# 180 - Why Bad Ideas Persist | Crémieux

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-cities-podcast-5840331/180-why-bad-ideas-persist-cr-mieux
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-cities-podcast-5840331/180-why-bad-ideas-persist-cr-mieux.md
Podcast: [Free Cities Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/free-cities-podcast-5840331)
Published: 2026-05-01T05:00:29+00:00
Episode link: https://fountain.fm/episode/wnv0Nt6IZ2qNQ2Dhv9m8
Audio file: https://feeds.fountain.fm/0Mh804AKI3yaq86kDWTp/items/OI44dEDHffg3W1SLvUbg/files/AUDIO---DEFAULT---39066649-cebd-47bd-922a-75c0980ede52.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/free-cities-podcast-5840331/episodes/180-why-bad-ideas-persist-cr-mieux
Duration seconds: 4493

## Resource

IQ, Institutions & Why Every Country Is Run Poorly - Crémieux is a pseudonymous statistician and writer with a large following on Substack and X. He likes to take widely cited studies, reopen the data, and argue the conclusions don't always hold up. His readers include Elon Musk and JD Vance, and his work circulates widely in tech and policy circles. Timothy Allen sits down with Crémieux in Honduras, for a wide-ranging conversation about IQ, institutions, fertility, biotech, agglomeration economies, and why he thinks every country on Earth, even Singapore, is run poorly. The result is part interview, part real-time error-correction service: every casual claim Timothy makes gets gently audited against the data, and the answers are usually "harsher, less equal, and less comforting than people want them to be." In this conversation: Why complex problems get clearer with honest inquiry and why the answers are usually harsher than people want The IQ data nobody wants to talk about, and why most "special" groups aren't statistically special at all Why El Salvador transformed without the people changing and what that says about institutions over genetics Honduras as a case study in self-imposed poverty: severance taxes, FDI delays, and 80% informal employment What predicts socialist tendencies (and why champagne socialists are a statistical blip) Voice vs exit: why Switzerland and Dubai work, and why one-world government would be a "global Honduras" The privacy-biotech tradeoff: Florida's Sunshine Genetics Act, China's biobank race, and the data we owe the future The unsolved problem at the heart of every charter city: how do you generate the agglomeration effects of San Francisco? Enjoy the conversation. Timestamps (Audio version only, includes Timothy's episode introduction…

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## Transcript

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