Palladium Podcast

Matt Parlmer talks with Wolf Tivy about the recent protests, their effects on state legitimacy in America, and whether Christopher Dahlke's 2018 article Mass Political Violence Won't Happen in America still holds in 2020. Matt Parlmer is a software engineer, who works on research and development at Utility Computing. He can be reached on Twitter or his website.

Bruno Maçães joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss why America is ripe for a re-founding, stagnation in Europe and China, and why liberalism has stopped delivering on progress. Bruno Maçães is the former Europe Minister of Portugal from 2013 to 2015. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and the author of two recent books, The Dawn of Eurasia and Belt and Road. The Dawn of Eurasia was selected as a book of the year by both the Financial Times and Foreign Affairs. His new book, History Has Begun, is available now.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton talk with Stephen Wolfram about the role institutions play in generating intellectual progress in science, as well as his development of a new computational paradigm for understanding fundamental physics. Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; the originator of the Wolfram Physics Project; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of more than four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.

Saffron Huang joins Wolf Tivy to expand on her recent Palladium article on Harvard, particularly about the ways in which elite education can be re-imagined to route around the problem of managerialism. Saffron Huang is a graduating senior at Harvard in Applied Mathematics and Government. She is currently working on various projects related to Chinese institutions, technology ethics, and AI. She can be found on Twitter at @saffronhuang.

Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss how great founders make history through the institutions they create, how political transitions actually work, and what intellectual dark matter exists in our society today. Samo Burja is the founder and president of Bismarck Analysis, which applies the foundational sociological research that Samo and his team have produced over the past decade to deliver unique insights to clients about institutional design and strategy. Samo’s studies focus on the social and material technologies that foster healthy human societies with an eye toward understanding and restoring the structures that produce functional institutions. Samo has authored numerous articles and papers on his findings, including his manuscript, Great Founder Theory, available here. Samo is a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute and a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation. He speaks about his work to audiences around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Y Combinator’s YC 120 conference, the Reboot American Innovation conference in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Samo spends most of his time in California and his native Slovenia. He can be followed on Twitter at @SamoBurja.

Author and professor Michael Lind joins Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison to discuss economic pluralism, the new class war between America's elites and its working class, and how to fix it. Michael is the author of more than a dozen books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, including The Next American Nation and Land of Promise. He has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, and The National Interest. He has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and is currently a professor of practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. In his most recent book, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, Michael debunks the idea that recent populist insurgencies in America are primarily the result of bigotry, traces how the breakdown of mid-century class compromises between business and labor led to the conflict, and reveals the real battle lines: the managerial overclass on one side and the working class on the other.

Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher join Wolf Tivy to discuss the economic foundations of industrial policy, why manufacturing is more valuable than other economic activity, and what went wrong in the economics profession. Marc Fasteau is the founder and former chairman of American Strategic Insurance Group and board member of the Coalition for a Prosperous America. He formerly served on the staffs of the House Banking & Currency Committee, of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and of the Joint Economic Committee. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and was a partner at the investment bank Dillon Read & Co. He is currently writing a book on Industrial Policy with Ian Fletcher. Ian Fletcher is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work and a member of the Advisory Board of the Coalition for a Prosperous America. From 2010 to 2012, he was Senior Economist of CPA, and prior to that, Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Educated at Columbia and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is currently writing a book on industrial policy with Marc Fasteau.

Luka Jukic comes on the podcast to talk with Matt Ellison about his recent reporting in Ukraine and the war for the country's soul. Luka Jukic is a graduate student at the UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. He has lived in and reported from many countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Political theorist and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss mechanism design, governance, and blockchain technology. Vitalik Buterin is best known for co-founding Bitcoin Magazine and the Ethereum project, but he has been recently expanding his attention into more general problems of political theory, governance, and society. This journey has led to collaboration with the Taiwanese government, among other projects. It's going to be very interesting to talk with him.

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 strategy which by using Martian resources, allows a human Mars exploration program to be conducted at a cost 1/8th that previously estimated by NASA. In addition to his many technical publications, Dr. Zubrin is the author of seven books, including The Case for Mars: How We Shall Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization, Mars on Earth: Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror, the humorous How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet, and Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

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.

Wolf Tivy and Pasha Kamyshev discuss Pasha's latest article on AI grand strategy, and the deeper foundations of the problem: we are building digital totalitarianism, but we don't know how to reconcile that with creating a good society.

Ash Milton discusses his review of economist Mariana Mazzucato's tour de force book The Value of Everything with Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy and further dives into the topics of the economic value debate and its fallout, how states create wealth, whether finance is productive, and the challenge of policing rent seeking.

Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton are joined by Palladium writer Jean Fan to discuss her recent narrative piece on the psychological experience of observing rapid progress and change in China.

Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton are joined by Palladium writer Siavash Tahan to discuss his recent piece on urban housing politics in California. Topics include the class dynamics of housing, social community, the future of cities, and how cruise ships reveal that land is a scam.

Welcome to the eighteenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. Jonah Bennett and Ash Milton are joined by Palladium writers Avetis Muradyan and Ryan Khurana. They discuss Avetis' recent narrative piece on landlordism and economic pessimism, as well as the power of storytelling in producing optimism.

Welcome to the seventeenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy interview award-winning investigative journalist Ben Westhoff on his new book Fentanyl, Inc., a monumental effort that discusses the inception of the fentanyl crisis in America and reports on Westhoff's infiltration of Chinese labs to get to the bottom of the problem and the top of the drug supply chain.

Welcome to the sixteenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton discuss the themes of social alienation and reintegration embedded in a number of recent Palladium articles. Topics include collective action, substantive goods, and the private market for cults.

Welcome to the fifteenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton interview Glen Weyl, founder and board member of RadicalxChange and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft, about his book Radical Markets, where he introduces new ways of re-imagining property ownership and voting.

Welcome to the fourteenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy talk about science fiction with Hannu Rajaniemi, a New York Times published science fiction writer and biotech startup founder. He’s currently CEO of HelixNano, which works on developing novel therapeutic modalities for cancer.

Welcome to the thirteenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton interview Gladden Pappin, assistant professor of politics at the University of Dallas and deputy editor of American Affairs, about liberalism, the state, and Pappin's recent article Toward a Party of the State.

Welcome to the twelfth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton discuss Jonah's recent article on the U.S. national security state's move to ban the export of advanced microprocessors to Huawei, a full-scale technology company with links to the Chinese government.

Welcome to the eleventh episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy interview Nick Cassimatis, a former tenured AI professor, on artificial general intelligence, AI and unemployment, and the current state of the field. Nick is a former tenured AI professor and the founder of Dry.io, a platform that makes software 1000x faster to write, and lets people create and moderate their own social networks, search engines, and other software services. For suggestions or questions, email [email protected].

Welcome to the tenth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton interview Mark Lutter, founder of the Center for Innovative Governance Research, on the future of charter cities. For suggestions or questions, email [email protected].

Welcome to the ninth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett and Wolf Tivy interview Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, a political risk consulting firm, on his recent Botswana piece and his thoughts about China's Belt & Road in Africa. You can find Samo on Twitter and YouTube.

Welcome to the eighth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Wolf Tivy interviews Will Eden, a biotech investor at Thiel Capital, on the impact of biotech advancements on society, Will's proposed health plan, immortality, and whether health care is even real at all.

Welcome to the seventh episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton discuss the recent coup in Venezuela and Luka Jukic's article on how the Balkans are hanging by an American thread. For suggestions or questions, email [email protected].

Welcome to the sixth episode of the Palladium Podcast, where we explore the future of governance and society. This week, Jonah Bennett, Wolf Tivy, and Ash Milton interview Matt Ellison, author of the recent Palladium piece on Gustav Hilger, the German strategic mastermind behind the American post-war order. For suggestions or questions, email [email protected].

This week, Wolf Tivy interviews Nick Pinkston, founder of Plethora, a rapid manufacturing company in San Francisco, about manufacturing and industrial policy.

This week, Jonah Bennett, Ash Milton, and Wolf Tivy discuss the role of romantic adventurism at the end of history and also Daniel Weissman’s fantastic piece on post-globalization Istanbul.

This week, Jonah Bennett, Ash Milton, Wolf Tivy, and Miguel Morel discuss Miguel’s on-the-ground Venezuela article and the Palladium team’s experiences in Caracas, Bogotá, and Buenos Aires. The panel also delves into Luka Jukic’s piece on the post-Soviet sphere and Sonya Mann’s piece on cypherpunk culture and gun printing.