Taleb Talks About Banking, Babylon & Birdsong

• In Antifragile he tells the story of when he was a child and his father was stopped at a road check during the Lebanese civil war. His father refused to do as demanded and the militiaman got angry with him for being disrespectful. So he shot him in the back and the bullet stayed in his chest for the rest of his life. His father's heroism set the bar high, showing him how dignity is worth nothing unless you earn it: "If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don't take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing."
• "Small is powerful. We should be breaking up the big bureaucratic corporations; use anti-trust laws as Roosevelt did in the US." His reasoning is deliciously simple: "It's much easier to bullshit at the macro-level than it is to bullshit at the micro-level."
• "Top-down knowledge is an illusion. Education without erudition is nothing. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education – I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning." They are doing fine – his son studies engineering and his daughter biology.
• So what does he enjoy? "Aah," he says, pondering while getting into position for our photographer, whose south London accent he admires, and wishes he had had while trading options: "Walking, anywhere, around cities or the country, running (in five-finger shoes), sitting in cafés listening to chatter, parties, working in my study in the New York suburbs, listening to the birds, to the noises of the countryside, the mathematics of Steve Wolfram, Andalucian music, philology and the history of the Mediterranean and now the Maghreb. That's my new obsession."

- Margareta Pagano interviews Nassim Taleb author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder