The Metagame

Jessica is the first American-born woman to graduate as an Ayurvedic Physician and practice independently. She studied for 8 years in India completing Bachelor of Āyurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS). She’s also the founder of myayu.com and has been healing many of my friends. In this overview, we discuss what western medicine misses, archetypal ways of knowing, personal empiricism, the doshas an...

Guy is an independent researcher, author, Emergent Ventures Fellow, and hands-down the most prolific/insightful shit-poster I know on twitter. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know him as “Rival Voices”. Among many things, he’s an expert on Adversarial Epistemology: finding truth in an environment designed to deceive you. You can learn more from his book Alignment Gone Strange . This is a...

Kati Devaney is a neuroscientist and meditation teacher with over 25 years of practice. She earned her PhD in 2018 using fMRI to study attention and prediction updating in experienced Vipassana meditators and completed a postdoc at Harvard Medical School. She’s now the Chief Scientific Officer at the Consciousness Foundation , co-founded the Berkeley Alembic and the SF Dharma Collective , advises...

Elena Lake is a bodyworker and former mathematician. After studying math, CS, and physics at MIT and two years doing ML at Meta, she left tech to study touch. When her early massage sessions started producing results she couldn't explain, she trained across Esalen, craniosacral, fascia, ScarWork, BoneWork, and visceral manipulation. In 2024 she developed her own modality: Regenerative Touch . Elen...

Alex Olshonsky is a coach, somatic therapist, and writer. After a polysubstance addiction nearly killed him during his Silicon Valley years at Twitter, Salesforce, and Slack, he found freedom in somatic psychology and contemplative practice. He now coaches founders and people in recovery, co-founded the psychedelic-assisted addiction nonprofit Natura Care , and writes the Substack Deep Fix . In th...

Richard Ngo is one of a handful of people who've worked on AGI safety at both DeepMind and OpenAI. After three years as a futurist on OpenAI's Governance team, he left to pursue independent research on coalitions, virtue ethics, and the foundations of cooperation. He’s also a science fiction author ( The Gentle Romance: Stories of AI and Humanity ) and writes at Mind the Future. We talk about virt...

"Nothing human makes it out of the near future." - Nick Land Matt Southey is a leading expert on the philosophy of Nick Land with a PhD in Religion from Rice University. He is also the founding editor of The Latecomer , an online magazine which publishes essays on the long-term future. Matt's excellent piece on "A Brief History of Accelerationism" can be found here . This is a public episode. If y...

Michael “Valentine” Smith is a co-founder of CFAR (the Center for Applied Rationality) and the author of influential LessWrong essays including The Hostile Telepaths Problem , Kenshō , and The Intelligent Social Web . He’s also been described as “one of the most powerful wizards in the Bay Area.” In this conversation, he explains why your brain creates fog and self-deception to survive social situ...

Jake Orthwein is the creator of Frame Problems , a video essay channel on science, art, philosophy, politics, and culture. In this episode, Jake talks about his upcoming film for Sam Harris ‘s mindfulness app Waking Up. We explore the latest neuroscience on consciousness and how it might explain the psychedelic experience, religious phenomenology, meditation and what it all means for a good life....

Alex Zhu is a math olympian and researcher exploring the convergence of analytical rationality and religion. He’s also the co-founder of AlphaSheets . He’s currently working on a rigorous framework for bridging AI alignment and mysticism. Romeo Stevens is one of co-founders of the Qualia Research Institute and the founder of Mealsquares . He writes extensively about buddhism, pedagogy, skill devel...

Pranab Sachi is the co-founder of Attention Copilot , a service that blends meditation and therapy techniques with real-time productivity support. He applies non-dual teachings, IFS, somatic awareness, and emotional processing to help people experience deep work on demand. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit them...

Max Shen is a pain researcher with a background in computational cognitive science and degrees from MIT. After developing severe RSI in grad school, he devoted himself to understanding pain from the inside out. Remarkably, his pain was cut in half just from reading Dr. John Sarno's Healing Back Pain . Max’s work blends active inference, non-dual teaching, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy to create pr...

Connirae Andreas is a living legend in the world of personal development and NLP. She’s best known for creating Core Transformation , a parts-work modality that follows troubling feelings to discover what they ultimately want for you. This leads to “core states” like peace or wholeness and allows change to unfold naturally without effort or control. YouTube: Resources: * Core Transformation * The...

Michael Stroe ( @Plus3Happiness ) is a phenomenologist and “happiness concierge.” Through a combination of the Buddhist Fetters & somatic practices, he’s allegedly reduced his suffering by ~90%. He claims to consistently live at 9/10 life satisfaction and has skillfully guided others into similar transformations. Today we demystify his journey and discuss concrete practices for oneshotting procras...

Alex Zhu is a math olympian and researcher exploring the convergence of analytical rationality and religion. He’s also the co-founder of AlphaSheets . He’s currently working on a rigorous framework for bridging AI alignment and mysticism. In this conversation we explore about how he got into spirituality without sacrificing his rigorous epistemics. Resources * Alex’s Twitter and Substack * C. Lang...

Justin is the Chief Quant & Director of Analytics at MathAcademy.com (the best way to learn math). He optimizes learning efficiency in students’ brains with cutting edge cognitive psychology. He’s written extensively and passionately about “serious upskilling” and how to increase agency to benefit yourself and the world. Resources: * Justin’s Twitter and Website * That Paul Graham article on Ident...

Ever met someone whose presence is so clean and luminous it changes the energy of the room? That’s today’s guest. Jeff Lieberman is an artist, musician, MIT-trained scientist, and former host of Time Warp on Discovery Channel. His current work is on how human beings can find genuine freedom through emotional fluidity, consciousness, and connection. He co-founded Sleepawake , a transformational pro...

This is the first in person Metagame episode! Be sure to check out the video. Jonny Miller is a writer, nervous system coach and podcaster. We met at Edge Esmerelda where he facilitated a surprisingly psychoactive breathwork session. This episode is about the practicalities of feeling your feelings and unlatching patterns that have been governing your personality since childhood. Resources: * www....

Chris Barber is an entrepreneur/researcher. He co-founded an executive coaching marketplace for startups, and a place for engineers to discover good startups to join. His primary focus is AI preparation & emotional regulation. He’s the inventor of a simple but highly effective method for processing emotions called Resonance . It’s a way of speaking that helps others regulate their emotions and fee...

Dr. Tucker Peck is a meditation teacher, clinical psychologist, and bestselling author. He studied meditation with Sharon Salzberg and Upasaka Culadasa (John Yates) . Tucker’s first book, Sanity and Sainthood , debuted as a #1 bestseller in 2025. A former professor, he is the founding director of the scholarship fund Open Dharma Foundation, and co-host of the podcast Teaching Meditation. He lives...

Daniel Thorson spent 5 years in residential training at The Monastic Academy with 2 years in cumulative silent retreat. He has decades of deep engagement with contemplative practice, systems theory, and transformative work. He’s also the beloved host of The Emerge Podcast and writes at The Intimate Mirror , where he’s exploring how people can develop a secure attachment with reality. Resources: *...

Rich Bartlett helps people grow high-trust communities & decentralized organizations. He’s the co-founder the community building network Microsolidarity , and non-hierarchical management consultancy The Hum . He also co-runs Fight Wise an online course about developing courage in your relationships, standing up for yourself, skillfully navigating conflicts, and asking for what you want. Resources:...

Brooke Bowman is the founder of Vibecamp . She also runs events to help foster connection and social cohesion such as Ms. Bowman's School for the Socially Inept , and The Network Society Camp . For nearly a decade before that, she was in an affair with heroin. Her mental and physical health declined slowly at first, then plummeted, leaving her sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles for two and a h...

Romeo Stevens is one of co-founders of the Qualia Research Institute and the founder of Mealsquares . He writes extensively about buddhism, pedagogy, skill development and psychotherapeutic modalities. You can find his work on his blog , Lesswrong and Twitter . Resources: * Romeo’s Twitter * Neurotic Gradient Descent (Romeo’s blog) * Math Academy * Practiceopedia (out of print music practice book)...

Dr. Tataryn is a long-time meditator (47+ years) and founder of the Bio-Emotive Framework. He conducts seminars in integral theory, sports psychology, and the integration of psychology and spirituality. He also hosts emotional clearing workshops intensives around North America. His is presently working with advanced meditators and spiritual teachers on balancing life after enlightenment, using his...