The Joe Rogan Experience

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#2503 - Eric Weinstein

Explore episode May 21, 2026
History
The Forbidden City: How a Cleveland Journalist Stumbled on the Manhattan Project

#2503 - Eric Weinstein · May 21, 2026 History

In March 1944, Cleveland journalist Jack Raper vacationed in New Mexico and published a story describing a secret city with a mysterious mayor, strange explosions, and a 'doomsday weapon.' He was describing Los Alamos. Raper was punished by being sent to the Pacific. The story was ignored. Weinstein uses this as an analogy for Renaissance Technologies: the clues are visible if you know where to look.

7m 10s

Where this was said

Renaissance Technologies, SUNY Stony Brook, and the Hidden Manhattan Project Theory

At 2:29:00 · chapter starts 2:25:00

The conversation arrives at one of Weinstein's strangest ideas: that Renaissance Technologies' Medallion Fund — with returns that have no comparable second place in human financial history — may not be purely what it appears. Jim Simons started at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He became the unusually young chairman of SUNY Stony Brook's math department. He hosted C.N. Yang for lunch seminars that connected differential geometry to the Standard Model. He then founded a hedge fund that hired exclusively mathematicians and physicists, never financial professionals. The parallel to Los Alamos is made explicit through a 1944 article called 'Forbidden City,' in which Cleveland journalist Jack Raper accidentally exposed the Manhattan Project by describing a secret New Mexico city with strange explosions and a mayor who was 'the second Einstein.' Raper was punished and the story was ignored. Weinstein's point: the clues of hidden programs are always visible if you know where to look — and Renaissance Technologies doesn't make sense under ordinary assumptions.

Business
Renaissance Technologies and SUNY Stony Brook: A Modern Manhattan Project?

#2503 - Eric Weinstein · May 21, 2026 Business

Jim Simons's Renaissance Technologies Medallion Fund has produced returns with no comparable second or third place in human financial history. Its formula: hire only mathematicians and physicists, no finance people. Its origin: a lunch seminar between Simons and C.N. Yang at SUNY Stony Brook that connected differential geometry to the Standard Model. Weinstein asks openly whether this is a secret government operation hiding in plain sight.

8m 20s

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