Johnathan Bi on Mimesis and René Girard

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

When the 20-year-old overachiever Johnathan Bi's first startup crashed and burned, he headed to a Zen retreat in the Catskills to "debug himself." He discovered René Girard and his mimetic theory--the idea that imitation is a key and often unconscious driver of human behavior. Listen as entrepreneur and philosopher Bi shares with EconTalk host Russ Roberts what he learned from Girard and Girard's insights into how we meet our primal need for money, fame, and power. The conversation includes the contrasts between economics and Girard's perspective.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:12.7	Institution.
0:13.7	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives, but every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.3	We'd love to hear from you.
0:38.0	Today is October 25th, 2022, and my guest is entrepreneur and philosopher Jonathan B.
0:44.3	Our topic for today is the thought of Renee Gerard, based on a multi-part lecture series
0:50.2	that Jonathan has done and that we will link to Jonathan.
0:53.3	Welcome to econtalk.
0:54.7	Thanks for having me.
0:56.7	I'm so excited for this talk.
0:57.7	You have a background in math and computer science.
1:01.0	You're now working on a FinTech startup.
1:03.0	How did you get interested in Gerard?
1:05.7	And do you really know anything about him?
1:07.5	Right.
1:08.5	Well, I like to joke and say, when people ask me what my credentials in training in Gerard
1:13.9	is, and I said I was trained in the most Gerardian way possible, which that is to say none
1:18.1	at all.
	...

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