The Existential Hope Podcast

Science fiction has always shaped the technologies we build, from the submarine to the smartphone. But almost every story we've ever told about AI is dystopian. And now we're training AI on those stories. In this episode, we spoke with Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur and founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, which runs large-scale incentive competitions to crack some of the world's hardest problems, fro...

Political polarization might have a surprisingly simple fix: ask people what they want for their communities in 50 years instead of today, and their answers start to look remarkably similar. But almost no political system is built to plan that long-term. In this episode we talk to Taylor Dee Hawkins, founder of Foundations for Tomorrow , a nonprofit pushing for long-term governance reform in Austr...

Most AI futures give us two options: mass unemployment, or a government handout to soften the blow. But what if there's a third option, one centered on completely new categories of creative work that don't yet exist, where people get paid for contributing to AI rather than replaced by it? In this episode, we talk with Jaron Lanier, pioneer of virtual reality and scientist at Microsoft Research. He...

AIs could get much better at understanding what we truly value if we gave them access to our brain signals. And doing that is becoming easier than ever before. In this episode, we talk with Thorsten Zander, professor at Brandenburg University of Technology and co-founder of Zander Labs. He coined the concept of passive brain-computer interfaces : devices that read brain signals to decode a user's...

More and more people want to make a real-world difference with their career. Very few of them do. Why are careers in consultancy or finance still so much more mainstream than careers tackling the world's biggest problems? In this episode, we talk with Jan-Willem van Putten, co-founder of the School for Moral Ambition, an organization that is building clear pathways for people who want to do work t...

We think a lot about how AI will affect humanity, and for good reason. But AI could have an enormous impact on the trillions of animals that share our world (for better or worse), and almost nobody is talking about it. In this episode, we talk with Constance Li, founder of Sentient Futures, an organization working to make sure AI and other emerging technologies improve the lives of animals rather...

Having an AI boyfriend or girlfriend might seem creepy, but what if it helped you get better at human relationships?  In this episode, we talk with David Eagleman, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford, bestselling author, and science communicator. We discuss how AI and other technologies can help us become better humans – wiser, kinder and more empathetic, not just more productive. We get...

What would the world look like if the poorest country was as rich as Switzerland is today? It turns out we could actually see it happen by 2100, and with an economic growth that is similar to the one we have been experiencing for the past 20 years. In this episode, we talk with Marc Canal, Senior Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, and co-author of the book A Century of Plenty . We unpack wha...

To make the future go well, we might not need a perfect model for its end state, or an abstract philosophical theory to guide us. Can your own sense of “the right thing to do” actually help make the world better? In this episode we talk with SJ Beard, researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and author of the book “Existential Hope”. Some of the topics we discuss: How to shift o...

Most scientists do “safe” research to secure their next grant. But what if more of them worked on the most important problems instead? In this episode, we talk with Anastasia Gamick, co-founder of Convergent Research, about how to raise our level of ambition for what science can actually achieve. Convergence Research incubates Focused Research Organizations : small, startup-style teams that build...

Being pessimistic about progress will make you sound smart. You'll look rational by not assuming any breakthroughs, just extrapolating current trends until every technology plateaus. You'll probably also be wrong, for exactly the same reason: throughout history, people keep delivering solutions that almost no one anticipated.  Jason Crawford, founder of the Roots of Progress Institute, joins...

While dystopian fiction dominates our screens and bookshelves, Elle Griffin is busy researching how things might actually go right. She wanted to write a utopian novel and realized she needed a better understanding of what an ideal society could look like.  In our conversation, we discuss how her favorite utopian literature influenced her views on a well-designed society. But we also explore...

When people think about AGI, most of them ask “When is it going to arrive?” or “What kind of AGI will we get?”. Andrew Critch, AI safety researcher and mathematician, argues that the most important question is actually “What will we do with it?” In our conversation, we explore the importance of our choices in the quest to make AGI a force for good. Andrew explains what AGI might look like in pract...

Anna Gát, founder of the Interintellect community, joins us to explore the essential role of hopeful action and diverse communities in shaping the future. Anna shares why she started Interintellect as a space for intellectual inquiry free from political polarization and traditional gatekeeping, driven by the hope that constructive social collaboration is possible. She details the specific rules of...

You’d need 200 Chernobyls a year to kill as many people as fossil fuels. And yet most of us are far more scared of nuclear than of any other energy source, despite the overwhelming data telling a different story. Where does this fear come from? We find out with Isabelle Boemeke, the world’s first nuclear energy influencer, and author of Rad Future , a book that makes the case for nuclear in langua...

Young people across the Western world are struggling to start their lives. In most cases, it's not for lack of ambition, but because they can't find a place to live. The consequences show up anywhere from sluggish economies to low birth rates. But there's a way to fix it. In this episode, we talk with Sam Bowman, editor of Works in Progress , a magazine focused on high-leverage ideas to improve th...

What if we could treat depression, anxiety, or chronic pain by tuning the brain, just as precisely as a pacemaker regulates the heart? Jacques Carolan, Program Director at the UK’s ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), joins us to talk about the next wave of precision neurotechnology; new tools that let us see and influence brain activity with far greater accuracy. We explore how ultrasou...

What if chronic diseases, from Alzheimer’s to autoimmune conditions, share a hidden cause: lingering infections deep within our tissues? Microbiologist Amy Proal , co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation , joins host Allison Duettmann to discuss how persistent pathogens could drive inflammation, aging, and many chronic illnesses, and why our current “autoimmunity” model might be missing the...

In this episode, Ken Liu joins the podcast to explore how science fiction serves as our modern mythology. We discuss his new techno-thriller "All That We See or Seem", the concept of egolets (AI capturing facets of our identity), the noematograph (AI as a camera for thought), and the role of collective dreaming in making us more human. Ken also reflects on Frankenstein, Philip K. Dick, the challen...

In this episode of the Existential Hope Podcast, Beatrice Erkers is joined by David Duvenaud, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and former researcher at Anthropic. We discuss David’s work on post-AGI civilizational equilibria and the widely discussed paper Gradual Disempowerment. David reflects on why liberalism may not hold up in a world where humans are no longer needed, how UBI c...

What does a genuinely positive future with AI look like? While dystopian visions are common, the most valuable—and scarcest—resource we have is a concrete, hopeful vision for where we're headed. In this episode, we're joined by Nathan Labenz, host of the popular Cognitive Revolution podcast, to explore the tangible possibilities of a beneficial AI-driven world. Nathan shares his insights on everyt...

For years, the conversation about the long-term future has been dominated by a crucial question: how do we avoid extinction? But what if ensuring our survival is only half the battle? In this episode, Beatrice is joined by Fin Moorhouse, a researcher at Forethought and co-author with Will MacAskill of the Better Futures series, to make the case for focusing on the other half: flourishing. Or as we...

Is code just a technical skill for engineers, or is it a deeply humanistic art form capable of expanding our minds? In this episode, host Beatrice Erkers is joined by scientist, author, and Coder-in-Residence at Lux Capital, Sam Arbsman, to explore the profound ideas in his new book, The Magic of Code . Sam reframes our relationship with computing, arguing that code is one of history's most powerf...

The tech industry we read about every day accounts for only 2% of the global economy. So what about the other 98%? In this episode, host Beatrice Erkers talks to hacker, inventor, and author Pablos Holman about his new book, Deep Future , and why it’s time to look beyond software to solve the world’s biggest problems. Pablos argues that for decades, our brightest minds have been focused on apps an...

What if we could build an AI that doesn't just answer questions, but makes fundamental scientific discoveries on its own? That's the mission of Future House, and in this episode, host Allison Duettmann sits down with its co-founder, Andrew White. Andrew shares the incredible journey that led him from chemical engineering to the forefront of the AI for Science revolution. He gives us a look under t...