Podcast: Eric Markowitz

I spoke with Eric Markowitz, Partner and Director of Research at Nightview Capital, about an essay he published this year titled, “How a brush with death shaped my long game” (link). We dive straight into the details of the health crisis which shook Eric’s world in early 2023 (link) and then have an open-ended conversation about what he’s taken from it as a husband, father, friend and investor.

Eric has a remarkable way with words. As he said to me,

“There’s a shared concept across narratives, philosophy, and fiction called the "dark night of the soul." I think everyone encounters that in their personal or professional journey. I hit mine, and I hope I don’t hit it again. What I want to convey is that you’re not alone when it happens, and that growth often comes from these painful experiences. I’m sure you’ve seen it in business or personal relationships too—things don’t get better until they get really bad… You have to pull things apart until they almost break so you can see where the weak links are, and then you rebuild.”

I highly recommend you read Eric’s essay before you listen to our conversation. The context will help and you will get to enjoy Eric’s wonderful skill as a writer. If you want more, you can follow Eric on X (⁠@EricMarkowitz⁠) or at Big Think (⁠link⁠).

The following transcript has been lightly edited with ChatGPT:

Graham Rhodes: Hi, my name is Graham Rhodes, and you're listening to the Long River Podcast. Today, I’m doing something a bit different by speaking with a friend of mine, Eric Markowitz. It’s not so much about his investment journey, but about a personal health crisis he faced at the beginning of 2023. Eric wrote about this recently in an essay titled How a Brush with Death Shaped My Long Game, and he writes so well I almost feel like reading his essay aloud to you.

Every word bites. Every phrase hammers an idea home. And is this not one of the most gripping opening lines you've ever heard? "Last February, I opened my laptop and began writing a goodbye letter to my 18-month-old daughter." I’ll leave you hanging on that thought as we dive into my conversation with Eric about his health crisis, what he went through physically, personally, and emotionally, what he learned, and how it changed him as a person, a father, a husband, and an investor. I feel incredibly lucky to have this conversation with Eric, and I’m very grateful that he opened up to share his experience. I hope you enjoy it.

Eric Markowitz of Nightview Capital, welcome to the show. Let’s get right into it—what happened and how did it all start?

Eric Markowitz: Yeah, I don’t want to get you banned from Spotify, but it was a shitty, hellish, horrible experience. For anyone listening who hasn’t read the piece, basically, I was a pretty healthy guy in my mid-30s, and then all of a sudden, one day, I was getting a haircut and the room started spinning a little bit. I thought it was really odd, but it just kept getting worse. It felt like severe vertigo—the room spinning around me, constant nausea, and vomiting. I went to the hospital, and they initially thought I might be having a stroke, so they did an MRI. My brain looked clear, so they discharged me.

I went back home, but I kept deteriorating. I returned to the hospital, and they admitted me, but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They put me on fluids to stabilize me, but it was terrifying because we had no idea what was going on. Eventually, they misdiagnosed me with some weird inner ear infection called vestibular neuritis and discharged me again. I spent about a month at home, deteriorating, losing 30 to 40 pounds, with the room constantly spinning due to the vertigo and nausea. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy—it was pure hell.

Finally, my wife, who kept me alive during this period, advocated for me to get a second MRI. When I got the results, the radiologist told me to get to the hospital immediately. He said I had a "rapidly enhancing lesion" in my brain, in the cerebellum. At that point, there were a couple of potential outcomes, but the clearest one was that I had stage 4 glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer. They said I needed emergency brain surgery, and if I survived the surgery— which wasn’t guaranteed—I’d have maybe three months to live.

There was also an alternative scenario: a weird infection that had developed into an abscess, which was even more dangerous because it could rupture at any moment. If it burst into my cerebrospinal fluid, I would die within 24 hours. It was a real shit sandwich, and terrifying, especially since I had an 18-month-old daughter at the time (she’s now three). To not bury the lead, I survived the surgery, and the diagnosis was thankfully not cancer. It turned out to be a one-in-a-million infection that had baffled all my doctors.

My neurosurgeon, who I’ve become good friends with, even presented my case at a neurosurgery conference because it was so bizarre. Thankfully, I’m on the path to recovery now, with no immediate concerns. I’m in the clear—knock on wood—and just taking it day by day. But it was a really scary and uncomfortable situation.

One of the reasons I’m talking about it now, giving it air in public, is that I think everyone hits a moment in their life like I did. It may not be as dramatic, but there’s a shared concept across narratives, philosophy, and fiction called the "dark night of the soul." I think everyone encounters that in their personal or professional journey. I hit mine, and I hope I don’t hit it again. What I want to convey is that you’re not alone when it happens, and that growth often comes from these painful experiences. I’m sure you’ve seen it in business or personal relationships too—things don’t get better until they get really bad. In business, you have to pull things apart until they almost break so you can see where the weak links are, and then you rebuild.

If you look at successful businesses—and not to make this about business, but that’s our shared interest—they’ve all had a dark night. It’s just a question of how leadership managed it. I think it’s fascinating because so many people and businesses hit that point and think, "This is it; it's over." But if you’re lucky enough to survive it, the question then becomes, "What was not working before, and how can I make it better now?" My life was fine, but there were problems—my obsession with work, my attachment to certain things, relationships. It’s not perfect yet, but I’m reorienting my perspective to make things better.

GR: In the essay you wrote, you talked about making a point of principle about being a long-term investor. Then, suddenly, you realized that you weren’t living in a long-term way, and that you might not even see the long term. It’s easy to talk about crises and calamities in the abstract, but living through them is a whole other thing. I’m so glad you did.

EM: Yeah, I think you brought up an interesting point, which didn’t quite make it into the article. Things work well until they don’t, right? There’s an old market saying: "You take the escalator up and the elevator down." Catastrophes happen quickly, and that’s true for all of us. I think the key takeaway for me is that every day, we should think about the safety net we’re building, not about building the tallest building. We should focus on strengthening the foundation so that if a big earthquake comes, we’re the one building left standing.

To make that more practical for someone’s life, I came out of this experience incredibly grateful for my support network. That support network is really the only thing that matters in my life—stock prices don’t care that I survived, but my friends and family did. If you want to apply this to business or investing, tail risks drive everything. They call it a "tail risk," but it’s really an existential risk that happens more often than we think. We often avoid thinking about these "what if" scenarios because it’s uncomfortable, but at some point, you need to. Having kids makes you think about putting things in place to ensure their future.

For me, this experience reinforced the importance of doubling down on friendships and relationships. For my birthday, I threw myself a big guys’ trip with 10 of my closest friends from all over the country. I guilted them into coming by saying, "This is my Eric survived brain surgery trip!" It was great, and it reinforced relationships that were already there. Beyond reorienting my life to be more long-term, the practical takeaway is to double down on the safety net—the thing that keeps you safe in the first place. This applies across portfolio management and life in general. You don’t ever want to be in a position where you can get wiped out. That seems obvious, but it happens to too many smart people.

GR: You write at the end of your article that long-term investing is really about discipline and consistency, but those are hard things to maintain. Consistency involves changing habits and giving up old beliefs. Now that the immediate crisis has passed, how much of this has stuck with you?

EM: The experience showed me that I need to do more work to figure out what longevity and long-term thinking really look like. The essay I wrote touches on consistency and living in the present, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to longevity. Consistency is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of elements that go into true longevity—in businesses, as an investor, and in human health.

What’s fascinating to me is looking at things that have survived for a long time—structures, businesses, art, languages, cultures—and trying to understand the lessons embedded in them. For the past several months, I’ve been doing an independent research project, studying these enduring things. For example, my wife sent me an article about a shark in Greenland that can live for 400 years, and scientists are trying to understand what in its DNA enables it to live that long. I’ve been diving deep into what makes the shark live, because I think there’s a lesson in there.

As for how much I’ve implemented this in my own life and business, you’d have to ask my wife! She’d probably say I still have a lot of the same bad habits—I still check my phone too much, don’t exercise as much as I should, and have bad eating habits. But I think the subtle tweak is a reorientation. If you think about a big oil tanker, a one-degree change in direction over an extended journey results in a very different destination. What I’m realizing, by studying businesses and reading others on the subject, is the power of marginal gains. Tiny tweaks over extended periods of time can have huge impacts, and it’s not just about one thing—it’s about dozens of things.

In fact, I’ve just finished a column on the concept of fun in business. If you look at some of the most long-lasting businesses—not necessarily in terms of growth or market share, but in terms of longevity—they often have a culture where people are enjoying themselves. There’s a balance between working hard and cultivating qualities that are essential for growth, but softer elements like fun and education are equally important. That’s something I’m exploring more.

GR: You talked about longevity, using examples like languages, cultures, and religions. These are systems—a set of shared beliefs or practices adhered to by a large group of people, with safety in numbers and built-in redundancy. But when you’re facing a personal health crisis, it’s just you—there’s no system. So, I think it’s insightful how you’re looking at family and friendships as your support network, finding safety in those relationships.

EM: Absolutely. I only survived because of a lot of other things—because I live in a country with access to good healthcare, because I have a wife who kept me alive, and because I had a great doctor and neurosurgeon. My brain surgeon was a friend of a friend, and the night they found the lesion in my brain, I called my best friend, Ben Jacobs, and said, "Take care of my wife and kids if things don’t work out." He said, "Let’s call Zach." Zach had just moved to Portland after finishing his neurosurgery residency at Stanford. He looked at my scan that evening and said, "I want to do your surgery." So, I benefited from this social fabric that kept me alive.

These systems, like friendships, technology, and geography, all played a role. Without them, if I had been alone on an island, I wouldn’t have survived. There’s safety in numbers, but there’s also a danger in following the herd. Sometimes, you don’t want to be an outlier, but in other cases, you do.

GR: I was thinking more about what you mentioned—what if you get hit by lightning? If you were living on an island, you’d be toast. But now, you're probably thinking about how you’ll live on through your family—how you’ll provide for your daughters and wife when you’re not here, how you want your friends to remember you, and what kind of business you’re building to survive beyond you. You even mentioned thinking 50 to 100 years into the future. That’s a profoundly different way of looking at the world.

EM: I think so. I’m starting to see that more clearly, especially as we were talking earlier about having a second child. In a lot of ways, I think my life’s work is to provide my kids with a roadmap—a framework for them to give their kids a roadmap, and so on. It’s not just about longevity for the sake of living a long time, because longevity on its own is pointless. No one wants to live 100 years if they’re miserable. There has to be a reason for it, some fulfilling goal behind longevity.

For me, the goal is to give my kids a framework. I’m still figuring out exactly how to do that, but it mostly comes down to "show, don’t tell." I want to do things they can look back on and think, "That took a long time, but it was cool that he did that." They might have a completely different takeaway, and they may want to pursue something entirely different, but I hope I can leave them with a sense of purpose and direction. We all have a finite amount of time, so I want to use mine productively to build something that helps them, keeps them safe, and gives them a framework for their own growth.

Like I wrote in the essay, the worst thing you can experience as a parent is not being able to help your child, whether it’s because they’re sick or you’re sick. That’s the worst feeling. So, this experience reframed my thinking on how to offer something lasting for my daughters—now that there are two of them! Hopefully, one day they’ll appreciate it. Right now, they just yell at me and cry, but maybe by the time they’re in their 30s, they’ll see what I was trying to do.

GR: So, roughly 29 years and 49 weeks for the youngest one. (Laughs) I really appreciate what you said—these things take time and effort to build. Maybe the motivation behind it helps us rationalize the discomfort and effort, and the distance between the action and the reward.

I’m wondering if you’d like to flesh out more about the playbook you’re building for your daughters or, if you prefer, you could talk about another concept you’ve mentioned called "Tikkun Olam." I’d love to hear more about that, too.

EM: Sure. "Tikkun Olam" is an ancient Jewish concept that essentially means making the world whole again. It’s about making the world a little bit better, and that can be interpreted broadly. It could mean doing charitable work, pursuing direct philanthropy, or finding other ways to contribute positively to the world.

For me, outside of the direct work I do at the firm (and in some ways related to it), I’m focused on this idea of building things that last. That’s clearly applicable to investing, but it’s also part of my larger life's work. I think something has happened in the financial industry over the past 30 to 50 years—maybe even forever, I’m not sure—but it’s become an ignoble profession. You have the Wall Street bravado, where it’s all about making the most money as quickly as possible. It’s counterintuitive, but I think there’s a real opportunity to build an investment firm centered around doing things for the long term, not just paying lip service to the idea.

By studying in-depth how to create systems that last, we can help people achieve financial goals they might not have been able to reach otherwise. I genuinely believe all these ideas are connected, and by figuring out how to create lasting systems, we achieve our goals both professionally and personally.

One thing I’ve noticed about people who have gone the farthest in life and done the most impressive things is that they have a central animating mission. They might be interested in many things, but there’s always a core purpose. Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is an example of someone with the biggest mission—he’s trying to save humanity. I’m not claiming to be on his level, but I admire people with that clarity of purpose.

Before, I had this frenetic feeling of constantly putting out fires, trying to juggle small things here and there. Now, I’m trying to unite everything around a single concept. At the business I help run, we’ve made structural changes to set it up to last for 300 years. It sounds crazy, but we made specific operational changes to build something enduring.

I spend a lot of time studying current companies, but I also study companies that aren’t investable. You can learn a lot from businesses that have withstood wars, political turmoil, technological change, and founder succession. Take Nintendo, for example. Most people think it launched in the 1970s or 1980s, but it actually started in the 1880s as a playing card company. It went through multiple reinventions. That’s an example of a company built for longevity.

GR: I love that. I’m going to share a couple of thoughts you provoked. First, I like the way you define "Tikkun Olam" because it starts with the premise that the world is imperfect, which is a realistic view. Then it offers a choice—we can do something about it. I really appreciate that concept. It’s pretty cool.

I also think it’s interesting that you chose Elon Musk as an example of someone with a mission. There’s something to be said for audacity, and it probably ties into your realization that life is so brief. We might as well use our time to do something great and worthwhile.

Finally, regarding your firm, you were talking about how businesses often don’t realize their weak links until a crisis hits. But I think it’s also true that during crises, people and businesses can unite to do something about them.

EM: Absolutely. I’m curious to get your thoughts on this too because if you study these things enough, you realize that the worst thing that can happen to a company with long-term aspirations is that things go too smoothly.

GR: I 100% agree. The same is true for individuals.

EM: Right. If your mission is to build something that can last 500 years, you should hope for crises. Crises create opportunities for reinvention within organizations. I’m starting to write about this for a column because it’s fascinating and not talked about enough. People often think crises are bad, but you should absolutely hope for one because that’s what will save you.

One of my favorite examples is a company from about 100 years ago called Kutol. They sold wallpaper cleaner, which was popular when homes were heated with coal and oil because walls would get dirty. But when homes started using cleaner energy like natural gas, demand for their product collapsed. The company was in turmoil.

The CEO’s sister-in-law, a schoolteacher, realized that kids liked playing with the wallpaper cleaner. They decided to repackage it as a children’s toy and, with nothing to lose, launched it as Play-Doh. Play-Doh became a phenomenal success, saving the company from bankruptcy. Kutol is still around today, over 120 years later. Had they not faced a crisis, I’m not sure they’d still exist. They were only willing to try something new because their backs were against the wall.

EM: I think what’s interesting about that case study is that the only reason they were willing to try something completely new was because they had no other choice. And you see this pattern over and over again. There isn’t really a word for it, but there should be—if you were to do a Harvard Business School case study on companies that thrived in crisis, there should be a term for it. On the flip side, you have companies that grow too big, like General Electric, which became so distributed across different sectors that it slowly started to decline. It was death by a thousand cuts.

When we think about our own lives or businesses, it’s so important to learn from mistakes and lean into things that go wrong. That’s what I’m trying to do with my own experience. It’s potentially the most valuable thing in life—to have something go really wrong, survive it, and then say, "Okay, let’s never get ourselves into that situation again."

GR: Yeah, listening to this, I think the obvious takeaway might be, "I need to lose weight" or "I need to exercise more." That’s important for being healthy, but perhaps the bigger lesson from a crisis is adaptability—learning how to change in the face of difficulty or an evolving environment. The companies that don’t survive are the ones that keep doubling down on the same thing. Imagine if Kutol had refused to repurpose its product. We wouldn’t be talking about Play-Doh today.

EM: Exactly. I started looking at extremophiles in the natural world—plants that survive in extreme conditions—and there's something fascinating there. There’s a Stanford study on a little shrub growing on the banks of Lake Tuz in Turkey. It can survive 150-degree heat, minus 20-degree cold, and salty, arid conditions. The most interesting part isn’t just that it can exist in harsh conditions, but that it thrives. The worse the conditions, the better the plant does.

I think that’s a unique concept to apply to life and businesses. It’s not just about withstanding tough times; it’s about thriving during them. We’re going to have recessions, wars, and crises, so the question shouldn’t be, "What businesses are immune to these things?" but "What businesses use tough times to level up and grow stronger?" That’s where you really see longevity.

GR: So, what’s a good example of a company that has leveled up during tough times?

EM: Airbnb is one example. We own it in our portfolio, full disclosure. During the pandemic, their revenue dropped to zero, and the founder, Brian Chesky, and his management team did an incredible job pivoting. They cut everything that wasn’t essential and doubled down on what would work. They came out of the pandemic stronger because of those painful decisions.

Time will tell if their leadership made the right call, but what’s interesting to watch over the next few years is how businesses that genuinely struggled during the pandemic end up performing. Not the ones that benefited from temporary market shifts, but the ones that were truly harmed and somehow came out stronger. Have you come across any companies in your work that seem to thrive in difficult times?

GR: The challenge with these examples is that you don’t know until many years later if they truly thrived. In the moment, it’s all about survival. But looking back, I think Amazon during the dot-com crisis is a great example. It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Their stock price dropped 80-90%, but it gave Amazon the space to dominate e-commerce for the next two decades. Another example is Google, taking advantage of overcapacity in fiber to create its own backbone across the world. Incredible foresight.

EM: Totally. In investing terms, the best investors we know look at an 80% decline in stock price as the best thing ever.

GR: There’s a Shelby Davis quote: "You make all your money in a bear market; you just don’t know it at the time."

EM: The key point is being able to take advantage of periods of extreme discomfort. The distinguishing characteristic between good and great investors is the mindset to keep going, even when things get worse. Anyone can manage a portfolio for five years, but the number of investors who beat the market for 50 years is close to zero. That says something.

The longer your time horizon, the harder it gets, but it also opens up more opportunity. The playing field becomes easier because fewer people can stay in the game for the long term. Crises are invaluable to study, both for companies and investors who have not just survived but come out stronger.

GR: You faced a deeply personal crisis, but recently, we all went through a collective crisis with COVID-19. It was only four years ago that the whole world was told to stay home. It felt like being at war. I think the lesson I took from that experience, as an investor, is that if I want to take advantage of crises, I need to be resilient. We’ve talked about resilience in terms of portfolio management, but I think it applies to the way we live our lives too.

EM: Absolutely. You can’t do this job if the relationships and networks that enable it aren’t aligned. If your personal life is in shambles, you won’t get through a crisis.

GR: That includes your home life, colleagues, and clients, right?

EM: Exactly. Especially in investing, where alignment is everything. We’ve had clients for a very long time, and they really trust us. I respect the hell out of that. It’s essential to create that alignment in this business, even more so than in others. So many businesses are transactional—if you don’t like getting your hair cut at one place, you just go somewhere else. But in investing, I’d much rather work with someone who gives us a small check for 30 years than someone who gives a big check and demands results in six months. I’m guessing you feel the same in your business.

I was listening to the Founders podcast recently, and they talked about David Ogilvy, the big advertising founder. He used to fire his clients all the time because he believed, "If we’re not on the same page, I can’t do my best work." I really respect that.

GR: You mentioned Nintendo earlier as a timeless company with incredible IP, but they have zero revenue in the world’s largest gaming market, which is mobile. It’s a conscious choice—they’ve decided not to play in that space because it goes against their perception of fun and joy. That’s an interesting decision. Can you tell me more about how you approach your day, especially as someone whose central mission is longevity?

EM: Well, I had a kid three weeks ago, so my day right now isn’t representative of how I want it to be. (Laughs) But I’ve made some practical changes. I used to work from a home office, but I got myself a separate office. That’s been really healthy for me, creating a boundary between work mode and home mode. It’s a subtle change, but the return on investment has been astronomical in just a few months.

The second thing I did was go through my calendar and cancel a lot of calls. I used to do tons of research and networking calls, but I found them draining and not especially useful. So, I cut those out.

I also started eating the same thing every day to eliminate decision fatigue. I make the same smoothie for breakfast and usually have the same lunch. My wife makes fun of me for it, but I don’t care about food that much—I just want to focus on what matters to me. All of this falls under the umbrella of being more protective of my time and more thoughtful about how I spend it.

Lastly, I started writing again.

GR: Writing?

EM: Yeah. I began my career as a business journalist and investigative reporter, and although I write a weekly newsletter, I hadn’t been doing much real writing. After I wrote the essay about my health crisis, I started writing a column for Big Think. It’s been fun, like an intellectual playground for me. It gives me something to focus on and a research project to dig into. I’m trying to make these columns really good, which forces me to cut out what doesn’t matter.

Writing is helping me think better, be a better investor, and find good companies. It’s helping me do better for my clients and my family because they’ll read these pieces one day and have their own insights. It’s compounding in a positive way, which I don’t think I was really doing before. Before, it was just about getting through the day—checking off calls, listening to earnings reports. Now, I’m more focused on doing one thing really well.

GR: I want to wrap this up, Eric. It’s been so interesting talking with you. We touched on this before we began recording, but I want to go back to it. Why are you telling the world your story? Why do you think it’s important to talk about your experience, and what do you hope people reading your essays or listening to this conversation will take away?

EM: Yeah, I struggled with whether I even wanted to share such a personal health crisis publicly. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, and people can interpret it in all kinds of ways. They can comment on your life in ways you might not want them to. When I put this piece out on Twitter, it got a lot of love—99% of people were incredibly kind and supportive—but there was that 1% of crazies who were really nasty, saying things like, "Why are you sharing this? Keep it to yourself. You’re just doing this to get attention for your newsletter."

On some level, I understand where they’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s right. It played into an insecurity I had about being perceived as seeking attention. But that’s not how I viewed it. For me, this experience was incredibly challenging, and I know that everyone, at some point, will face their own dark night of the soul. I’ve always appreciated writers who were open, vulnerable, and transparent about their struggles, and when I was going through this, I found solace in reading about others who had been through similar experiences.

I felt like it was almost my responsibility to give back—to share my thoughts and my hope. It sounds grand, but I wanted to give something back to the universe, to let people know that while these experiences are miserable, there is no growth without them. That’s a message that’s been shared before, but until you live through it, you don’t really understand. So, I wanted to continue banging that drum. There’s a Churchill quote: "If you’re going through hell, keep going." That’s the message I want to share—just keep going.

Let me share a final anecdote before we wrap up, something I haven’t told anyone before. There’s a Swedish musician named José González—are you familiar with him?

GR: Of course! Sony Bravia ads, around 20 years ago, right?

EM: Exactly. He has a song called Stay Alive, which I believe was written for a movie soundtrack. As the name suggests, the song’s mantra is "stay alive." I listened to that song on repeat—probably 10,000 times—while I was recovering from brain surgery. It was a lifeline for me, a kind of mantra that got me through that period. If you look at my Spotify Wrapped for 2023, it’s like, "You listened to this guy way too much." It was just that one song, over and over: Stay Alive.

A couple of months ago, I was having coffee at a hotel in downtown Portland, and I looked up—and José González was sitting across from me.

GR: No way!

EM: I couldn’t believe it. I Googled it and found out he had played a show in Portland the night before. So, it was definitely him. I had this out-of-body experience, wondering what I should say to him. But before I could decide, he got up and left. I went home and told my wife, and she just said, "The universe is winking at you."

I don’t know what it means—maybe nothing—but it felt magical to me. What got me through was the Buddhist philosophy that things are always changing, that what you feel now you won’t feel forever. I wanted to share that. And selfishly, talking about this publicly has put out a beacon, allowing me to connect with people like you and have meaningful conversations. After I published the essay, a few hundred people reached out to me to share their own stories, and it was incredibly moving. I cherish those connections.

On another level, I also want to show my kids the importance of putting things like this out there. Don’t hold on to your secrets. That’s the idea.

GR: I think you’ve been very courageous, and I’m so grateful you shared your story. I found it incredibly moving. The way you’ve turned such a terrifying experience into something positive is admirable. I’m really excited to see what you continue to build over the long term. Maybe, as we joked earlier, we should touch base again in 20 years to see how things have unfolded.

EM: I’ll send you a calendar invite for 2044! (Laughs)

GR: So, Eric, where can people find you? What’s the name of your column that you’re writing every fortnight? Tell us about that.

EM: Sure. It’s called The Long Game, and it’s published on Big Think. The easiest way to follow me is on X (formerly Twitter)—my handle is @EricMarkowitz, and all the links are there.

GR: This has been an absolute blast. Thank you again, Eric.

EM: Thank you, Graham.