#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more
"[One] thing is just to spend time thinking about the kinds of things animals can do and what their lives are like. Just how hard a chicken will work to get to a nest box before she lays an egg, the a...
8 Mar 20242h 21min
#181 – Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond
"The question I care about is: What do I want to do? Like, when I'm 80, how strong do I want to be? OK, and then if I want to be that strong, how well do my muscles have to work? OK, and then if that'...
1 Mar 20241h 37min
#180 – Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated
The World Economic Forum’s global risks survey of 1,400 experts, policymakers, and industry leaders ranked misinformation and disinformation as the number one global risk over the next two years — ran...
21 Feb 20242h 36min
#179 – Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety
Mental health problems like depression and anxiety affect enormous numbers of people and severely interfere with their lives. By contrast, we don’t see similar levels of physical ill health in young p...
12 Feb 20242h 56min
#178 – Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting
"I think at various times — before you have the kid, after you have the kid — it's useful to sit down and think about: What do I want the shape of this to look like? What time do I want to be spending...
1 Feb 20242h 22min
#177 – Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps
Back in December we spoke with Nathan Labenz — AI entrepreneur and host of The Cognitive Revolution Podcast — about the speed of progress towards AGI and OpenAI's leadership drama, drawing on Nathan's...
24 Jan 20242h 47min
#90 Classic episode – Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
You wake up in a mysterious box, and hear the booming voice of God: “I just flipped a coin. If it came up heads, I made ten boxes, labeled 1 through 10 — each of which has a human in it. If it came up...
12 Jan 20242h 59min
#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
