#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it
When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office —...
2 Maj 20253h 14min
Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests
How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus on your strengths or on the world’s most pressing pro...
24 Apr 20252h 18min
#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power
Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first ti...
16 Apr 20253h 22min
Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys
"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how mu...
11 Apr 20251h 47min
#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway
Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve solved the problem before the arrival of human-leve...
4 Apr 20252h 16min
15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI
"There’s almost no story of the future going well that doesn’t have a part that’s like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does evil stuff.' So it has highlighted the importance of...
28 Mars 20252h 35min
#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared
The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang...
11 Mars 20253h 57min
Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui)
When OpenAI announced plans to convert from nonprofit to for-profit control last October, it likely didn’t anticipate the legal labyrinth it now faces. A recent court order in Elon Musk’s lawsuit agai...
7 Mars 202536min
