In this special episode, the tables are turned as I'm interviewed by a listener of the show, DJ Thornton from Sydney. We reflect on the progress of the show in 2023, what I learned from this year's guests, and what's in store for 2024.Full tra

David Deutsch & Steven Pinker (First Ever Public Dialogue) — AGI, P(Doom), & The Enemies of Progress

Dec 19th, 2023 1h 55m

At a time when the Enlightenment is under attack from without and within, I bring together two of the most thoughtful defenders of progress and reason, for their first ever public dialogue.Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology

Shruti Rajagopalan — On Spotting Talent, And Making Sense of Rising India

Nov 28th, 2023 2h 45m

Shruti Rajagopalan is an Indian-American economist. She leads the Indian political economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She also hosts the Ideas of India podcast.Full transcrip

Raghuram Rajan — Debt, Monetary Policy, and Unintended Consequences

Nov 1st, 2023 1h 51m

What were the deep causes of the global financial crisis and great recession? Has unconventional monetary policy in the wake of the crisis done more harm than good? And should monetary policy target financial stability?I discuss these question

Peter Singer — Moral Truths and Moral Secrets

Sep 19th, 2023 1h 54m

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as the world's most influential living philosopher.Full transcript available at: jnwpod.comEpisode recorded on 26 April 2023.See omnystudi

Peter Turchin — Why Societies Fall Apart (And Why the US May Be Next)

Aug 30th, 2023 1h 41m

Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist and one of the founders of cliodynamics — a new, cross-disciplinary field that applies mathematics and big data to test historical theories.Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.See omnystudio.com/lis

Stephen Wolfram — Constructing the Computational Paradigm

Aug 16th, 2023 4h 24m

Stephen Wolfram is a physicist, computer scientist and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and the author of A New Kind of Science.Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.S

Katalin Karikó — Forging the mRNA Revolution

Aug 1st, 2023 2h 3m

Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist. She is one of the inventors of mRNA technology.Full transcript available at: thejspod.com.Episode recorded on 15 February 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Richard Rhodes — The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Jul 25th, 2023 3h 42m

Richard Rhodes is an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.Full transcript available at: thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ken Henry — An Economic Odyssey

May 9th, 2023 4h 35m

Dr Ken Henry is an Australian economist who served as Secretary of Australia's Treasury from 2001 to 2011. He was instrumental in helping Australia avoid recession during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — Australia was the only major advanced

Palmer Luckey — Science (Non)fiction

Apr 25th, 2023 1h 39m

Palmer Luckey is an American tech entrepreneur and billionaire. He has founded two companies: Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014), and Anduril (recently valued at $8.5 billion). He has been described as the real-life Tony St

Daniel Kahneman — Dyads, And Other Mysteries

Apr 13th, 2023 1h 13m

Daniel Kahneman is widely regarded as the most influential psychologist alive. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002) for his work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, much of it done jointly with his late collaborator Amos Tv

Talent Is That Which Is Scarce — Tyler Cowen

Dec 31st, 2022 48m 21s

In the long run, talent allocation is almost everything. But as a society, we're not actually very good at it. The question of how to reliably match people with jobs they are well suited for is one of the big unsolved problems of our times. Jo

Intellectual Exoskeletons — Andy Matuschak

Dec 23rd, 2022 2h 8m

From language and writing to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, computers and Adobe Photoshop, our species has a history of inventing tools for augmenting our own intelligence. But what comes next?Andy Matuschak is a developer and designer. He h

Rationality And Its Opposite — Steven Pinker

Dec 14th, 2022 52m 32s

How rational are we? How can a species smart enough to set foot on the moon also be prone to conspiracy theories that the moon landing was fake? Joe speaks with Steven Pinker to discuss rationality — and its opposite.Steven Pinker is the Johns

Against Bayesianism — David Deutsch

Apr 24th, 2022 1h 39m

Bayesianism, the doctrine that it's always rational to represent our beliefs in terms of probabilities, dominates the intellectual world, from decision theory to the philosophy of science. But does it make sense to quantify our beliefs about su

The Lessons Of Afghanistan — William Dalrymple

Sep 5th, 2021 58m 12s

William Dalrymple is an acclaimed historian and writer.Show notes available at: josephnoelwalker.com/138-afghanistanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Race That Stopped The Nation — Richard Holden & Steven Hamilton

Aug 30th, 2021 1h 55m

Richard Holden is Professor of Economics at UNSW. Steven Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The George Washington University.Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/holden-hamiltonSee omnystudio.com/listener for priv

Ergodicity — Ole Peters

Aug 23rd, 2021 2h 9m

Ole Peters is a physicist and a Fellow at the London Mathematical Laboratory.Show notes available at: josephnoelwalker.com/136-ergodicitySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#135: The Tyranny Of Merit — Michael Sandel

Jun 22nd, 2021 1h 4m

Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University, where he is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory. His course “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television

The Tyranny Of Merit — Michael Sandel

Jun 22nd, 2021 1h 4m

The Spectre Of Havoc — Graham Allison

Jun 14th, 2021 52m 58s

Graham Allison is an American political scientist and the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Harvard University.Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/graham-allisonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#134: The Spectre Of Havoc — Graham Allison

Jun 14th, 2021 52m 58s

A General Theory Of Catastrophe — Niall Ferguson

Jun 6th, 2021 1h 8m

Niall Ferguson is one of the world's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harv