Dwarkesh Podcast
500K subscribers·114 episodes
Terence Tao – Kepler, Newton, and the true nature of mathematical discovery
1h 23mMar 20, 2026
Terence Tao – Kepler, Newton, and the true nature of mathematical discovery
Dylan Patel — The Single Biggest Bottleneck to Scaling AI Compute
2h 31mMar 13, 2026
Dylan Patel — The Single Biggest Bottleneck to Scaling AI Compute
Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird – Ada Palmer
2h 2mMar 6, 2026
Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird – Ada Palmer
Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential”
2h 22mFeb 13, 2026
Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential”
Elon Musk – "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”
2h 49mFeb 5, 2026
Musk claims AI’s future bottleneck is power, solved in space
Adam Marblestone – AI is missing something fundamental about the brain
1h 49mDec 30, 2025
Why brains outlearn AIs: hidden loss functions and steering systems
Sarah Paine – Why Russia Lost the Cold War
1h 54mDec 19, 2025
Why the Soviet Union Collapsed: Arms Races, Empires, and Economics
Ilya Sutskever – We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research
1h 36mNov 25, 2025
Ilya Sutskever: Beyond scaling laws toward deeply generalizing superintelligence
Satya Nadella – How Microsoft thinks about AGI
1h 28mNov 12, 2025
Satya Nadella explains Microsoft’s long-game strategy in the AI race
Sarah Paine — How Russia sabotaged China's rise
1h 31mOct 31, 2025
How Russia Repeatedly Crippled China’s Rise To Protect Its Empire
Andrej Karpathy — “We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals”
2h 26mOct 17, 2025
Andrej Karpathy explains AI agents, RL flaws, and future education revolution
“I find it almost disturbing that the universe favors life this strongly” – Nick Lane
1h 20mOct 10, 2025
Nick Lane argues life is inevitable, complex life astonishingly rare
Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end
1h 7mSep 26, 2025
Richard Sutton: Why Reinforcement Learning Beats LLMs for Real Intelligence
Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levine
1h 28mSep 12, 2025
Sergey Levine explains why practical household robots are five years away
Sarah Paine – How Hitler almost starved Britain
1h 36mSep 5, 2025
How Britain Survived Hitler’s U‑Boats And What It Teaches Today
Evolution designed us to die fast; we can change that — Jacob Kimmel
1h 45mAug 21, 2025
Why Evolution Neglected Longevity And How Epigenetics May Fix It
China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmer
1h 8mAug 15, 2025
Solar, Silicon, and AI: Why America Can Still Beat China
Artificial meat is harder than artificial intelligence — Lewis Bollard
1h 8mAug 7, 2025
Why Ending Factory Farming Is Harder Than Building Artificial Intelligence
Sarah Paine — How Imperial Japan defeated Tsarist Russia & Qing China
1h 56mJul 25, 2025
Meiji Japan’s Strategy: How a Tiny Island Overturned Asian Power
Stephen Kotkin — How Stalin became the most powerful dictator in history
2h 13mJul 10, 2025
Stephen Kotkin explains Stalin’s genius, terror, and communist contradictions
A billion years of evolution in a single afternoon — George Church
1h 34mJun 26, 2025
George Church on rewriting life, aging, biosecurity, and future biotech
Why China's manufacturing economy is dominating — Arthur Kroeber
2h 27mJun 19, 2025
China’s techno-industrial rise, trade frictions, and managing U.S. rivalry
"China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff
1h 36mJun 12, 2025
Rogoff warns: China’s crisis deepens as America’s debt gamble grows
Xi Jinping’s paranoid approach to AGI, debt crisis, & Politburo politics — Victor Shih
1h 29mMay 29, 2025
Xi Jinping centralizes power as China juggles AI, debt, succession risks
Is RL + LLMs enough for AGI? — Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken
2h 24mMay 22, 2025
Reinforcement learning plus LLMs race toward agentic white‑collar automation
Mark Zuckerberg — AI will write most Meta code in 18 months
1h 15mApr 29, 2025
Zuckerberg predicts AI-coded Meta, open-source dominance, and weirder internet
Why Rome actually fell: plagues, slavery, & ice age — Kyle Harper
1h 24mApr 24, 2025
Plagues, climate shocks, and slavery: rethinking why Rome collapsed
AGI is still 30 years away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu
3h 9mApr 17, 2025
Why AGI Might Be Decades Away: Intelligence Isn’t the Bottleneck Anymore
AI 2027: month-by-month model of intelligence explosion — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
3h 5mApr 3, 2025
Simulating 2027’s AI intelligence explosion and geopolitical endgame risks
AMA: career advice given AGI, how I research ft. Sholto & Trenton
49mMar 25, 2025
AI Careers, AGI Timelines, and Building a High‑Leverage Podcast Empire
Joseph Henrich — Humans defeated smarter species with cultural evolution
1h 53mMar 12, 2025
How Cultural Evolution, Not IQ, Made Humans Earth’s Dominant Superorganism
Satya Nadella — Microsoft’s AGI plan & quantum breakthrough
1h 16mFeb 19, 2025
Satya Nadella outlines AI, quantum, and the future of work
Jeff Dean & Noam Shazeer — 25 years at Google: from PageRank to AGI
2h 15mFeb 12, 2025
Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer Envision AI’s Self‑Improving, Compute‑Hungry Future
Sarah Paine — How Mao conquered China (lecture & interview)
1h 49mJan 30, 2025
Mao’s ruthless genius: propaganda, peasants, and China’s bloody unification
Sarah Paine — Why Japan lost WWII (lecture & interview)
2h 7mJan 25, 2025
How Samurai Culture Doomed Japan’s World War II Grand Strategy
Sarah Paine — The war for India (lecture & interview)
2h 13mJan 16, 2025
How Great Powers Played Cutthroat Billiards Over India and Pakistan
Tyler Cowen — The #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans
1h 0mJan 9, 2025
Tyler Cowen: Why Human Bottlenecks Will Slow Transformative AI Progress
Adam Brown — Bubble universes, space elevators, & AdS/CFT
2h 44mDec 26, 2024
Vacuum decay, holographic universes, and AI that aces grad physics
Gwern — Anonymous writer who predicted AI trajectory on $12K/year salary
1h 36mNov 13, 2024
Anonymous polymath Gwern on AI scaling, anonymity, and obsessive rabbit holes
@Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works
2h 10mOct 2, 2024
Inside Chips and AI: Scale-Pilled Geopolitics, Taiwan Risk, NVIDIA Power
Daniel Yergin — Oil destroyed Hitler, fracking destroyed Putin
1h 28mSep 18, 2024
How Oil Shaped War, Wealth, and Today’s Geopolitics and Energy Future
David Reich — How one small tribe conquered the world 70,000 years ago
1h 57mAug 29, 2024
Ancient DNA upends human origins: small tribe, global takeover explained
Joe Carlsmith — Preventing an AI takeover
2h 31mAug 22, 2024
Joe Carlsmith on AI takeover risk, alignment, and moral futures
Patrick McKenzie — Money laundering, big tech censorship, SBF & Japan
2h 2mJul 24, 2024
Discord volunteers outperformed governments in America’s chaotic vaccine rollout
Tony Blair — Why political leaders keep failing at major change
52mJun 26, 2024
Tony Blair explains why political leaders rarely deliver real change
Francois Chollet — Why the biggest AI models can't solve simple puzzles
1h 34mJun 11, 2024
ARC prize challenges LLM dominance, demands true machine intelligence progress
Leopold Aschenbrenner — 2027 AGI, China/US super-intelligence race, & the return of history
4h 32mJun 4, 2024
Leopold Aschenbrenner forecasts 2027 AGI and geopolitical superintelligence struggle
John Schulman (OpenAI Cofounder) — Reasoning, RLHF, & plan for 2027 AGI
1h 35mMay 15, 2024
OpenAI Cofounder John Schulman on Training, Alignment, and Near-Term AGI
Mark Zuckerberg — Llama 3, $10B models, Caesar Augustus, & 1 GW datacenters
1h 18mApr 18, 2024
Mark Zuckerberg bets on open-source AI, colossal compute, and metaverse
Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken — How LLMs actually think
3h 13mMar 28, 2024
Inside LLM Minds: Context Windows, Features, and Future Superintelligence
Demis Hassabis — Scaling, superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, AlphaFold
1h 1mFeb 28, 2024
Demis Hassabis explains path to AGI, scaling, safety, and Gemini
Patrick Collison — Why Silicon Valley's most talented should leave
1h 55mFeb 21, 2024
Patrick Collison urges deep craft over status games in Silicon Valley
Tyler Cowen — Hayek, Keynes, & Smith on AI, animal spirits, anarchy, & growth
1h 42mJan 31, 2024
Tyler Cowen Ranks the GOAT Economists, Markets, AI, and Anarchy
Jung Chang (Wild Swans author) — Living through history's largest man-made famine
1h 31mNov 29, 2023
Jung Chang recalls Mao’s terror: famine, brainwashing, and survival
Andrew Roberts — Why Hitler lost WWII, Churchill as applied historian, & Napoleon as startup founder
1h 18mNov 22, 2023
Applied history, nuclear taboos, and startup-style generals reshape war
Dominic Cummings — Inside the collapse of western government
2h 35mNov 15, 2023
Dominic Cummings dissects why Western governments keep failing catastrophically
Paul Christiano — Preventing an AI takeover
3h 7mOct 31, 2023
Paul Christiano on timelines, AI coups, and real alignment work
Shane Legg (DeepMind Founder) — 2028 AGI, superhuman alignment, new architectures
44mOct 26, 2023
DeepMind’s Shane Legg Predicts 2028 AGI, Maps Path and Risks
Grant Sanderson (@3blue1brown) — Past, present, & future of mathematics
1h 31mOct 12, 2023
Grant Sanderson reimagines math, education, and AI’s evolving intelligence frontier
Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake
2h 24mOct 4, 2023
Why Dictators Blunder: Grand Strategy, War, And Maritime Power
George Hotz vs Eliezer Yudkowsky
1h 34mAug 15, 2023
George Hotz and Eliezer Yudkowsky Clash on AI Doom and Timelines
Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) — The hidden pattern behind every AI breakthrough
1h 58mAug 8, 2023
Dario Amodei on scaling laws, AI safety, and looming capabilities
Andy Matuschak — The reason most learning tools fail
2h 22mJul 12, 2023
Andy Matuschak explains why learning tools fail and memory matters
Carl Shulman (Pt 2) — AI Takeover, bio & cyber attacks, detecting deception, & humanity's far future
3h 7mJun 26, 2023
Carl Shulman dissects AI takeover mechanics, risks, and fragile hope
Carl Shulman (Pt 1) — Intelligence explosion, primate evolution, robot doublings, & alignment
2h 43mJun 14, 2023
Carl Shulman Maps How Scaling AIs Could Trigger Intelligence Explosion
Richard Rhodes — The making of the atomic bomb
2h 37mMay 23, 2023
Richard Rhodes on nuclear weapons, deterrence, and unintended consequences explored
Eliezer Yudkowsky — Why AI will kill us, aligning LLMs, nature of intelligence, SciFi, & rationality
4h 3mApr 6, 2023
Eliezer Yudkowsky explains why advanced AI likely ends humanity soon
Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) — Why next-token prediction could surpass human intelligence
47mMar 27, 2023
Ilya Sutskever defends next‑token prediction as path to superintelligence
Nat Friedman (Github CEO) — Reading ancient scrolls, open source, & AI
1h 38mMar 22, 2023
Nat Friedman on decoding ancient scrolls, AI, and open source leverage
Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out
2h 37mMar 13, 2023
Inside FTX: Brett Harrison on Sam, dysfunction, and rebuilding crypto
Marc Andreessen — AI, crypto, 1000 Elon Musks, regrets, vulnerabilities, & managerial revolution
1h 20mFeb 1, 2023
Marc Andreessen on AI, managers, and keeping innovation alive globally
Garett Jones — Immigration, national IQ, & less democracy
1h 14mJan 24, 2023
Garrett Jones links migration, IQ, and democracy’s long-run tradeoffs
Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high
1h 39mJan 9, 2023
Lars Doucet explains Georgism, land taxes, and why rents explode
Holden Karnofsky — History's most important century
1h 56mJan 3, 2023
Holden Karnofsky explains why AI could define humanity’s entire future
Bethany McLean — Enron, FTX, 2008, Musk, frauds, & visionaries
1h 25mDec 21, 2022
Bethany McLean dissects fraud, visionaries, markets, and capitalism’s blind spots
Nadia Asparouhova — Tech elites, democracy, open source, & philanthropy
1h 22mDec 15, 2022
Tech elites, philanthropy, and why meritocracies drift into aristocracies
Byrne Hobart - FTX, Drugs, Twitter, Taiwan, & Monasticism
1h 30mDec 1, 2022
Fraud, Thymos, and Monks: Byrne Hobart Dissects FTX, Power, Ideas
Edward Glaeser - Cities, Terrorism, Housing, & Remote Work
57mNov 28, 2022
Edward Glaeser on cities: resilience, housing, remote work, and decline
Kenneth T. Jackson - Robert Moses, Hero of New York?
1h 33mNov 8, 2022
Reassessing Robert Moses: Builder, Bully, and Savior of New York
Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review
2h 25mOct 27, 2022
Why Construction Stagnates: Regulation, Design Tradeoffs, and Future Tech
Bryan Caplan - Feminists, Billionaires, and Demagogues
2h 5mOct 20, 2022
Bryan Caplan Challenges Feminism, Defends Billionaires, Warns Demagogues’ Power
Tyler Cowen - Why Society Will Collapse & Why Sex is Pessimistic
1h 34mSep 28, 2022
Tyler Cowen on Talent, Collapse, Sex, and Long-Term Civilization Risk
Charles C. Mann - Americas Before Columbus & Scientific Wizardry
1h 32mSep 14, 2022
Charles C. Mann on Contingent History, Collapse, and Technological Salvation
Austin Vernon - Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding Alpha
2h 24mSep 8, 2022
Energy Abundance, Smarter Manufacturing, and Where Real Alpha Still Hides
Steve Hsu - Intelligence, Embryo Selection, & The Future of Humanity
2h 21mAug 23, 2022
Genetic Prediction, IVF, and Engineering Intelligence: Steve Hsu’s Vision
Will MacAskill - Longtermism, Effective Altruism, History, & Technology
57mAug 9, 2022
Will MacAskill on shaping humanity’s future through deliberate moral progress
Joseph Carlsmith - Utopia, AI, & Infinite Ethics
1h 32mAug 3, 2022
Joseph Carlsmith explores utopia, AI risk, and infinite ethics
Fin Moorhouse - Longtermism, Space, & Entrepreneurship
2h 20mJul 27, 2022
Longtermism, criticism, and space: Finn Moorhouse on fixing the future
Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order
1h 23mJul 13, 2022
Napoleon’s Global Impact: War, Reform, Empire, and Modern Power Politics
Sam Bankman-Fried - Crypto, FTX, Altruism, & Leadership
46mJul 5, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried on crypto, altruism, and the brutal founder grind
Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection
1h 4mJun 23, 2022
Why Most People Shouldn’t Trade: Edge, Hiring, Crypto, Rationality, Risk
Ananyo Bhattacharya - John von Neumann, Jewish Genius, and Nuclear War
54mMay 11, 2022
John von Neumann: Jewish Prodigy Who Shaped Computing, War, and Strategy
Manifold Markets Founder - Predictions Markets & Revolutionizing Governance
50mMay 5, 2022
Manifold Markets: Play-Money Prediction Markets To Reshape Information And Governance
Pradyu Prasad - Imperial Japan, the God Emperor, and Militarization in the Modern World
1h 40mApr 27, 2022
Hirohito, public choice, and lessons from Japan’s militarized rise
Razib Khan - Genomics, Intelligence, and The Church of Science
1h 4mApr 21, 2022
Razib Khan on genes, intelligence, caste, and science’s fading faith
Jimmy Soni - Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the Paypal Mafia
1h 8mApr 16, 2022
Inside PayPal’s Chaos: Talent, Scenius, and Non-Superhero Founders
Bryan Caplan - Labor Econ, Poverty, & Mental Illness
1h 3mApr 12, 2022
Bryan Caplan Challenges Poverty, Education, and Mental Illness Narratives
Richard Hanania - Foreign Policy, Fertility, and Experts
1h 2mFeb 24, 2022
Richard Hanania Dissects Foreign Policy Myths, Wokeness, and Falling Fertility
David Deutsch - AI, America, Fun, & Bayes
1h 24mJan 31, 2022
David Deutsch challenges AI hype, human limits, Bayesianism, and fun
Byrne Hobart - Optionality, Stagnation, and Secret Societies
1h 11mOct 5, 2021
Byrne Hobart on coordination, stagnation, optionality, and hidden power
David Friedman - Dating Markets, Legal Systems, Bitcoin, and Automation
1h 23mAug 9, 2021
David Friedman on Dating Markets, Anarchy, Bitcoin, and Future Law
Sarah Fitz-Claridge - Taking Children Seriously | The Lunar Society #15
58mJun 4, 2021
Sarah Fitz-Claridge argues for non-coercive, rights-respecting parenting philosophy
Michael Huemer - Anarchy, Capitalism, and Progress
1h 37mMay 28, 2021
Michael Huemer Challenges State Authority, Envisions Anarcho‑Capitalist Future
Uncle Bob - The Long Reach of Code, Automating Programming, and Developing Coding Talent
45mNov 28, 2020
Uncle Bob on AI, coding careers, ethics, and true craftsmanship
Scott Aaronson - Quantum Computing, Complexity, and Creativity
1h 27mNov 20, 2020
Scott Aaronson on quantum ideas, genius, busy beaver and creativity limits
Scott Young - Ultralearning, The MIT Challenge
1h 38mNov 16, 2020
Scott Young Explores Ultralearning, Genius, Ambition, And Realistic Mastery Paths
Charles Murray - Human Accomplishment and the Future of Liberty | The Lunar Society #10
1h 52mOct 28, 2020
Charles Murray on genius, religion, decadence, and rescuing liberty
Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods
1h 26mOct 19, 2020
Alex Tabarrok on Prizes, Public Goods, Baumol, and Better Government
Caleb Watney - America's Innovation Engine
55mSep 4, 2020
Can America Stay Innovative? Immigration, Clusters, Big Tech, And Policy
Robin Hanson - The Long View and The Elephant in the Brain
1h 40mAug 31, 2020
Robin Hanson on Long-Term Futurism, Hidden Motives, and Social Signaling
Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress & the History of Technology
48mAug 25, 2020
Jason Crawford Explores Why Progress Happened—and How To Protect It
Matjaž Leonardis - Science, Identity and Probability
34mAug 22, 2020
Matjaž Leonardis Challenges Scientific Identity, Bayesian Induction, and Learning Myths
Tyler Cowen - The Great Reset
46mJul 10, 2020
Tyler Cowen on great reset, growth, nukes, and mentoring futures
Bryan Caplan - Nurturing Orphaned Ideas, Education, and UBI
57mMay 22, 2020
Bryan Caplan attacks UBI, defends open borders, and rethinks povertyGet more from every podcast
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