180 - Why Bad Ideas Persist | Crémieux

180 - Why Bad Ideas Persist | Crémieux

From Free Cities Podcast by Timothy Allen

May 1, 2026 · 1h 15m

About this episode

Timothy Allen interviews Crémieux about IQ, institutions, and the reasons behind poor governance in countries worldwide.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Timothy Allen

Guest: Crémieux

Topics covered

  • IQ
  • institutions
  • fertility
  • biotech
  • agglomeration economies
  • self-imposed poverty
  • socialist tendencies

Keywords

  • IQ
  • institutions
  • Honduras
  • El Salvador
  • biotech
  • socialism
  • poverty
  • agglomeration economies

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Honduras, El Salvador, Switzerland, Dubai, Singapore

More episodes of Free Cities Podcast

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Free Cities Podcast podcast page.