Faster, Please! — The Podcast

As I often remind subscribers to Faster, Please! , predictions are hard, especially about the future. The economic boom of the 1990s came as a surprise to most economists. Equally surprising was that it ended so soon. Neither of these events caught Ed Yardeni off-guard. Some forecasters, Yardeni included, anticipated a new Roaring ’20s for this century… only to be interrupted by the pandemic. But...

As private and government interest in nuclear fusion technology grows, an array of startups have arisen to take on the challenge, each with their own unique approach. Among them: LaserFusionX . Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I talk with CEO Stephen Obenschain about the viability of fusion energy, and what sets his approach apart. Obenschain is the president of LaserFusionX. He was formerly...

In a world facing climate change and clean energy challenges, it’s starting to look like a nuclear energy renaissance is starting to happen. That is, if we can overcome our irrational fear of nuclear. In this episode of Faster, Please! - The Podcast , I talk with Dr. Spencer Weart about the cultural influences that shaped generations of anxiety around nuclear power, and how that tide may be turnin...

Education was among the first victims of AI panic. Concerns over cheating quickly made the news. But AI optimists like John Bailey are taking a whole different approach. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Bailey about what it would mean to raise kids with a personalized AI coach — one that could elevate the efficacy of teachers, tutors, and career advisors to new heights. John Bai...

Readers and listeners of Faster, Please! know how incredible the untapped potential of nuclear power truly is. As our society (hopefully) begins to warm to the idea of nuclear as an abundant, sustainable, and safe source of energy, a new generation of engineers and entrepreneurs is developing a whole new model of nuclear power: the microreactor. Here on this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcas...

The US Space Force , the newest branch of the American military, takes national defense to a new frontier. Here on Faster, Please! — The Podcast , I sit down with AEI senior fellow Todd Harrison to discuss the state of the Space Force and its evolving mission. Harrison has served as senior vice president and head of research at Metrea , a defense consulting firm, been a senior fellow for defense b...

What if there were a way to generate massive amounts of affordable, carbon-free energy with minimal environmental or safety risk? Sounds too good to be true, but nuclear fusion just might be the kind of energy source that America—and the world—has been waiting for. Michl Binderbauer is the CEO of California-based TAE Technologies , a company trying to develop an aneutronic commercial fusion reacto...

Science. Ownership. Speed. Openness. These are the four pillars of Andrew McAfee’s observed structure for successful companies. It is the “geeks,” the leaders at the forefront of cross-industry innovation, who embrace these norms and have the potential to redefine business as we know it. In order to break ground and create the kind of future we dream of, organizational leaders need to banish the f...

If you’re looking for a smart and punchy companion piece to my new book, The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised , then you are in luck. Look no further than venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s wonderful new mega-essay, “ The Techno-Optimist Manifesto .” If there’s a sentence or even a word in that manifesto that I disagree with, I have yet to find it. That’s wh...

Johan Norberg’s work revolves primarily around economic and intellictual history and attempting to learn lessons from past financial systems. In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast , Johan takes us through his version of capitalism, giving an especially interesting perspective on the economic system of his home country.  Johan is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of se...

More than 20 years ago, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama characterized the Information Technology revolution as "benign" but cautioned that "the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a post-human stage of history." From Twitter to CRISPR to ChatGPT, a lot has changed since then. In this episod...

Is climate change an impending existential threat, or a serious but manageable problem we can tackle with innovation and human ingenuity? Zeke Hausfather joins this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast to explain the basics of climate modeling and give a clear-eyed assessment of the risks we face and the measures we can take. Zeke is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst. He is the cl...

As the cost to launch a rocket into orbit has come down over the past decade, a slew of startups have joined the emerging space economy. But is there enough business for all these companies? And what's the broad economic case for space? In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast , I'm chatting about those questions and more with Michael Sheetz . Michael is a space reporter for CNBC where he...

Rapid progress in artificial intelligence, especially large language models such as ChatGPT, has rekindled an old debate about the feasibility of top-down economic planning. While 20th-century experiments in socialism ultimately failed, some techno-socialists have argued a new set of tools could help planners outperform markets. But today’s guest argues no amount of computing power or sophisticate...

Over the past 15 years, the cost to launch a rocket into orbit has declined dramatically thanks to SpaceX. Today, we're witnessing the launch of a new Space Age — one built around billionaires like Elon Musk, but also a flowering of smaller private ventures. To discuss the state of play in the emerging orbital economy, I've brought Ashlee Vance on this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast . Va...

On Faster, Please! — The Podcas t , I've interviewed guests on exciting new technologies like artificial intelligence, fusion energy, and reusable rockets. But today's episode explores another Next Big Thing: biotechnology. To discuss recent advances in CRISPR gene editing and their applications for medicine, I'm sitting down with Kevin Davies . Kevin is executive editor of The CRISPR Journal and...

"The promise of eternal life has conventionally been the dangled carrot of religion. It is now the holy grail of Silicon Valley," writes novelist Lionel Shriver in a recent National Review cover essay . In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast , Lionel joins me to discuss why some tech billionaires are chasing after immortality and the serious challenges that would accompany extended human...

Nuclear fusion holds the potential to provide the world with cheap, clean, virtually inexhaustible energy for the future. For decades, the technology was dismissed as sci-fi fantasy. But a series of recent technological breakthroughs — including a net-energy gain ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory last December — and spate of startups have made both government and investors increas...

Many countries around the world have below-replacement fertility rates . And today’s today's guest says it's happening faster than we think, with world population on track to peak around 2060. That’s decades before the well-known UN model projection. What does that mean for the American and global economies, and what can we do about it — if anything? My AEI colleague  Jesús Fernández-Villaverde jo...

Does technological progress automatically translate into higher wages, better standards of living, and widely shared prosperity? Or is it necessary to steer the development of technological improvement to ensure the benefits don't accrue only to the few? In a new book, two well-known economists argue the latter. I'm joined in this episode by one of the authors, Simon Johnson . Simon is the Kurtz P...

I have many times written about the importance of the story we tell ourselves about the future, especially in big-budget science fiction films. But does all the doom and gloom from Hollywood even matter? And is it driven from creatives at the top or by audience demand? To discuss those questions and more, I'm talking with Sonny Bunch . Sonny is the culture editor for The Bulwark, where he hosts  T...

The conventional narrative about the economic history of World War II says that new learning from wartime mobilization jumpstarted a postwar golden age of fast economic growth. But, economist Alexander Field writes in his 2011 book, A Great Leap Forward , "It was not principally the war that laid the foundation for postwar prosperity. It was technological progress across a broad frontier of the Am...

When it comes to Up Wing thinking, there's no better litmus test than nuclear power. Setting aside the regulatory barriers we've imposed on ourselves, the United States can tap a source of clean, reliable energy that overcomes the carbon emissions and geopolitical challenges of fossil fuels. Here to make the case for nuclear in this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast , is Robert Zubrin. Robe...

As space enthusiasts and entrepreneurs look to expand human civilization to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, few stop to examine the geopolitical risks of space colonization or the opportunity costs of not fixing problems on Earth. While most Faster, Please! guests advocate further expansion into space, Daniel Deudney offers a different perspective. Deudney is a professor of political science, internat...

Thanks to SpaceX, it’s getting cheaper and cheaper to launch stuff into orbit. But just imagine if instead of using rockets, we could send cargo and people to space on an incredibly tall elevator. This may sound like a total sci-fi idea, but it has some grounding in real-world physics. In theory, we could build a space elevator by putting a counterweight in geostationary orbit and attaching a cabl...