WEBVTT

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Imagine you're 14 years old. You're walking the

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streets of a city that is actively hunting you

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down. Right. And to survive, you can't just hide,

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you know? You have to become a phantom. You take

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on a fake name, a fake religion, a totally fabricated

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family history. It's the ultimate high wire act.

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Exactly. You have to walk right among the very

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people who want to destroy you. And you just

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have to smile like you belong. Because one slip.

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I mean, one wrong word or even just a nervous

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glance and you're dead. Surviving that kind of

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crucible, the absolute darkest period of the

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20th century in Nazi occupied Hungary. It doesn't

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just leave a mark on a person. No, it rewrites

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everything. Exactly. It rewrites how they perceive

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reality itself. It teaches you that these rigid

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rules of the world, these institutions that seem

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invincible, they're sometimes just malleable

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illusions, illusions that can be bent or manipulated.

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Or broken. Well, welcome to another Deep Dive.

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Today, you are joining us as the third person

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in our conversation as we unpack the life, the

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theories, and frankly, the intense controversies

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of a man who took that exact lesson of survival

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and used it to shake the globe. We are, of course,

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talking about George Soros. Right. And our mission

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today is to navigate this massive polarizing

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landscape of his life. And we're drawing strictly

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from his incredibly expensive Wikipedia page,

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which is this fascinating chronological map.

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Yeah, it really is. It tracks a guy who went

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from... a frustrated philosophy student, to a

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financial titan, to this massive global political

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lightning rod. Okay, let's unpack this. Can you

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give us a high level overview? Sure. So to give

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you a sense of the scale we're dealing with here,

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Soros was born in 1930 in Budapest. Over his

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career, he amassed a net worth of over $7 .2

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billion. Which is just staggering. It is, but

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what's even more staggering is the money he no

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longer has. He gave away an unbelievable $32

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billion of his own fortune. Wow. 32 billion.

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Yeah. And along the way, he became this central

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figure in global finance, international philanthropy,

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and as you'll see, modern political conspiracy

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theories. Right. And his origin story, it really

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reads like a high stakes historical thriller.

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I mean, he was actually born Jorgi Schwartz.

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Yes. But his family changed their name to Soros

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as this protective camouflage against the rising

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anti -Semitism in Hungary back in the 1930s.

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And the name itself is brilliant. The palindrome,

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right? Yeah. spelled the same forwards and backwards.

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In Hungarian, it means next. But his dad was

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a massive Esperanto enthusiast. Esperanto, the

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constructed language. Yeah, exactly. And in Esperanto,

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the word soros means will sore. Oh, that's incredibly

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fitting. But. That survival instinct was tested

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to the absolute limit. In 1944, when Nazi Germany

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occupied Hungary, 14 -year -old Soros survived

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by posing as the Christian godson of an agricultural

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official. Which just sounds terrifying. It was.

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He even had to accompany this official to inventory

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the confiscated estates of Jewish families. Escaping

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that kind of environment requires this profound

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psychological detachment. you learn to observe

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systems from the outside, you know, understanding

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that the official reality is often entirely constructed.

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And that raw survival instinct, it transitions

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directly into his intellectual awakening, because

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he escapes to London in 1947, and he ends up

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studying at the London School of Economics under

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this famous philosopher, Karl Popper. Right,

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which is a pivotal relationship. Yeah. And Soros

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actually wanted to be an academic philosopher.

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That was his absolute dream. But his grades simply

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weren't good enough. That's amazing. Yeah. So

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that failure basically prompted him to pivot

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to banking. The irony there is just so rich.

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His academic failure in philosophy is exactly

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what unleashed his financial empire. He didn't

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just abandon his philosophical theories when

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he moved to Wall Street, he weaponized them.

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Weaponized them how? Well, he applied Karl Popper's

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ideas about the fallibility of human knowledge

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directly to the stock market. And that leads

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to what is arguably his crowning intellectual

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achievement, the theory of reflexivity. Okay,

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we need to spend some time on this because if

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you don't understand reflexivity, you cannot

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understand how Soros made his billions or like

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how he spends them. Absolutely. Because traditional

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economics, it generally assumes that markets

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naturally find a rational equilibrium, right?

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The textbook idea is that people act rationally

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based on economic fundamentals. Right. But reflexivity

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completely throws that traditional model out

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the window. Okay. So what's his argument? Soros

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argued that markets are actually driven by the

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fallible heavily biased ideas of the participants

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themselves. Beliefs and events are actively influencing

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each other in real time So it's not just that

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people misjudge the market. No, it's that their

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misjudgments physically change the fundamentals

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of the market. It creates these massive, self

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-reinforcing, vicious or virtuous cycles of boom

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and bust. OK, let me make this relatable for

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you listening. Think of it like a rumor at a

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high school that an upcoming party is going to

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be epic. OK, I like where this is going. Because

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people believe it's going to be epic, everyone

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decides to go. Right. So their belief actively

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makes the party epic. Until it gets too big and

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the cops show up. Exactly. And that's the bust.

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The belief changed the reality, which then ruined

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the reality. That is actually a perfect analogy

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for what Soros calls dynamic disequilibrium.

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It's this state where the market never settles

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into that textbook balance, but just keeps wildly

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over correcting based on collective psychology.

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Right. And to ground this in the real world,

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look at the 2008 housing crisis from the text.

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Lenders started making more easy money available.

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So people bought more houses, which naturally

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drove the housing prices up. Making everyone

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feel rich. Exactly. Then the lenders looked at

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their balance sheets and saw the collateral in

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Erica. The houses were now worth more, which

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made them feel safer to lend even more money.

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Wow. So it's this massive, unsustainable loop.

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Exactly. And Soros built his fortune by identifying

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these exact loops. He bet on exactly when that

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rubber band would finally snap. So reflexivity

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wasn't just some abstract academic theory. For

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Soros, it was literally a multi -billion dollar

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weapon. A weapon he used very effectively. Which

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brings us to the event. September 16th, 1992.

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Black Wednesday. Yes. So Soros looks around and

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he recognizes this massive flaw in the UK's position

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within the European exchange rate mechanism,

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the ERM. Yeah, the UK was legally obligated to

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keep the value of the pound within this very

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specific narrow band against the German mark.

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But the UK had triple the inflation rate of Germany

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and they were using these high interest rates

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that were just crushing their asset prices. Right.

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The pound was fundamentally weak. The government

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was just burning through its own foreign exchange

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reserves to constantly buy up their own currency

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and create fake demand it was an illusion and

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Sora sees this and he doesn't just casually bet

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against the pound he builds a staggering short

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position of over 10 billion dollars 10 billion

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in 1992 yeah He forced the UK into a corner where

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they literally ran out of financial ammunition.

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They had to withdraw from the ERM and let the

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pound devalue. And the result of that? He earned

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himself over $1 billion in pure profit in a single

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day. He literally became known as the man who

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broke the Bank of England. Which cemented his

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legendary status in the finance world forever.

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I mean, his quantum fund became the most successful

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hedge fund in history. Since 1973, it has generated

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roughly $40 billion. OK, but here's where it

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gets really interesting. And I want to push back

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a bit here. Sure. He basically bet against an

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entire country's economy for fun and profit,

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as the economist Paul Krugman once described

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speculators like him. Right. Krugman even coined

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the term saroi for them. Exactly, saroi. So how

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does a guy who actively crashes national currencies

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Square with his later image as this massive global

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humanitarian Well to answer that you have to

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look at what he actually did with that wealth

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for Soros Accumulating wealth was never the end

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goal. Okay, what was it was the funding mechanism

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for his ultimate philosophical ambition engineering

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what he calls open societies and Understand that

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we have to go back to his old professor Karl

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Popper The philosopher from the London School

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of Economics. Exactly. Popper's core philosophy

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is based on fallibility. The idea that no human

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being has a monopoly on the absolute truth. So

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because our knowledge is always imperfect, the

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only way a society can survive and thrive is

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if it remains open. It has to protect freedom

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of speech, democratic debate, and human rights.

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So that bad ideas can be peacefully replaced

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by better ones. Precisely. Authoritarian and

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communist regimes, by contrast, are closed societies.

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They claim to possess the ultimate truth and

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they use force to suppress anyone who points

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out their flaws. Okay, I see the connection now.

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He survives a closed society built on this lethal,

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absolute ideology of the Nazis. Then he goes

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to London, learns about the open society. He

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uses the fallibility of humans on Wall Street

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to make billions. And then he takes those billions

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to fund a war against closed societies globally.

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So talk about the scale of this philanthropy.

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It's massive. He's donated 64 percent of his

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original fortune and he started early. Back in

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the 1970s, he began funding black students to

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attend university in apartheid South Africa,

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which was a deeply closed society based on racial

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absolutism. Exactly. He also actively supported

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dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. He funded

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the Solidarity Movement in Poland and Charter

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70. in Czechoslovakia. And I saw in the sources

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he even pitched this $100 million Marshall Plan

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for Africa. Yeah, to foster education and employment.

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And he poured massive money into higher education,

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like a $500 million endowment to Bard College

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in the US. And he founded the Central European

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University right in his hometown of Budapest.

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Right. So what does this all mean for you listening?

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He's not just writing checks to charities, you

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know. He's operating almost like a sovereign

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nation. trying to single -handedly pry open closed

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communist societies with a tidal wave of cash.

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But when a private citizen uses billions of dollars

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to actively engineer global political outcomes

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like that, they inevitably become a massive target

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for backlash from all sides. Okay, stop right

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there. Before we dive into this next part, we

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need to be crystal clear with you, the listener.

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The sources we're looking at contain highly politically

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charged material from both the left and the right.

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Yes, very charged. We are absolutely not taking

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sides or endorsing any of these viewpoints. Our

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goal here is simply to impartially report what

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is contained in the original source material

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just so you can understand the full picture.

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That context is vital because Soros's political

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spending is largely unprecedented. Take the U

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.S., for instance. He spent millions trying to

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defeat George W. Bush in 2004. Which he called

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the central focus of his life, right? Right.

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And more recently, he's poured massive sums into

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local district attorney races. He backed Larry

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Krasner in Philadelphia and George Gascon in

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L .A. Pushing for criminal justice reform, bail

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reform, police accountability. Exactly. And the

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backlash has been fierce. From the right, and

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particularly from nationalist governments, he's

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enemy number one. In his native Hungary, the

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Fidesz government ran nationwide anti -Soros

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billboard campaigns. Framing him as a national

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security risk who was pushing migration. Yes,

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and his wealth and Jewish identity have made

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him the perfect code word for far -right conspiracy

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theories, falsely framing him as a puppet master.

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And that rhetoric has real -world consequences.

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I mean, in 2018, a pipe bomb was mailed to his

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home by Cesar Sayoc. The pushback isn't just

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from the right. During the 1997 Asian financial

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crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir

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Mohamed, blamed Soros for the massive plunge

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in their currency. Oh, right. Using blatant anti

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-Semitic tropes. Exactly. Claiming he was orchestrating

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a conspiracy. So he gets attacked from all angles.

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Which brings up a fascinating contradiction.

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He writes books warning about the super bubble

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of market fundamentalism. He says the free market

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system is inherently flawed. Yeah. Yet he used

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that exact unregulated system to become a billionaire.

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Is he a hypocrite, or is he simply the only one

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honest enough to exploit a broken game while

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trying to change the rules? Well, he'd probably

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point right back to his theory of reflexivity.

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He recognizes the flaws because he understands

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how human bias shapes the system. He even joked

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that he used to get severe backaches when his

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portfolio was positioned wrong. His body's subconscious

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telling him the market reality was shifting.

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Exactly. He exploited the system, yes. But he's

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using the winnings to try and engineer a better

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one. So let's wrap this up. Just look at the

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incredible arc we've covered. from a teenage

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boy hiding from the Nazis, to a frustrated philosopher

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who accidentally broke the Bank of England, to

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a polarizing mega donor who gave away $32 billion

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to shape the world in his image. Right. And why

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does this matter to you? Because whether you

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agree with him or not, Soros's life proves that

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abstract ideas like reflexivity and open societies

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aren't just textbook theories. No, they're not.

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They dictate the value of your currency. the

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political ads on your screens, and the shape

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of modern democracy. Which leaves you with one

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final, really lingering question to chew on.

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If Sorios's theory of reflexivity is true, that

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our beliefs about reality actually change reality,

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what happens when a billionaire uses his massive

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fortune not just to predict those feedback loops,

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but to artificially kickstart them in global

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politics, are we all just living inside his feedback

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loop? Think about it.