#112 Classic episode – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
Preventing the apocalypse may sound like an idiosyncratic activity, and it sometimes is justified on exotic grounds, such as the potential for humanity to become a galaxy-spanning civilisation.But the...
8 Jan 20243h 50min
#111 Classic episode – Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms
If you’re living in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, your best bet at a high-paying career is probably ‘artisanal refining’ — or, in plain language, stealing oil from pipelines.The resulting oil spills dam...
4 Jan 20243h 22min
2023 Mega-highlights Extravaganza
Happy new year! We've got a different kind of holiday release for you today. Rather than a 'classic episode,' we've put together one of our favourite highlights from each episode of the show that came...
31 Des 20231h 53min
#100 Classic episode – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome
Today’s episode is one of the most remarkable and really, unique, pieces of content we’ve ever produced (and I can say that because I had almost nothing to do with making it!).The producer of this sho...
27 Des 20232h 51min
#176 – Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI's leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models
OpenAI says its mission is to build AGI — an AI system that is better than human beings at everything. Should the world trust them to do that safely?That’s the central theme of today’s episode with Na...
22 Des 20233h 46min
#175 – Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child
Lead is one of the most poisonous things going. A single sugar sachet of lead, spread over a park the size of an American football field, is enough to give a child that regularly plays there lead pois...
14 Des 20232h 14min
#174 – Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers
"It will change everything: it will change our workplaces, it will change our interactions with the government, it will change our interactions with each other. It will make all of us unwitting neurom...
7 Des 20232h
#173 – Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe
"We do have a tendency to anthropomorphise nonhumans — which means attributing human characteristics to them, even when they lack those characteristics. But we also have a tendency towards anthropoden...
22 Nov 20232h 38min
