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May 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm super excited to share my conversation with @matt_levine who is one of the funniest, wittiest, and sharpest writers today. I've learned much about the world from reading his Money Stuff almost every day for the past few years.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mat…
We spoke a lot about the emotional life of writing (panic and fun), the wisdom of the Classics, how to read the Bible from the point of view of a hedge fund trader, why delight is underrated, and applying rationality to the apparently absurd.

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6fLc1X…
Many of you know Matt on meme stocks. Fewer of you know him on Archilochus, Sophocles, Jacob and Esau, Machiavelli.
I'm so happy to live in a world where Matt can write instead of have to ask bankers about their kids. #Progress

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More from @ZoharAtkins

Zohar Atkins Profile picture
May 19
Today is Lag B'Omer, a folkloric Jewish holiday that celebrates two things: 1) the life of Shimon Bar Yochai, purported author of my namesake, the Zohar 2) the abatement of a plague that killed 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva. How do these two relate to one another?
(THREAD)
Rabbi Akiva and Shimon Bar Yochai both opposed Rome. Rabbi Akiva opposed Rome by backing the failed Bar Kochba revolt. Shimon Bar Yochai opposed it by speaking out, but then running away and hiding in a cave for 13 years.
Rabbi Akiva ends up dying a martyr's death at hands of Romans. He was not only politically active, but arguably politically incorrect; his battle failed. Bar Yochai's quietism didn't succeed in fending off Rome, either, but there's a happy medium between the two.
Read 21 tweets
Zohar Atkins Profile picture
May 12
This is my most personal piece to date, explaining why I think art is a bridge, why I care about bridge building, and laying out my life-work. I'll excerpt some pieces here, so THREAD!

whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/art-is-the-b…
The point of a life thesis is not simply to be right, but also, and more importantly, to be devoted. Before making my argument, however, it is important to know a bit about my story, and why I care about being a bridge in the first place. 2
I was raised in two worlds and have always lived in two worlds: the world of religion, faith, spirituality, tradition, and the world of secularism, rationality, skepticism, materialism. 3
Read 16 tweets
Zohar Atkins Profile picture
May 3
A lot is made of the difference between King Saul and King David as characters, but one of the most glaring differences is that Saul's kingship is not contested, while David's is constantly opposed. 1/4
If Bible wanted to make the point that legitimacy and authority are the same, it would have made Saul's kingship contested and David's consensus. 2/4
But the whole force of the contrast is to argue that political legitimacy and true authority are not always the same. Saul is the legitimate ruler, but not an authority. David is an authority even as his legitimacy is challenged. 3/4
Read 5 tweets
Zohar Atkins Profile picture
Apr 20
It's easy to get caught up in questions of doctrine, belief, or law when reading the Bible, but the Bible is also a work of art. My thoughts on what this means for how we read the Bible, with help from the magisterial Jed Perl:

whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/authority-an…
Open invitation to @zenahitz @jennfrey @KSPrior who care about Bible, hermeneutics, and art, to weigh in.
I think one reason I love Perl is that he makes a Straussian argument for close reading of art works, not just texts, while also countering the philosophical prejudice that sees art as subordinate to theory.
Read 4 tweets
Zohar Atkins Profile picture
Mar 31
Giorgio Agamben (1942-present), Italian philosopher and philologist, is one of the most original, wide-ranging, and virtuosic thinkers and writers alive. This @threadapalooza is my tribute to a mind who is so much more than his headline-making politics.
But for the uninitiated, let's get in a brief word about Agamben's politics. After 9/11 turned down a position at NYU because entering the US would require him to submit himself to biometric finger-printing. Distrustful of the surveillance state this was too much. 2
More recently, and to the chagrin of left-liberals, Agamben has been a voice from the anti-capitalist left critical of Covid lockdowns, seeing the pandemic largely as a pretext for the consolidation of governmental power. Agamben is more of an anarchist than a Marxist. 3
Read 103 tweets
Zohar Atkins Profile picture
Mar 17
A d’lo yada ben baruch transcendentalism v’arur empiricism
Translation: On Purim it is a commandment to drink until one cannot distinguish between blessed transcendentalism and cursed empiricism.
Kant and Hume. Heidegger and Popper. One is leading the other on the horse of Being, but I don’t know who is who.
Read 13 tweets

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