Palladium Podcast

Jesse Velay-Vitow joins Ash Milton to discuss how we can reconcile industrial disruption, ecological stewardship, and the destiny of our species. Topics include how people have terraformed the Earth for millennia, whether our society's risk tolerance is unacceptably low, and why we need a strong conception of telos to discipline humanity's world-making power. Jesse recently wrote about the consequ...

Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy from Turkey to discuss why civilization is older than we thought. Samo's research into ruins like Göbekli Tepe inspired him to ask just how ancient civilization could really be. Topics include why national politics can end up yielding archaeological progress, whether the Dunbar number is a false limit on human development, and why Samo is willing to bet on finding cities...

Charlie Smith joins Wolf Tivy to debate the real future of crypto. Its advocates promise radical transformation, but skeptics can point to a long list of scams and schemers. By examining the projects doing something real, we can better understand how crypto lets people coordinate in new ways. And are the schemers just a facet of life on any new frontier? In the second half, Charlie and Wolf discus...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the moral logic that drives industrial progress. The industrial revolution has been left halted across its most important domains. The 20th century's major advances were never fully developed. Returning to the path of industrial progress isn't just a policy matter. Instead, we need to re-develop the complex ecosystem of mastery, tacit knowledge, and material practi...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss cults as society's real foundation. Cults channel and condition the highest desires of human consciousness. The stories they tell about the world give meaning to every other aspect of our lives. Their authority can make demands for people to act in ways that no other kind of organization can dream of. Sometimes, they inspire members to sacrifice their lives. Cults...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the Qing-era Chinese thinker Yan Fu and how to understand liberalism as a political project. Political systems exist downstream of a governing class that tries to create a certain kind of society. The liberal thought of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith proposed increasingly broad participation in political and economic power. But its mission was not permanent rebell...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the GameStop rebellion and why such outbursts almost always fail to bring about the changes they want. The reality is that power exists as a set of deals, and only those able to coordinate on the same level have the potential to rewrite them. Most movements end up becoming recuperated instead—but this presents its own set of opportunities. The first half of the sho...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the ultimate impact of human beings on Earth, and why neither green energy tweaks nor radical degrowth and return to nature are solutions. Instead, we need to envision what the Earth could be if we used our powers properly. We also need to reconcile our ethics of respect towards non-human parts of the world's ecosystem, and our disruptive role within it.  The first...

Mike Solana joins Wolf Tivy to discuss how San Francisco's governance works, how it has gone wrong, and what he thinks it would take to fix it. This episode is available in full to all listeners. Most of our podcasts are only available in full to Palladium Members. Members also get to participate in the Palladium Community Salons, which the editorial podcasts are often based on, as well as other b...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss what kind of economy we want to build, accumulative versus developmental orientations to industry, what classes are actually interested in investing in growth, and the necessity of a class of the state with interests beyond individual finance. The first half of the show is available to all our listeners. The full discussion is available to Palladium Members. Member...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss Charlie Smith's recent piece on posthumanism and its implications. Other topics include the ways in which a complex society impacts our agency, why the idea of discourse is a mind virus, and thinking of humanity as a hypothesis for life. The first half of the show is available to all our listeners. The full discussion is available to Palladium Members. Members also...

Wolf Tivy and Galen Wolfe-Pauly discuss what's wrong with social media and computing as we know it, as well as a new paradigm for humane computing. Galen is the CEO of Tlon, which runs Urbit , a personal computing server that is designed to give users personal control over their data on social networks and other applications. The first half of the show is available to all our listeners. The full d...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the concept of progress and whether it should continue to have a central role on American consciousness. Other topics included how far we can distinguish between types of progress and whether it makes any sense in describing the cycles of human civilizations. The first half of the show is available to all our listeners. The full discussion is available to Palladium...

Dr. Nicholas Christakis joins the salon to discuss his new book on COVID-19, extreme crisis, and what we can learn about the relationship between pandemics and human nature. Dr. Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. He is also Director of the Human Nature Lab and Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. His research focuses on...

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the role of billionaires, how to think about personal wealth, and the inherent tensions between capital and state. They also delve into whether this kind of power can be reconciled with the greater goals of a society. The first half of the show is available to our listeners, but the full discussion is available solely to Palladium Members. Members also get to parti...

Roman Krznaric joins the salon from UK to discuss his book, intergenerational thinking, and how we can be good ancestors. His latest book is The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking , coming soon in the U.S. as of November 2020. Roman grew up in Sydney and Hong Kong. He studied at the universities of Oxford, London and Essex, and gained a PhD in political sociology. He is a...

Samo Burja comes on the podcast to talk about when it's appropriate to regulate online speech and the proper relationship between state and media. Samo Burja is the founder of Bismarck Analysis, a political risk consulting firm. He is also a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @SamoBurja .

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss what we can learn from ancient Greek modernity, the collapse of the scientific mythos, and how both knowledge and statecraft can find new grounds for legitimacy. The weekly editor's podcast draws from discussions in the Palladium Community Salon. To participate in these conversations, register here .

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss the postmodern condition, the failures of objectivity and neutrality, and how truth and meaning can survive. They also responded to a number of themes brought up in David Chapman's recent Twitter thread on these topics. The weekly editor's podcast draws from discussions in the Palladium Community Salon. To participate in these conversations, register here .

Mary Harrington comes on the podcast with Wolf Tivy to build out a model of relational vs. transactional conceptions of justice and morality, and to discuss bringing back the mirror of princes literature. Mary Harrington is a columnist for the UK current affairs magazine UnHerd. She can be found on Twitter @moveincircles .

Laura Deming joins the salon to speak with Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton about education, where talent comes from, and the state of longevity research. Discussion topics included how to cultivate talent, where the most fruitful life extension research is happening, and whether intellectually productive communities are necessarily doomed to stagnation. Laura Deming is the founder of The Longevity Fund,...

Michael O'Sullivan joins the salon to speak with Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton about his book The Levelling: What's Next After Globalization, which includes discussion on the future multipolar world, Europe's increasingly cohesive development as a geopolitical pole, and how to fix economic inequality produced by globalization. Michael O’Sullivan is a member of the World Economic Forum's Council on the...

John Dulin comes on the podcast with Wolf Tivy to discuss recent advances in weapons systems, how war is one of the most important drivers of technological progress, and the role of both the public and private sectors in fundamental research and mass marketization. John Dulin is CEO and founder of a defense industry startup. Previously, he was a machine learning research engineer at Numerai and Fr...

His Serene Highness Prince Michael of Liechtenstein speaks with Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton about his perspective on changes in international politics and economics—especially the importance of statecraft for small countries as the moral fashions and taboos of the great powers become more influential through a globalized internet culture. Prince Michael is Executive Chairman of Industrie- und Finanzk...

Byrne Hobart comes on the podcast to talk to Wolf Tivy about what parts of the American economy are real, the phenomenon of inequality increasing during crises, and the impact of COVID-19 on the real economy. Byrne Hobart works in the financial services industry and writes one of the top newsletters on Substack called The Diff . He has worked at research companies, a hedge fund, and a cryptocurren...