Sarah Paine: How Imperial Japan Defeated Tsarist Russia & Qing China
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After my last lecture series with Sarah Paine ended, I still had so many questions. I knew we’d on...
Stephen Kotkin — How Stalin Became the Most Powerful Dictator in History
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world’s foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and ha...
Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests thin...
George Church — A Billion Years of Evolution in a Single Afternoon
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
George Church is the godfather of modern synthetic biology and has been involved with basically ever...
China’s Manufacturing Dominance: State Directives & Ruthless Competition — Arthur Kroeber
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Drag...
“China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin.” — Ken Rogoff
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Rogoff is the former chief economist of the IMF, a professor of Economics at Harvard, and author...
Xi Jinping’s paranoid approach to AGI, debt crisis, & Politburo politics — Victor Shih
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local ...
Is RL + LLMs enough for AGI? — Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
New episode with my good friends Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken. Sholto focuses on scaling RL and ...
What Will Automated Firms Look Like?
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Based on my essay about AI firms.Huge thanks to Petr and his team for bringing this to life!Watch on...
Mark Zuckerberg — AI Will Write Most Meta Code in 18 Months
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Zuck on:* Llama 4, benchmark gaming* Intelligence explosion, business models for AGI* DeepSeek/China...
Why Rome Actually Fell: Plagues, Slavery, & Ice Age — Kyle Harper
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the populatio...
AGI is Still 30 Years Away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, do...
2027 Intelligence Explosion: Month-by-Month Model — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion.Scott Alexand...
AMA ft. Sholto & Trenton: New Book, Career Advice Given AGI, How I'd Start From Scratch
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I recorded an AMA! I had a blast chatting with my friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas. We dis...
Joseph Henrich – Why Humans Survived and Smarter Species Didn't
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have not succeeded because of our raw intelligence.Marooned European explorers regularly star...
Notes on China
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I’m so excited with how this visualization of Notes on China turned out. Petr, thank you for such ...
Satya Nadella – Microsoft’s AGI Plan & Quantum Breakthrough
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Satya Nadella on: Why he doesn’t believe in AGI but does believe in 10% economic growth; Microsoft...
Jeff Dean & Noam Shazeer – 25 years at Google: from PageRank to AGI
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week I welcome on the show two of the most important technologists ever, in any field.Jeff Dean...
Sarah Paine Episode 3: How Mao Conquered China
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy!Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challeng...
Sarah Paine Episode 2: Why Japan Lost (Lecture & Interview)
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second episode in the trilogy of a lectures by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War Co...
Sarah Paine Episode 1: The War For India (Lecture & Interview)
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I’m thrilled to launch a new trilogy of double episodes: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine...
Tyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I interviewed Tyler Cowen at the Progress Conference 2024. As always, I had a blast. This is my four...
Adam Brown – How Future Civilizations Could Change The Laws of Physics
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Brown is a founder and lead of BlueShift with is cracking maths and reasoning at Google DeepMin...
Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI's Trajectory
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gwern is a pseudonymous researcher and writer. He was one of the first people to see LLM scaling com...
Dylan Patel & Jon (Asianometry) – How the Semiconductor Industry Actually Works
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade.Dylan P...
Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secul...
David Reich - How One Small Tribe Conquered the World 70,000 Years Ago
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I had no idea how wild human history was before chatting with the geneticist of ancient DNA David Re...
Joe Carlsmith - Otherness and control in the age of AGI
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chatted with Joe Carlsmith about whether we can trust power/techno-capital, how to not end up like S...
Patrick McKenzie - How a Discord Server Saved Thousands of Lives
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I talked with Patrick McKenzie (known online as patio11) about how a small team he ran over a Discor...
Tony Blair - Life of a PM, The Deep State, Lee Kuan Yew, & AI's 1914 Moment
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I chatted with Tony Blair about:- What he learned from Lee Kuan Yew- Intelligence agencies track rec...
Francois Chollet, Mike Knoop - LLMs won’t lead to AGI - $1,000,000 Prize to find true solution
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here is my conversation with Francois Chollet and Mike Knoop on the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize they're...
Leopold Aschenbrenner - China/US Super Intelligence Race, 2027 AGI, & The Return of History
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chatted with my friend Leopold Aschenbrenner on the trillion dollar nationalized cluster, CCP espion...
John Schulman (OpenAI Cofounder) - Reasoning, RLHF, & Plan for 2027 AGI
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chatted with John Schulman (cofounded OpenAI and led ChatGPT creation) on how posttraining tames the...
Mark Zuckerberg - Llama 3, Open Sourcing $10b Models, & Caesar Augustus
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Zuckerberg on:- Llama 3- open sourcing towards AGI- custom silicon, synthetic data, & energy co...
Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken - How to Build & Understand GPT-7's Mind
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Had so much fun chatting with my good friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas on the podcast.No w...
Demis Hassabis - Scaling, Superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, Rogue Nations Threat
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here is my episode with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMindWe discuss:* Why scaling is an artform...
Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) - Craft, Beauty, & The Future of Payments
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss:* what it takes to process $1 trillion/year* how to build multi-decade APIs, companies, a...
Tyler Cowen - Hayek, Keynes, & Smith on AI, Animal Spirits, Anarchy, & Growth
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It was a great pleasure speaking with Tyler Cowen for the 3rd time.We discussed GOAT: Who is the Gre...
Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro [Narration]
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a narration of my blog post, Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro.You rea...
Will scaling work? [Narration]
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a narration of my blog post, Will scaling work?. You read the full post here: https://www.dw...
Jung Chang - Living through Cultural Revolution and the Crimes of Mao
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A true honor to speak with Jung Chang.She is the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (sol...
Andrew Roberts - SV's Napoleon Cult, Why Hitler Lost WW2, Churchill as Applied Historian
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Roberts is the world's best biographer and one of the leading historians of our time.We discu...
Dominic Cummings - COVID, Brexit, & Fixing Western Governance
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here is my interview with Dominic Cummings on why Western governments are so dangerously broken, and...
Paul Christiano - Preventing an AI Takeover
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Christiano is the world’s leading AI safety researcher. My full episode with him is out!We di...
Shane Legg (DeepMind Founder) - 2028 AGI, New Architectures, Aligning Superhuman Models
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I had a lot of fun chatting with Shane Legg - Founder and Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind!We di...
Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown) - Past, Present, & Future of Mathematics
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel...
Sarah C. M. Paine - WW2, Taiwan, Ukraine, & Maritime vs Continental Powers
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I learned so much from Sarah Paine, Professor of History and Strategy at the Naval War College.We di...
Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) - Scaling, Alignment, & AI Progress
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here is my conversation with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.Dario is hilarious and has fascinating t...
Andy Matuschak - Self-Teaching, Spaced Repetition, & Why Books Don’t Work
12 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks ago, I sat beside Andy Matuschak to record how he reads a textbook.Even though my own jo...
Carl Shulman (Pt 2) - AI Takeover, Bio & Cyber Attacks, Detecting Deception, & Humanity's Far Future
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The second half of my 7 hour conversation with Carl Shulman is out!My favorite part! And the one tha...
Carl Shulman (Pt 1) - Intelligence Explosion, Primate Evolution, Robot Doublings, & Alignment
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In terms of the depth and range of topics, this episode is the best I’ve done.No part of my worldv...
Richard Rhodes - Making of Atomic Bomb, AI, WW2, Oppenheimer, & Abolishing Nukes
23 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It was a tremendous honor & pleasure to interview Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of T...
Eliezer Yudkowsky - Why AI Will Kill Us, Aligning LLMs, Nature of Intelligence, SciFi, & Rationality
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For 4 hours, I tried to come up reasons for why AI might not kill us all, and Eliezer Yudkowsky expl...
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) - Building AGI, Alignment, Future Models, Spies, Microsoft, Taiwan, & Enlightenment
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I went over to the OpenAI offices in San Fransisco to ask the Chief Scientist and cofounder of OpenA...
Nat Friedman - Reading Ancient Scrolls, Open Source, & AI
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It is said that the two greatest problems of history are: how to account for the rise of Rome, and h...
Brett Harrison - FTX US Former President & HFT Veteran Speaks Out
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I flew out to Chicago to interview Brett Harrison, who is the former President of FTX US President a...
Marc Andreessen - AI, Crypto, 1000 Elon Musks, Regrets, Vulnerabilities, & Managerial Revolution
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My podcast with the brilliant Marc Andreessen is out!We discuss:* how AI will revolutionize software...
Garett Jones - Immigration, National IQ, & Less Democracy
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Garett Jones is an economist at George Mason University and the author of The Cultural Transplant, H...
Lars Doucet - Progress, Poverty, Georgism, & Why Rent is Too Damn High
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal, a book about Georgism...
Holden Karnofsky - Transformative AI & Most Important Century
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Holden Karnofsky is the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy and co-founder of GiveWell. He is also the autho...
Bethany McLean - Enron, FTX, 2008, Musk, Frauds, & Visionaries
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This was one of my favorite episodes ever.Bethany McLean was the first reporter to question Enron’...
Nadia Asparouhova - Tech Elites, Democracy, Open Source, & Philanthropy
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nadia Asparouhova is currently researching what the new tech elite will look like at nadia.xyz. She ...
Byrne Hobart - FTX, Drugs, Twitter, Taiwan, & Monasticism
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps the most interesting episode so far.Byrne Hobart writes at thediff.co, analyzing inflections...
Edward Glaeser - Cities, Terrorism, Housing, & Remote Work
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Glaeser is the chair of the Harvard department of economics, and the author of the best books...
Kenneth T. Jackson - Robert Moses, Hero of New York?
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I had a fascinating discussion about Robert Moses and The Power Broker with Professor Kenneth T. Jac...
Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was a pleasure to welcome Brian Potter on the podcast! Brian is the author of the excellent Const...
Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was a fantastic pleasure to welcome Bryan Caplan back for a third time on the podcast! His most r...
Tyler Cowen - Talent, Collapse, & Pessimism of Sex
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was my great pleasure to speak once again to Tyler Cowen. His most recent book is Talent, How to ...
Charles C. Mann - Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Charles C. Mann is the author of three of my favorite history books: 1491. 1493, and The Wizard and ...
Austin Vernon - Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding Alpha
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most ...
Steve Hsu - Intelligence, Embryo Selection, & The Future of Humanity
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Hsu is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University and cofounder of the co...
Will MacAskill - Longtermism, Altruism, History, & Technology
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Will MacAskill is one of the founders of the Effective Altruist movement and the author of the upcom...
Joseph Carlsmith - Utopia, AI, & Infinite Ethics
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Carlsmith is a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philo...
Fin Moorhouse - Longtermism, Space, & Entrepreneurship
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Fin Moorhouse is a Research Scholar and assistant to Toby Ord at Oxford University's Future of Human...
Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of The Na...
Sam Bankman-Fried - Crypto, Altruism, and Leadership
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I flew to the Bahamas to interview Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX! He talks about FTX’s plan to...
Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Agustin Lebron began his career as a trader and researcher at Jane Street Capital, one of the larges...
Ananyo Bhattacharya - John von Neumann, Jewish Genius, and Nuclear War
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ananyo Bhattacharya is the author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann...
Stephen Grugett (Manifold Markets Founder) - Predictions Markets & Revolutionizing Governance
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Grugett is a cofounder of Manifold Markets, where anyone can create a prediction market. We ...
Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World
27 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talk to Pradyu Prasad (blogger and podcaster) about the book "Hirohito and the Making o...
Razib Khan - Genomics, Intelligence, and The Church of Science
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Razib Khan is a writer, geneticist, and blogger with an interest in history, genetics, culture, and ...
Jimmy Soni - Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the Paypal Mafia
16 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jimmy Soni is the author of The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silic...
Bryan Caplan - Discrimination, Poverty, & Mental Illness
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I interview the economist Bryan Caplan about his new book, Labor Econ Versus the World, and many oth...
Richard Hanania - Foreign Policy, Fertility, and Wokeness
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Hanania is the President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and the au...
David Deutsch - AI, America, Fun, & Bayes
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David Deutsch is the founder of the field of quantum computing and the author The Beginning of Infin...
Byrne Hobart - Optionality, Stagnation, and Secret Societies
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Byrne Hobart writes The Diff, a newsletter about inflections in finance and technology with 24,000+ ...
David Friedman - Dating Markets, Legal Systems, Bitcoin, and Automation
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David Friedman is a famous anarcho-capitalist economist and legal scholar. Watch on YouTube. Liste...
Sarah Fitz-Claridge - Taking Children Seriously
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Fitz-Claridge is a writer, coach, and speaker with a fallibilist worldview. She started the jo...
Michael Huemer - Anarchy, Capitalism, and Progress
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more ...
Uncle Bob - The Long Reach of Code
28 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob) is a programming pioneer and bestselling author or Clean Code. We disc...
Scott Aaronson - Quantum Computing, Complexity, and Creativity
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Aaronson is a Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director...
Scott Young - Ultralearning
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scott is the author of Ultralearning and famous for the MIT Challenge, where he taught himself MIT&a...
Charles Murray - Human Accomplishment and the Future of Liberty
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I ask Charles Murray about Human Accomplishment, By The People, and The Curmudgeon's Guide to G...
Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and with Tyler Cowen a founder ...
Caleb Watney - America's Innovation Engine
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Caleb Watney is the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.Watch on YouT...
Robin Hanson - The Long View
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He is the author of The Elephan...
Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress
25 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Crawford writes at The Roots of Progress about the history of technology and industry and the ...
Matjaž Leonardis - Science, Identity, and Probability
22 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Matjaž Leonardis has co-written a paper with David Deutsch about the Popper-Miller Theorem. In this...
Tyler Cowen - The Great Reset
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and also Director...
Bryan Caplan - Nurturing Orphaned Ideas
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling...