#135 – Samuel Charap on key lessons from five months of war in Ukraine
After a frenetic level of commentary during February and March, the war in Ukraine has faded into the background of our news coverage. But with the benefit of time we're in a much stronger position to...
8 Aug 202254min
#134 – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us
Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obe...
22 Juli 20223h 41min
#133 – Max Tegmark on how a 'put-up-or-shut-up' resolution led him to work on AI and algorithmic news selection
On January 1, 2015, physicist Max Tegmark gave up something most of us love to do: complain about things without ever trying to fix them. That “put up or shut up” New Year’s resolution led to the firs...
1 Juli 20222h 57min
#132 – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems
If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it's a fair bet that they don't want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free. This problem exists...
14 Juni 20222h 42min
#131 – Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
“We’re leaving these 16 contestants on an island with nothing but what they can scavenge from an abandoned factory and apartment block. Over the next 365 days, they’ll try to rebuild as much of civili...
3 Juni 20221h 5min
#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, & mental health under pressure
Imagine you lead a nonprofit that operates on a shoestring budget. Staff are paid minimum wage, lunch is bread and hummus, and you're all bunched up on a few tables in a basement office. But over a fe...
23 Maj 20222h 16min
#129 – James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination
The good news is deaths from malaria have been cut by a third since 2005. The bad news is it still causes 250 million cases and 600,000 deaths a year, mostly among young children in sub-Saharan Africa...
9 Maj 20223h 19min
#128 – Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen
In nature, animals roar and bare their teeth to intimidate adversaries — but one side usually backs down, and real fights are rare. The wisdom of evolution is that the risk of violence is just too gre...
28 Apr 20222h 46min
