Palladium Podcast

Isaac Wilks and Natalia Dashan join Ash Milton to discuss the Ivy Leagues and elite culture. Topics include the future of Yale, the death of Skull and Bones, how universities maintain their power, and why ritual is a necessary part of education. Isaac Wilks is an undergraduate at Yale University, studying political science and the Chinese language. He is interested in institution building, geopolitics, and urbanism. He can be found on Twitter at @wilks_isaac. Natalia Dashan is an associate editor at Palladium Magazine. She graduated from Yale in 2016 with a B.S. in psychology. Follow her on Twitter at @nataliadashan.

Founder, investor and philanthropist Jaan Tallinn joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss the frontier of artificial intelligence research and what an A.I. future means for humanity. Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa. He is a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Future of Life Institute, and philanthropically supports other existential risk research organizations. Jaan is on the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, member of the High-Level Expert Group on AI at the European Commission, and has served on the Estonian President's Academic Advisory Board. He is also an active angel investor, a partner at Ambient Sound Investments, and a former investor director of the AI company DeepMind.

Jeremiah Johnson and Ash Milton discuss the Neoliberal Project. Topics include democratic peace theory, housing maximalism, the roots of institutional decay, and why the west coast is bad at politics. Jeremiah Johnson is the co-founder of the Neoliberal Project, a partner organization of the Progressive Policy Institute. He also hosts discussions on policy and economics at the Neoliberal Podcast. The Neoliberal Project tweets @ne0liberal.

Award-winning environmentalist and author Michael Shellenberger joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss ecomodernism, the history of the atomic age, and why nuclear is the real green energy. On June 30, Harper Collins will publish Michael Shellenberger’s timely new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, which is available for pre-order on Amazon and has received strong pre-publication praise from Harvard’s Steven Pinker, Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes, and climate scientists Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley. Apocalypse Never is a comprehensive debunking of environmental misinformation about everything from climate change and rainforest destruction to nuclear energy and renewables.

Professor John Vervaeke joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss the contemporary crisis of social meaning. We explore the specter of death during pandemic, how to surpass self-deception, and the role of community in creating meaning.John Vervaeke is an assistant professor in cognitive psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto. His work centers around the relationship between science and spirituality and the meaning crisis. He is on Twitter at @vervaeke_john.

Ash Milton and Samuel Hammond discuss America, China, and the future. Topics include tech optimism, whether the Bay Area can remake American politics, whether China thinks like Confucius or Marx, and more. Samuel Hammond is the director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center. He can be found on Twitter @hamandcheese.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton hold a digital salon with Robin Hanson to discuss possible coronavirus insurance mechanisms, prediction markets, and ideology Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and influential writer. He is known for his challenging views on human motivations and biases, futurism and artificial intelligence, and information markets. He previously worked at Lockheed and NASA. He is the author of The Elephant in the Brain, about human cognitive biases, and the Age of Em, on the prospects for society after the development of computer-emulated human minds.

Fiat currency has made it easy for states to get away with unbalanced spending and hidden inflation. Nic Carter joins Wolf Tivy to discuss how Bitcoin disciplines monetary policy and can benefit American power. Nic Carter is the founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on public blockchain projects. Prior to Castle Island, Nic Carter worked as Fidelity's first cryptoasset analyst. He holds an MSc in finance and investment from the University of Edinburgh and an MA in philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. He can be found on Twitter at @nic__carter.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton hold a digital salon with Robert Zubrin and a few select audience guests to discuss how humanity can settle Mars. Robert Zubrin is President of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace R&D company located in Lakewood, Colorado. He is also the founder and President of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. Formerly a Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, he holds a Masters degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington.  Zubrin is the inventor of several unique concepts for space propulsion and exploration, the author of over 200 published technical and non-technical papers in the field, and was a member of Lockheed Martin’s “scenario development team” charged with developing broad new strategies for space exploration. In that capacity, he was responsible for developing the "Mars Direct" mission plan, a

Palladium editors Wolf Tivy, Ash Milton, and Matt Ellison discuss Ash's recent article on decentralization. They contemplate a new paradigm of renewed functionality in government and industry.

Wolf Tivy and Mary Harrington discuss her experience learning to recover meaning within postmodernism, and the larger philosophical growing pains we are facing as a society.

AI technology will increasingly be a superweapon for totalitarian social and geopolitical control. Wolf Tivy and Daniel Faggella discuss this disturbing potential impact, geopolitical strife, and the long-term problem of species dominance.

Wolf Tivy talks to Nicholas Paul Brysiewicz from the Long Now Foundation about philosophical reflections on the pandemic. It is a chance to step back into a longer now, listen to what the world teaching us, and find confidence in our callings.

Palladium senior editor Wolf Tivy holds a digital salon with William Eden, Matt Parlmer, and a few select audience guests, to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, why we took it seriously early on, and what we're doing now for the public good. William Eden is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Ulysses Diversified Holdings and a former biotech investor at Thiel Capital. Prior to that, he worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve. Matt Parlmer is a software engineer, who is now dedicating his time to the Open PPE Project, a venture to re-shore N95-style mask manufacturing in the U.S. as fast as possible and is looking for an infusion of capital. He can be reached at Twitter or his website.

Jonah Bennett interviews Mwiya Musokotwane, who is building Nkwashi, a new city in Zambia.

Deep in Siberia, Nikita Zimov is restoring the Pleistocene ecosystem to combat climate change and undo the damage done by ancient over-hunting. Wolf Tivy interviews him to find out how and why. To get involved or donate, visit the Pleistocene Park's official site and check out the Patreon.

Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy interview Sean Pawley on his work developing a new bank in East Africa, how Rwanda has developed under a Singapore-style model since 1994, and Chinese geopolitical strategy in Africa.

Wolf Tivy interviews Ben Landau-Taylor and Oberon Dixon-Luinenburg on their recent Palladium piece about state-directed industrialization around the world, the relationship between economics and political power, and why we should care about the development of machine tools.

Ash Milton interviews Jason Crawford, author of the blog The Roots of Progress, about the development of progress studies as a new field of research and community.

Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy discuss Seth Largo's article The University System Isn't Going Anywhere, why the bachelor's degree is the new citizenship, and what it would take to actually build a status-generating alternative to the university.