m limiting this week’s Rabbit Hole to three links which represent the rapid tick-tock of the trifecta of massively fast compute, AI algorithms and blockchain development as I believe that these are the top three technology mega-trends of the 2015 – 2025 period (ex-Life Sciences innovation).
Sheep Logic
In Part 6 of the Notes from the Field Series, Ben observes that we think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack. In truth we are sheep, living by the logic of the flock.
Information Bottlenecks, Fake News and Boredom (by Silly Rabbit)
A new idea called the “information bottleneck” is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.
The Myth of Market In-Itself: Things That Matter #3, Pt. 1
Benjamin Graham famously said that the market is a voting machine in the short run, and a weighing machine in the long run. This is a right-sounding idea. It is also wrong. Behavior matters over every horizon.
The Jukebox Theory
We’re back with episode 24 of the Epsilon Theory podcast! Ben shares his thoughts on the inflation narrative and a new idea reminiscent of C-SPAN to make politics at every level more transparent and engaging.
Youth, Immutable Content, and the Secondhand Scoop (by Silly Rabbit)
This week’s Rabbit Hole column is more thematic with recent links that I found interesting around the topic of ‘news,’ on which Ben wrote the defining commentary of recent years with Fiat Money, Fiat News.
Mailbag! Fall 2017 Edition
Back by popular demand, it’s the Epsilon Theory Mailbag! “Always Go To the Funeral” and “The Arborist” Another rifle shot to the crux of the…

My friend’s older brother dubbed us a copy on tape, told us it was cool, and that it was fun to sing along to, so we should start learning the words. We all knew “Fight for your Right” from MTV, and how that was a great jukebox/school dance singalong of an excuse to get rowdy. But the whole tape, it was a portal, and one of many building blocks that shaped my mid-90’s obsession with the mid-80’s burgeoning hip-hop scene.
There’s something about that first phase of hip-hop I keep coming back to when I think about AI. New tools, new sounds, new styles. New art, new culture. New rules – to be made and broken. Let me try to explain one corner of the connection to you and why I think it matters, inspired by a series of Seth Godin posts and me playing Beastie Boys to my nephews in the car recently.
“And on the cool check-in, center-stage on the mic / and we puttin’ it on WAX / It’s the newwwww styyyle”
n 1986, three New York City kids did what teenage best friends do best: they made each other laugh. Now, the trick – and it’s a timeless trick, to getting your friends to laugh – is you have to do this mix of surprising them AND calling back to other shared somethings.
You’ve got to hold it up, or, “hold it now,” and then – “hit it.”
Read more at cultishcreative.com
Nothing Good Ever Happens in Philadelphia, According to Bones
Sometimes the most extraordinary stories come from the most ordinary encounters. Bones’ tale of surviving a race riot in a Philadelphia hotel, being saved by a knife-wielding marine, and hiding in a stopped elevator reveals how strangers can become unlikely heroes in moments of crisis. His story connects to larger themes about urban experience, random kindness, and how single traumatic events can shape our entire worldview about places and people.
Art is Expression, Commerce is Separate
The brutal math of creativity reveals both challenge and opportunity: 86% of Americans say arts improve their communities, 79% attend cultural events, but only 13% of artists earn full-time livings from their work. Rather than crushing creative spirits, this gap should reframe our understanding of success. The quality of human expression has nothing to do with commercial viability, and that separation actually liberates us to create meaningful work regardless of market forces.
Grow Your Network: Bob Seawright Is A Cross-Generational Sports Investment Philosopher
The deeper dive into Bob’s philosophy reveals three crucial frameworks that extend far beyond sports: accountability creates consequences that drive performance, shared live experiences create irreplaceable community bonds, and cross-generational wisdom flows both ways. His love of promotion and relegation systems shows how real consequences eliminate the “idiot owner” problem, while his relationship with his grandchildren demonstrates how the best intergenerational connections involve mutual learning and playful competition.
The Social Cost of Incompetent People
Larry McMurtry’s observation that “incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves” cuts to the heart of why skill development isn’t just personal improvement – it’s social responsibility. When we flip the script, competence becomes a form of kindness that reduces friction and burdens for everyone around us. In a world drowning in unnecessary complexity, choosing to be genuinely good at what we do is an act of community care.