The Jolly Swagman Podcast: Recent Episodes
Joe Walker
The JSP is a weekly exploration of questions that are both important and overlooked. Joe Walker, a former political speechwriter helping to build a Y Combinator-backed startup, hosts refreshingly in-depth conversations. Topics cover capitalism, science, business, culture and politics. Guests include Nobel laureates, former prime ministers, authors, entrepreneurs, investors and thought-leaders. Australia's best long-form podcast. A space for curious contrarians.
Patrick Weller is emeritus professor of politics and public policy at Griffith University and the author or editor of some forty books.
Pat wrote what was the first (and may still be the only) Westminster-system equivalent to Robert Caro's epic meditation on Lyndon Johnson: a detailed study of how Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser wielded power. First published in 1989, it's a fascinating study of how one individual climbed into the hermit-crab-shell that is the prime ministership and made it his own.
Pat is also the author of two other detailed studies of Australian political leaders, and the definitive history of cabinet government in Australia.
Pat's work offers a picture of how human institutions – in this case, Westminster cabinets – work in practice and on a day-to-day level. Understanding the messiness, the beautiful malleability of the institutions, and their human bottlenecks has helped me build a more accurate model of the world – useful for predicting how governments may both respond to and utilise powerful new technologies.
Sponsors
- Effective Altruism Australia: how Australians give to GiveWell's top charities — tax-deductibly, and with 100% pass-through. Until June 30, 2026, EAA is matching new donations up to $300,000. Donate at https://www.eaa.org.au/joewalker.
- e61: a non-partisan economic research institute focused on Australian public policy. To receive a copy of the new essay I co-authored with e61 on data centres and the compute economy, go to https://www.e61.in/joewalker.
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Danielle Wood is an Australian economist and the current chair of the Australian Productivity Commission.
Had a lot of fun chatting with Dani about how she's making sense of AI and its implications for policy. We discuss:
- whether AI will be more like the internet or the Industrial Revolution,
- where in the AI stack the profits will ultimately flow (and why it might not be the model layer),
- why diffusion is the "main game" for Australian policymakers,
- whether there's a case for government support of data centres,
- why the AI jobpocalypse story is too crude (and why humans may still have jobs even under transformative AI),
- whether AI will turn out to be a normal or abnormal technology, or both,
- and why in either case Australia shouldn't follow the EU in legislating an AI Act.
Sponsors
- Effective Altruism Australia: how Australians give to GiveWell's top charities — tax-deductibly, and with 100% pass-through. Until June 30, 2026, EAA is matching new donations up to $300,000. Donate at https://www.eaa.org.au/joewalker.
- e61: a non-partisan economic research institute focused on Australian public policy. To receive a copy of the new essay I co-authored with e61 on data centres and the compute economy, go to https://www.e61.in/joewalker.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at https://www.vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Part 3 of a three-part immigration series this week. Martin Parkinson (economics) available here; Mark Cully (history) available here.
Mike Pezzullo ran the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (2013-2014), then the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (2014-2017), then the Department of Home Affairs (2017-2023). For more than a decade across those three roles, he was responsible for how Australia selects migrants, screens for risk, and thinks about social cohesion under stress.
We discuss the central but underappreciated fact about how Australia selects migrants: the diversity of our intake is a happy accident of global migration flows, not engineered policy. We also walk through how the visa system actually screens for security and character, why Pezzullo doubts the Bondi terrorist's father would have been refused a student visa in 1998 even with today's tools, what a 2027 China-Taiwan blockade would mean for the Australian migration system in real time, and a never-aired proposal for fixing Australia's "permanent temporaries" problem — a constitutional amendment Pezzullo calls "the Pezzullo special." We finish with: should "populate or perish" return as defence policy?
(Episode recorded on 16 March 2026.)
Sponsors
- Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Part 2 of a three-part immigration series this week. Martin Parkinson (economics) available here; Mike Pezzullo (acculturation, social cohesion, security) drops Friday.
Mark Cully was the inaugural chief economist at the Australian Department of Immigration (2009-2012). His forthcoming book, Waves of Plenty (September 2026), is (to my knowledge) the first truly general history of immigration to Australia. It will fill a remarkable gap in our literature, given the centrality of immigration to the Australian story.
We discuss Australian exceptionalism in migration policy. The only country to have run assisted passage at scale (around 3.5 million people whose fares were subsidised). The first country in the world to have a dedicated Department of Immigration. The first country to offer migrants English-language training. Per capita, the world's largest receiver of international students for decades. Today, one of only three countries – alongside Switzerland and Singapore – with an overseas-born share above 30%. On current trends that share is projected to approach 40% by mid-century, a level likely not seen since the 1880s.
We walk through six decades that built the nation – the 1830s, 1850s, 1890s, 1950s, 1970s, and 2000s. We discuss why Australia eschewed slavery, why the 1850s might be the most important decade in the making of modern Australia, and what the White Australia policy was really about. We also explore what made the post-war migration program the most epic policy experiment in our history, whether migration has increased Australian living standards, and what history can teach us about the rise of One Nation.
(Episode recorded on 23 February 2026.)
Sponsor
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Part 1 of a three-part immigration series this week. Mark Cully (history) drops Thursday; Mike Pezzullo (acculturation, social cohesion, security) drops Friday. Martin Parkinson ran the Australian Treasury (2011-2014), then the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet (2015-2019). He's also thought deeply about the economics of migration policy, not just in those roles, but also in his past academic life and as chair of the Australian government's 2023 Migration Review (the most significant review of our migration system in more than three decades).
We discuss the central but underappreciated issue with Australian migration policy today: we've drifted into a quasi-guest-worker system without anyone voting for it. About 2.3 million people in Australia now go to sleep here every night with work rights, but without being citizens or permanent residents.
We also work through how migration affects living standards, the "Soviet-style" occupation list that governs our skilled program, how to attract true global talent, how international student fees came to subsidise roughly half of Australian university research, and what should be the upper and lower bounds for net migration. We end up in an unexpected place: how much more geopolitical weight would a larger population actually buy us?
(Episode recorded on 27 February 2026.)
Sponsors
- Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this special end-of-year episode, the tables are turned: I’m the guest, and I’m interviewed by Zac Gross — an Australian macroeconomist and long-time listener of the show.
We reflect on what I learned on the podcast in 2025 and what I changed my mind about. We also discuss the behind-the-scenes work of running the show, and my plans for 2026.
Sponsors
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Glyn Davis and Terry Moran are two of the very small number of Australians who have literally sat in the Cabinet Room, week after week, watching the machinery of government operate from the inside.
Both served as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) — the most senior public servant in Australia. Terry held the role from 2008 to 2011 (including during the Global Financial Crisis). Glyn held it from 2022 to 2025.
Both have also held equivalent roles at the state level: Glyn as Director-General of the Office of the Cabinet in Queensland (1995–96), and Terry as Secretary of the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet (2000–08). Before PM&C, Glyn was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne for thirteen years, and later ran the Paul Ramsay Foundation (Australia’s largest philanthropic foundation). Terry’s career spanned senior roles across the Commonwealth and Victorian public services, including as CEO of Victoria’s Office of the State Training Board, inaugural CEO of the Australian National Training Authority, and Queensland’s Director-General of Education. He later served as Chancellor of Federation University.
In this episode, we trace the routines, conventions, and systems that shape power in Canberra. Where, exactly, does a prime minister’s power come from? What separates a good Cabinet submission from a bad one? What actually happens in the Cabinet room once the doors close? How does Australia’s Westminster model differ from the UK and Canada? And why is Australia so unusually good at bureaucracy?
(Episode recorded on 8 December 2025.)
Sponsors
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
2,500 years of strategic history, 11 books, one afternoon.
Hugh White is Australia's foremost strategic thinker: former senior adviser to Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in Defence, inaugural Director of ASPI, and principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper. He is now Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University.
Before this conversation, I asked Hugh for the eleven books that most shaped his thinking on strategy, international relations and defence policy. We work through them one by one — what each book argues, what it gets right and wrong, how it shaped his worldview — and use them to tackle the big questions: why great powers start disastrous wars, how international orders collapse, and how Australia and America should respond to the rise of China.
Episode resources
- Hugh's strategy reading list: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whites-strategy-reading-list/
- Hugh's 1993 Tathra note: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whites-tathra-note/
Sponsors
- Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Peter Costello is the longest-serving Treasurer of Australia (1996–2007).
He led the most complex overhaul of Australia's tax system in the postwar era: introducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) — a value-added consumption tax — while abolishing a range of indirect taxes (notably wholesale sales tax) and cutting income-tax rates.
I wanted to learn from Peter what it actually takes to achieve a reform at that scale — and why we haven’t managed anything like it since.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- GST implementation war stories;
- lessons on how to get big things done in government;
- why major reform became so much harder after 2000;
- why Peter would sometimes hide revenue estimates even from the prime minister; and
- the baby bonus (introduced in 2004), which led to an uptick in Australia's total fertility rate — making Australia one of the only western countries to increase (albeit temporarily) its TFR since the demographic transition began.
Episode sponsor:
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
One bacterium causes roughly 1 in 20 cancer cases worldwide. It’s the most cancer-causing pathogen we’ve found—and the main cause of peptic ulcers. Its discovery overturned an ironclad medical dogma that the stomach was sterile.
Despite infecting about half of humanity, Helicobacter pylori wasn't discovered until 1979 and shown to cause gastritis and peptic ulcer disease in the early 1980s. Why did it evade detection for so long—and what finally broke through the consensus?
I went to Perth, Australia—where H. pylori was first discovered—to chat with Barry Marshall, gastroenterologist and co-recipient (with Robin Warren) of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering H. pylori and proving that it causes gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Marshall famously infected himself with the bacterium to demonstrate causality and later helped develop clinical diagnostics like the urea breath test, which we demo live in the episode.
We discuss:
- the rise and fall of stomach cancer in the West;
- whether Darwin’s dyspepsia and Napoleon's stomach cancer trace to H. pylori;
- the ulcer–cancer paradox;
- Correa’s cascade: what H. pylori eradication reverses—and what it doesn’t;
- the “H. pylori enigmas” (Africa, India, Costa Rica);
- eradication prospects and an oral vaccine timeline;
- how the field missed the discovery;
- how the primitive internet enabled the discovery;
- what the H. pylori discovery teaches us about how knowledge diffuses;
- lessons from manufacturing millions of tests in Perth;
- and much, much more.
Episode sponsors:
- Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Stagnation! The 2010s witnessed Australia’s weakest productivity growth in six decades.
How much of the slowdown is homegrown? How much reflects the broader “great stagnation” plaguing the West?
How much is simply an artefact of the way “productivity” is measured?
And what would a credible new growth model for Australia—with its distinctive reliance on mining over manufacturing—actually look like?
To answer these questions and more, I’m joined by two of Australia’s smartest economists.
Greg Kaplan is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also the cofounder and chairman of e61, a non-partisan economic economic research institute in Australia.
Michael Brennan is the CEO of e61. He was previously chair of Australia's Productivity Commission and a Deputy Secretary of the Australian Treasury.
We discuss the forces behind falling construction productivity; how to think about “Australia’s most productive company”; where to find quality gains in the services sector; what we can learn from the stunning innovativeness of Australia’s agricultural industry; why we need new economic engines beyond the Sydney–Melbourne duopoly; and much, much more.
Episode sponsors:
- Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
- Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Francis Fukuyama is a Stanford political scientist and the author of (among many other works) The End of History and the Last Man—arguably the most influential work in political science of the past half-century.
If “History” is driven by technology, how does Fukuyama now view biotech and AI—and their potential to usher in a new, post-human history?
These are difficult questions, but I wanted to ask Frank about topics that are both important and (at least for AI) on which he has spoken little until now.
We also get a sneak peek at his forthcoming book and discuss his ideas on bureaucracies, delegation, and state capacity.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Laura Deming is a technologist and venture capitalist focused on anti-ageing and life extension. At 17, she founded The Longevity Fund (followed by age1), the first VC firm dedicated to longevity biotech, after being selected in the initial cohort of Thiel fellows (2011). Today she is also CEO and co-founder of Cradle, a startup pursuing human whole-body reversible cryopreservation.
I speak with Laura at Cradle’s San Francisco office. We start with the philosophical question of personal identity, and ask a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, do we want to preserve? From there we explore what a “more humane transhumanism” might look like, the game-theory of 200-year lives, scientific awe as a research tool, embodied thought-experiments to see inside the cell, how the FDA could shave years off longevity-drug timelines, the anti-memetic qualities of reversible cryopreservation, and why it might be the most leveraged problem in longevity.
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I share the 8 biggest things I learned from my Australian policy series. The conversations totaled more than 12 hours of discussion.
Grateful to my guests and to everyone who attended the live events. Was really fun to meet and hang out with you all!
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This episode is the seventh instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on April 29, 2025.
I speak with Ken Henry—former Treasury Secretary and chair of the landmark Henry Tax Review—about why Australia hasn’t achieved major economic reform since the GST, and what must change to restart it.
We discuss how AGI could reshape the public service, intergenerational unfairness in the tax system, the collapse in business investment, how to build a new Australian city, and the roots of Australia's long-standing policy complacency.
Video available here:
Transcript available here:
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This episode is the sixth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 26, 2025.
I speak with Sam Roggeveen—Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, and a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments—about why the United States won’t fight China for dominance in Asia, and what that means for an Australia long reliant on American protection.
We explore the limits of America’s resolve in Asia, why an alliance with Indonesia should be the top priority of Australian statecraft, whether new technologies like drones are reversing the long-held advantage of the defender, the possibility that Australia might one day acquire nuclear weapons, and how Sam’s “echidna strategy” could let us defend ourselves from a major Asian power without substantially boosting defence spending.
Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9n62A07mE
Transcript available here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/sam-roggeveen-aus-policy-series/
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This episode is the fifth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 12, 2025.
I speak with Peter Tulip—Chief Economist at the Centre for Independent Studies, and a former senior researcher at both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the US Federal Reserve.
We go deep into what's driving Australia's housing crisis, the problems with heritage rules and height restrictions, critiques of both NIMBY and YIMBY thinking, the sobering 10–20-year timeframe that even an “extremely ambitious” supply plan might require, and the cultural shift needed to reach a new equilibrium where housing is truly abundant.
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Australia stands alone among English-speaking democracies with its compulsory, preferential voting system. But why?
This episode is the fourth instalment of my Australian policy series. It was recorded in Melbourne on March 6, 2025.
I speak with Judith Brett—Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and author of the canonical history of Australia's electoral system, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage—about how Australia became an electoral trailblazer.
We trace the accidental adoption of near-universal manhood suffrage in the 1850s, the political calculations that led to compulsory voting and preferential voting, and why bureaucratic efficiency is so deeply woven into our electoral culture.
Along the way, we explore how Benthamite thinking and low taxation in the colonial era combined to create a voting system that is unique among English-speaking democracies.
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This episode is the third of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on February 5, 2025.
We explore the concept of state capacity—the ability of governments to achieve their policy goals—and ask why Australia outperforms almost every other country in the world in this domain.
For the conversation, I'm joined by two of Australia's great public policy economists.
Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School and president of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Steven Hamilton is assistant professor of economics at The George Washington University in Washington DC, and a former Australian Treasury official.
If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode is the second of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on January 29, 2025.
What is the relationship between economic equality and egalitarianism in the cultural sense? Where does Australia's egalitarian tradition come from? Are we too egalitarian? Is economic inequality increasing? What's been driving it? And does it even matter?
We sit down with Andrew Leigh to discuss these questions and more.
Dr. Andrew Leigh MP is Australia’s Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury, and Assistant Minister for Employment. An economist by training, he was previously Professor of Economics at the Australian National University and earned his PhD from Harvard. The main theme of his academic research has been inequality.
If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/events/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode is the first of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Melbourne on January 23, 2025.
In this salon, we go deep into Australia's immigration policy with Abul Rizvi, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. Abul managed Australia’s migration program from 1995 to 2007 and played a crucial role in the 2001 policy changes that massively increased the intake of skilled migrants—most notably by expanding pathways for overseas students.
If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/events/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode is a little different: I’m the one being interviewed—and my interlocutor is Andy Matuschak, an independent applied researcher focused on "tools for thought" (ways to augment human intelligence). Andy founded and led Khan Academy’s Research and Development Lab, and prior to that, he was a senior engineer at Apple where he helped build iOS. I first discovered Andy’s work in 2021, and it was a game changer for me and the podcast. We spoke on the show in 2022.
In 2024, I recorded some podcast interviews in the US, and had the pleasure of hanging out with Andy while I was in San Francisco.
In October, Andy dropped by my place in SF to go behind the scenes of my podcast research process and interview me while I prepared for a conversation with Larry Summers. This is an unvarnished, unfiltered look at my tech stack and how I prepare for my interviews. I'm very grateful to Andy for suggesting the idea and for so thoughtfully drawing out my current strategies, tactics and tools.
I support Andy's research. If you'd like to do so too, go here.
If you'd like to access my interview research notes for podcast interviews, you can support to access here.
Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTI69kKeaC4
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Eugene Fama is a 2013 Nobel laureate in economic sciences, and is widely recognised as the "father of modern finance." He is currently the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago.
Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/eugene-fama-156/
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Richard Butler AC is a retired Australian diplomat. He served as Australia's first Ambassador for Disarmament (1983-1988), Australian Ambassador to the United Nations (1992-1997), and Chair of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (1997-1999). He also served as Chair of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
Earlier in his career, he was Chief of Staff to Leader of the Opposition, and former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam (1975-1977).
Butler played a crucial role in both the permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995 and the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. His work helped establish the framework through which we still manage nuclear weapons risks today.
This is his first ever podcast interview.
Full transcript and research materials available here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/richard-butler-160/
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Larry Summers is a former US Treasury Secretary (1999-2001), Chief Economist at the World Bank (1991-1993), and Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama (2009-2010). He also served as President of Harvard University (2001-2006).
Currently, he is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, and he sits on the board of directors at OpenAI, one of the fastest-growing companies in history.
Full transcript and video available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/larry-summers-159/
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Nassim Taleb is trader, researcher and essayist. He is the author of the Incerto, a multi-volume philosophical and practical meditation on uncertainty.
Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/nassim-taleb-158/
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Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson are anthropologists based in America. Their partnership was central to the development of Dual-Inheritance Theory, a framework that applies Darwinian evolution to culture and explains how genes and culture have intertwined to shape our species.
This is their first ever joint interview.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/boyd-and-richerson/
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Lucy Turnbull is an urbanist, businesswoman and philanthropist.
She was the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney, from 2003-4.
From 2015-20, she was the inaugural Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, tasked with delivering strategic planning for the whole of metropolitan Sydney.
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Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. A bestselling author, his books include The Case Against Education, Open Borders, and Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Deregulation.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/bryan-caplan-155
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In this special episode, the tables are turned as I'm interviewed by a listener of the show, DJ Thornton from Sydney. We reflect on the progress of the show in 2023, what I learned from this year's guests, and what's in store for 2024.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com
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At a time when the Enlightenment is under attack from without and within, I bring together two of the most thoughtful defenders of progress and reason, for their first ever public dialogue.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I think of him as providing the strongest empirical defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book Enlightenment Now).
David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and the father of quantum computing. I think of him as having produced the most compelling first principles defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book The Beginning of Infinity).
Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/153-deutsch-pinker-dialogue.
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Shruti Rajagopalan is an Indian-American economist. She leads the Indian political economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She also hosts the Ideas of India podcast.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com
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What were the deep causes of the global financial crisis and great recession? Has unconventional monetary policy in the wake of the crisis done more harm than good? And should monetary policy target financial stability?
I discuss these questions and more with Indian economist and Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Raghuram Rajan.
Raghuram Rajan was chief economist at the IMF from 2003 to 2006, and from 2013 to 2016 he was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As RBI Governor, he notably introduced India's inflation-targeting scheme, among many other achievements.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/151-raghuram-rajan
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Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as the world's most influential living philosopher.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com
Episode recorded on 26 April 2023.
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Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist and one of the founders of cliodynamics — a new, cross-disciplinary field that applies mathematics and big data to test historical theories.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.
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Stephen Wolfram is a physicist, computer scientist and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and the author of A New Kind of Science.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.
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Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist and one of the chief inventors of mRNA technology.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.com
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Richard Rhodes is an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.com
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Dr Ken Henry is an Australian economist who served as Secretary of Australia's Treasury from 2001 to 2011. He was instrumental in helping Australia avoid recession during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — Australia was the only major advanced economy to do so.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.com
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Palmer Luckey is an American tech entrepreneur and billionaire. He has founded two companies: Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014), and Anduril (recently valued at $8.5 billion). He has been described as the real-life Tony Stark.
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Daniel Kahneman is widely regarded as the most influential psychologist alive. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002) for his work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, much of it done jointly with his late collaborator Amos Tversky. He is the author of the bestselling books Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein).
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In the long run, talent allocation is almost everything. But as a society, we're not actually very good at it. The question of how to reliably match people with jobs they are well suited for is one of the big unsolved problems of our times.
Joe catches up with return guest Tyler Cowen to discuss the art of identifying talent. Tyler is a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler. He is also the co-author of a new book, Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.
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From language and writing to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, computers and Adobe Photoshop, our species has a history of inventing tools for augmenting our own intelligence. But what comes next?
Andy Matuschak is a developer and designer. He helped build iOS at Apple, founded and led Khan Academy's R&D lab, and now works as an independent researcher investigating 'tools for thought' — that is, technologies that can transform human cognition and creativity.
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How rational are we? How can a species smart enough to set foot on the moon also be prone to conspiracy theories that the moon landing was fake? Joe speaks with Steven Pinker to discuss rationality — and its opposite.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, an elected to the National Academy of Sciences and one of Time‘s 100 Most Influential People.
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Bayesianism, the doctrine that it's always rational to represent our beliefs in terms of probabilities, dominates the intellectual world, from decision theory to the philosophy of science. But does it make sense to quantify our beliefs about such ineffable things as scientific theories or the future? And what separates empty prophecy from legitimate prediction?
David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and is widely regarded as the father of quantum computing. He is the author of The Fabric of Reality (1997) and The Beginning of Infinity (2011).
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William Dalrymple is an acclaimed historian and writer.
Show notes available at: josephnoelwalker.com/138-afghanistan
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Richard Holden is Professor of Economics at UNSW. Steven Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The George Washington University.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/holden-hamilton
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Ole Peters is a physicist and a Fellow at the London Mathematical Laboratory.
Show notes available at: josephnoelwalker.com/136-ergodicity
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Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University, where he is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory. His course “Justice” is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television and has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/michael-sandel
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Graham Allison is an American political scientist and the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Harvard University.
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Niall Ferguson is one of the world's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, including most recently Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/niall-ferguson
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John Hewson is a former Australian politician and was leader of the Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994.
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John Kay is one of Britain's leading economists.
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John Horgan is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey. He was senior writer at Scientific American from 1986-1997 and is the author of the bestselling book The End of Science.
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Graeme Davison is Australia's most eminent urban historian.
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Cheryl Misak is a Canadian philosopher and the author of Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers.
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Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.
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Andy Lee is one half of iconic Australian comedy duo Hamish & Andy.
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Robert Skidelsky, FBA is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes.
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Noam Chomsky is the father of modern linguistics and one of the most cited scholars in modern history. He is also one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, having written more than 150 books.
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Sir Paul Collier is a British development economist. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Oxford and was the Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003. Paul has authored numerous books, including The Bottom Billion, The Plundered Planet, and The Future of Capitalism. His latest book, co-authored with John Kay, is Greed is Dead: Politics After Individualism.
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Zach Carter is a senior reporter at The Huffington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.
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Robert Plomin is one of the world's leading behavioural geneticists. He is currently MRC Research Professor in Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.
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Jack A. Goldstone is an American sociologist and is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on the subject of revolutions.
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Mark Cuban is an American billionaire investor, entrepreneur and TV personality.
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Frank Wilczek won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 and is considered one of the world’s most eminent theoretical physicists.
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Benjamin M. Friedman is widely recognised as one of the world's leading macroeconomists. He is currently the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University.
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Joe Henrich is Professor and Chair of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Secret of Our Success and The Weirdest People in theWorld.
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Sir Angus Deaton is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and coauthor ofDeaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.
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David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist.
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John Hempton is co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Bronte Capital.Show notes
Selected links Follow John: Blog | Twitter 'Approaches to Studying Policy Representation', paper by David Broockman 'Indebted Demand', paper by Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub and Amir Sufi
Topics discussed Lessons from past market cycles. 4:51 Astarra-Trio. 10:43 Retail investors: Welcome to the party. 24:14 When John met Jim (Simons). 28:13 Can you predict market tops? 33:00 Are there any good reasons for believing this time really is different? 40:37 The Dunning-Kruger effect is everywhere. 52:18 A behavioural model of the coronavirus. 55:45 The illusion of the political centre. 1:10:19 How inequality may be distorting monetary policy, and vice versa. 1:23:00 SPAC attack. 1:26:03 The puzzle of Middleby. 1:31:15 Bull masturbating. 1:33:01 2020: a year of puzzles. 1:42:30
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Gerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist and director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
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David Hirshleifer is a professor of finance and currently holds the Merage chair in Business Growth at the University of California.
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Vernon Smith won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. This is his second appearance on the show.
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Anne Goldgar is an historian and holds the Van Hunnick Chair in European History at the University of Southern California Dornsife.
Show notes
Selected links Follow Anne:Website |Twitter Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden, by Anne Goldgar
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Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
Show notes
Selected links Follow Ed: Website 'A Nation Of Gamblers: Real Estate Speculation And American History', 2013 Ely Lecture by Ed Glaeser One Hundred Years Of Land Values In Chicago, by Homer Hoyt The Land Boomers, by Michael Cannon '25 years of housing trends' report by Aussie Home Loans
Topics discussed A potted history of real estate speculation in the United States. 8:51 How would Ed describe the Great Convulsion of the 2000s to an alien observer? 13:40 Why is real estate well-suited to being a speculative asset? 16:04 If speculators aren't crazy, what are they? 17:00 Was the Great Convulsion primarily driven by credit availability? 20:44 What would a good Bayesian have thought in response to the 2000s housing market in the US? 22:23 Radical uncertainty and its implications for rationality in the context of housing markets. 24:06 Are extrapolative beliefs rational? 26:22 Are housing bubbles irrational? 29:51
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Martha Olney is an economist and Teaching Professor in Berkeley's Economics Department. Show notes
Selected links Follow Martha: Website | Twitter Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s, by Martha Olney Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression, by Peter Temin Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920 – 1940, by Roland Marchand Traitor to his Class:The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H. W. Brands 'The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis', paper by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi
Topics discussed How did Martha become interested in the history of consumer credit? 3:28 The birth of consumer credit. 6:54 How consumer credit companies and advertisers midwifed a change in cultural attitudes regarding borrowing. 16:41 What is the relationship between the increase in inequality and the rise in consumer credit during the 1920s? 31:34 Political elites in the Great Depression versus the Great Recession. 47:35 How did studying the 1920s prepare Martha for the Great Recession? 54:58 If private debt is capitalism's Achilles Heel, what should we do about it? 57:54
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Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and politician.
Show notes
Selected links Follow Yanis: Website | Twitter Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, by Yanis Varoufakis The Sovereignty of Good, by Iris Murdoch 'Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox', paper by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers 'The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits', The New York Timesarticle by Milton Friedman
Topics discussed Utopia. 4:46 The Sovereignty of Good. 9:14 Has capitalism enabled people to pursue higher goods? 12:38 What is capitalism? 16:08 Monopolies. 23:19 The problem with capitalism. 28:54 Are workers robots or autonomous souls? 34:40 Is capitalism making us happier? 54:30 Milton Friedman's 1970 article on profit maximisation. 1:02:41 What is Yanis's alternative to capitalism? 1:09:12
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Arlie Hochschild is one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Show notes
Selected links Follow Arlie: Website Strangers In Their Own Land, by Arlie Hochschild Power, Politics, and People, by C. Wright Mills 'Ayn Rand and Modern Politics', article by David Sloan Wilson Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, by Anne Case & Angus Deaton
Topics discussed Arlie's childhood spread across the world. 5:08 How did C. Wright Mills influence Arlie? 8:34 Was sociology an easy career decision for Arlie? 11:20 When did Arlie decide she needed to write Strangers In Their Own Land? 12:54 Why is the Tea Party strongest in the southern states? 16:47 Why does the Tea Party love the atheist Ayn Rand? 25:14 What are 'deep stories'? 34:55 Taking the right's needs seriously. 42:07 Trump's power as an orator. 55:04 If the liberal elite failed to understand the white working class, how did a real estate magnate from Manhattan grock them so quickly? 1:03:10 Trump won 10.1 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016. What does that say about America today? 1:04:57 How can we learn to be more empathetic? 1:06:45
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Tyler Cowen is an economist and public intellectual par excellence.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Tyler: Website | Twitter | Podcast | Blog •Stubborn Attachments, by Tyler Cowen •Ideal Code, Real World, by Brad Hooker •Utilitarianism and Co-operation, by Donald Regan •Peter Thiel interview, Conversations with Tyler •The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen •The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman •Fully Growth, by Dietrich Vollrath •'The Nobel Prize Isn't What It Used To Be', Bloomberg article by Tyler Cowen •'Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2020' •Superintelligence, by Nick Bostrom •A Tract on Monetary Reform, by John Maynard Keynes •Indian Currency and Finance, by John Maynard Keynes •Individualism and Economic Order, by Friedrich Hayek •The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon
Topics discussed
•If God is dead, life is absurd and there are no rules, why shouldn't we just commit suicide? •Why should we care about the distant future? •Does rule utilitarianism collapse into act utilitarianism? •How can we make decisions at all without succumbing to moral paralysis and total uncertainty? •Why isn't the epistemic critique fatal to consequentialism? •Why didn't Tyler donate the proceeds of Stubborn Attachments to an effective charity? •What is the Great Stagnation? •Why was 1973 the breakpoint in western productivity growth? •Is the Great Stagnation overdetermined? •What metric would Tyler look at to determine whether the Great Stagnation had ended? •When did Tyler first become cognisant of the...
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Dr Andrew Leigh MP is an economist and Federal Labor parliamentarian.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Andrew: Website | Twitter •Reconnected, by Andrew Leigh and Nick Terrell •Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville •Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam •Disconnected, by Andrew Leigh
Topics discussed
•What has Andrew's experience of the pandemic been like? 7:54 •Andrew's vision for Australian society. 9:40 •What was it like to work under Robert Putnam? 12:27 •What are some of the big lessons Andrew learned from Putnam? 15:00 •What is Andrew's research system? 17:43 •What is 'social capital'? 18:12 •What is the story of the decline of social capital in Australia? 19:24 •Pushing back on the idea of social capital. 21:17 •Andrew's favourite examples of social entrepreneurship in Australia. 29:00 •Has the net effect of the digital world been to connect or disconnect us? 31:38 •Why are some organisations better at building social capital than others? 35:07 •How does Andrew think about religion? 36:40 •How can we increase social capital by using systems or design thinking? 41:37 •What impactful community organisation is no one building? 44:05
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Bethany McLean is an investigative journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Bethany: Website | Twitter •The Smartest Guys in the Room, by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind •'Is Enron Overpriced?', Bethany's March 5, 2001, article for Fortune •'What Caused Enron?: A Capsule Social and Economic History of the 1990's', article by John Coffee •Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou •The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse, by Marriane Jennings •Spy The Lie, by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Don Tennant •Saudi America, by Bethany McLean •The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis
Topics discussed
•How did Bethany become a journalist? 4:13 •How did Enron come to be Enron? 6:30 •How did Bethany see through Enron when most others were beguiled by it? 8:33 •What was the reaction to Bethany's original article expressing skepticism about Enron? 11:35 •Why was Enron an example of 'legal fraud'? 13:34 •How to spot the "dogs" dressed up as "ducks". 16:20 •What were the ultimate causes of Enron's collapse? 19:43 •How did so many smart people at Enron become so corrupted? 30:06 •Bethany's book recommendations. 32:42 •The fine line between frauds and visionaries. 34:56 •Self-deception. 41:56 •If Elizabeth Holmes succeeded, would the end have justified her means? 45:23 •Elon Musk. 46:54 •The truth about fracking. 55:14 •How does Bethany stay organised as a journalist? 57:17 •How does Bethany put questions to her sources? 58:36 •Balancing accuracy with narrative flair. 59:35 •Which factors help Bethany decide which facts to include in a story and which to omit from it? 1:05:40 •How to construct an effective narrative. 1:11:46 •What business model could scale up investigative journalism? 1:17:54 •How does democracy survive the eroding of journalism's traditional business model? 1:24:04
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Ian Macfarlane was Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia from 1996 to 2006.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Ian: Website •The Deficit Myth, by Stephanie Kelton •Macroeconomics, by William Mitchell, L. Randall Ray and Martin Watts •'Indebted Demand', paper by Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub and Amir Sufi
Topics discussed
•Monetary policy. 4:44 •Modern Monetary Theory. 42:07 •Secular Stagnation and Indebted Demand. 1:11:10
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Eric Weinstein is a mathematician and the Managing Director of Thiel Capital.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Eric: Website | Twitter •The Three Languages of Politics, by Arnold Kling •'Opinions and Social Pressure', paper by Solomon Asch
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Vernon Smith won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Vernon: Website •Rethinking Housing Bubbles, by Vernon Smith and Steven Gjerstad •'Debt Deflation: Theory and Evidence', address by Mervyn King •'Is the 2007 US Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? An International •Historical Comparison', paper by Rogoff and Reinhart •'Global Household Leverage, House Prices, and Consumption', FRBSF Economic Letter by Reuven Glick and Kevin Lansing •'Dealing With Household Debt', chapter by the IMF •'The great mortgaging: housing finance, crises and business cycles', paper by Jorda, Schularick and Taylor •'Leveraged bubbles', paper by Jorda, Schularick and Taylor •'Housing and the Economy', 2019 speech by Guy Debelle •'Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets', paper by Vernon Smith, Gerry Suchanek and Arlington Williams •A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I, by Vernon Smith •The example scenario of pessimists and optimists buying 100 identical houses is from House of Debt, by Amir Sufi and Atif Mian •'The Leverage Cycle', paper by John Geanakoplos •'Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment', paper by Brad Barber and Terry Odean •The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki •'The Clinton Housing Bubble', WSJ article by Vernon Smith •''We're heartbroken': home in same family for 93 years passes in', 2018 The Daily Telegraph article •'Why are we so worried about household debt?',
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Avi Loeb is Chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Avi: Website •The Myth Of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus •The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn •'The End of Spacetime', public lecture by Nima Arkani-Hamed •Rendezvouz With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke •'Glowing Auras and "Black Money": The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program', NYT article (16/12/17) •'2 Navy Airmen and an Object That "Accelerated Like Nothing I've Ever Seen", NYT article (16/12/17)
Topics discussed
•Avi's childhood growing up on a farm in Israel, and journey into academia. 5:16 •Avi's romance with philosophy, Satre, and Camus. 10:11 •When in their careers should scientists court risk? 15:24 •Albert Camus and The Myth Of Sisyphus. 21:10 •How does alien intelligence change the meaning of human existence? 24:50 •If there was no other intelligent life in the universe, would that make a god more likely? 34:51 •How far off is technology for 3D printing of...humans? 40:49 •What are the a priori odds of other intelligent life in the universe -- and how do we calculate them? 42:49 •Why is it so quiet out there? 47:25 •Space archaeology. 52:33 •Is space-time a doomed concept? 1:04:14 •How do we verify what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole? 1:12:08 •The multiverse: bullshit or not? 1:17:25 •What could spacefaring aliens teach us about physics? 1:30:00 •'Oumuamua -- a possible interstellar spacecraft lurking in our solar system. 1:31:45 •The Pentagon UFO releases. 1:43:47 •Hostile aliens. 1:46:00 •The advantages of generalism. 1:54:43 •The meaning of life (42). 2:01:21
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Peter Doherty is an immunologist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Peter: Website | Twitter •'I'm 79, I won the Nobel Prize and I don't give a s---', AFR profile of Peter Doherty •Pandemics: What Everyone Needs To Know, by Peter Doherty •The (in)famous Imperial College paper
Topics discussed
•Has Peter always not given a shit? 7:32 •Peter's odd high school experience. 9:00 •How the media report on science. 12:30 •What is the difference between a virus and a bacterium? 15:08 •How does a new coronavirus come into existence? 17:47 •What is Peter's area of expertise and what does he know about pandemics? 22:57 •What has the coronavirus pandemic taught us about the usefulness of epidemiological models? 25:20 •The politicization of lockdowns. 35:57 •The origins of America and Australia's cultural differences. 47:33 •Social media and political polarisation. 57:05 •In weathering the pandemic relatively well, was Australia lucky or were the epidemiological models too pessimistic? 59:56 •Can we just lockdown the vulnerable segment of the population, rather than the whole population? 1:03:52 •Is Peter optimistic about keeping a lid on the virus until a vaccine arrives? 1:08:25 •What do governments need to learn from the pandemic to be better prepared for the next one? 1:16:00
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Cameron Murray is a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney's Henry Halloran Trust. Ian Mulheirn is Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Tony Blair Institute.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Cameron Murray: Website | Twitter •Follow Ian Mulheirn: Website | Twitter •Tackling the UK housing crisis: is supply the answer?', 2019 report by Ian Mulheirn •'Innovative Approaches to Reducing the Costs of Home Ownership', 2003 report by Joye and Caplin •'The Australian Housing Supply Myth', 2019 paper by Cameron Murray •'The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply', paper by Albert Saiz
Topics discussed
•Why isn't a lack of supply the primary cause of high house prices? 14:40 •The role of interest rates. 18:46 •The tangled web of causality behind house prices. 36:42 •Narratives in housing markets: are they exogenous shocks or post hoc rationalisations? 41:40 •Where did the housing supply narrative come from? 46:41 •How would the UK government prop up its housing market if fundamentals deteriorated? 1:04:52 •Arguments in support of the housing supply myth. 1:05:48 •What makes for an intellectually defensible forecast of house prices? 1:29:17
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Matt Ridley is an author, journalist, biologist, and businessman. His books have sold over a million copies.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Matt Ridley: Website | Twitter •How Innovation Works, by Matt Ridley •The Origins of Virtue, by Matt Ridley •Zero to One, by Peter Thiel •Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin •The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen •'The Use of Knowledge in Society', essay by Friedrich Hayek •Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou •The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen •The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon
Topics discussed
•When did Matt first come to understand the disturbing notion of selfish gene theory? 8:55 •How did Matt, a biologist, become so interested in innovation? 16:20 •The infinite improbability drive. 20:30 •What's the difference between innovation and invention? 24:05 •What do most people (wrongly) believe about how innovation works? 25:48 •Why innovation relies on collaboration. 33:53 •Innovation is the child of freedom. But what amount or types of freedom are sufficient to underpin innovation? 40:35 •Why does innovation thrive in fragmented political systems? 46:39 •Does unfettered economic freedom tend irresistibly towards monopolies? 50:37 •Antitrust enforcement: have we been doing enough? 1:02:44 •The relationship between uncertainty and innovation. 1:05:58 •Frauds and visionaries. 1:14:20 •Uncertainty and economics. 1:15:26 •Are we in the midst of a Great Stagnation? 1:26:40 •Can we escape stagnation? 1:40:30
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Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Mervyn King: Website •Radical Uncertainty, by Mervyn King and John Kay •The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, by John Maynard Keynes •'Debt deflation: Theory and evidence', paper by Mervyn King •The End of Alchemy, by Mervyn King •Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, by Don Watson •The Poverty of Historicism, by Karl Popper •Obliquity, by John Kay •'Truth and Probability', essay by Frank Ramsey •Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, by Cheryl Misak
Topics discussed
•Why did Mervyn choose to study economics at Cambridge? 11:06 •Keynes' General Theory. 17:41 •Debt-deflation. 23:58 •When Mervyn met Ben. 29:20 •Was Mervyn caught off guard by the Global Financial Crisis? 31:40 •Does stability lead to instability? 38:18 •The stability heuristic. 41:43 •What is radical uncertainty? 49:54 •How technology creates radical uncertainty. 1:04:57 •Why has the economics profession overlooked radical uncertainty -- and when did this blindspot begin? 1:13:10 •Narratives. 1:25:18 •What does it mean to be rational? 1:31:21 •Speculative bubbles. 1:40:25
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Russ Roberts is an economist and the host of EconTalk.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Russ Roberts: Website | Twitter •EconTalk •Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories, by Ed Leamer •Fooled By Randomness, by Nassim Taleb •Systemic Risk of Pandemic Via Novel Pathogens -- Coronavirus', paper by Joe Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Nassim Taleb •'To philosophize is to learn how to die', essay by Montaigne •How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, by Russ Roberts
Topics discussed
•When and how did EconTalk begin? 8:55 •Has interviewing over 750 people made Russ a better or more effective person? 13:59 •How to really understand an idea. 32:00 •What has Russ learned from Nassim Taleb? 35:43 •The Precautionary Principle. 42:03 •The lockdown dilemma. 48:38 •The Precautionary Principle again. 1:11:52 •Is Russ afraid of death? 1:18:49 •What has Russ done to improve his craft as an interviewer? 1:27:18 •Where was Russ born and what did his parents do? 1:48:21 •Why did Russ study economics? 1:49:52 •Narrative economics. 1:51:13 •Who are the most important economists for non-economists to know? 1:57:12 •How does Russ think about what he does? 2:02:31 •Vipassana meditation. 2:06:26 •When would Russ recommend economics as an undergraduate degree? 2:17:18 •Adam Smith's distinction between being loved and being lovely. 2:21:14
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Malcolm Turnbull was Australia's 29th Prime Minister.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Malcolm Turnbull: Website | Twitter •A Bigger Picture, by Malcolm Turnbull •Malcolm's speech at the 2010 Deakin Lectures •Malcolm's speech at the 2010 BZE Stationary Energy Plan launch •'Condolence on the Death of Robert Hughes', 2012 speech by Malcolm Turnbull •Malcolm's 2015 speech challenging Tony Abbott's leadership •The Fiery Chariot, by Lucille Iremonger •Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke •The Case for Conservatism, by Quintin Hogg •The Reluctant Republic, by Malcolm Turnbull •Fighting For the Republic, by Malcolm Turnbull •Constitutional Advancement in a Frozen Continent: Essays in honour of George Winterton •'An Alternative Republic Proposal', Anne Twomey's 2015 article in the ALJ •Skin in the Game, by Nassim Taleb •Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb
Topics discussed
•Which of Malcolm's speeches is he most proud of? 9:52 •Malcolm's childhood. 12:51 •Burkean Conservatism. 20:20 •How do governments know when they're reforming too quickly or too slowly? 26:11 •Resolving the core tension in the Australian Republican Movement. 42:59 •Same-sex marriage. 48:48 •The Minority Rule. 52:19 •Is the Liberal Party philosophically tenable? 59:35 •How does Malcolm assess prospective tech investments? 1:04:24 •Malcolm's intellectual shift on China. 1:07:19 •Malcolm's struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. 1:11:42 •Antifragility. 1:15:48
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Chris Edmond and Steve Hamilton are Australian economists.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Chris Edmond: Website | Twitter •Follow Steve Hamilton: Website | Twitter •'A Rush Back to 'Normal' Would Be the Blunder of the Century', WIRED's interview of Larry Summers •'Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand', Imperial College London paper by Neil Ferguson et al •'How the recession we have to have can be sharp but short', The Australian Financial Review article by Steve Hamilton and Stan Veuger •'Coronavirus: payroll subsidy will save the economy', The Australian article by Chris Edmond and Bruce Preston
Topics discussed
•What happens to an economy when non-essential workers are told to stay home? 9:22 •The false choice between health and economic outcomes. 20:53 •How long do lockdowns need to last? 36:39 •Are Australia's lockdowns hard enough? 43:46 •What does pandemic-appropriate fiscal stimulus look like? 46:29 •Is this the end of surplus fetishism? 59:45 •JobKeeper. 1:06:44 •Will Australia see further rounds of stimulus? 1:19:21 •Is the financial economy healthy? 1:22:33 •Which one piece of advice would Steve and Chris give to the Australian Government? 1:26:26
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Chris Joye is Founder and Co-Chief Investments Officer at Coolabah Capital Investments. He is also a Contributing Editor with The Australian Financial Review.
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Andrea Crisanti is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Padua. He is part of the research team that eradicated coronavirus in Vo, a town in northern Italy.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Andrea: Website •Johns Hopkins University's coronavirus dashboard •Data on testing by country •Marc Lipsitch's 18 March STAT article
Topics discussed
•The Italian crisis. 8:22 •Why has Lombardy become an epicentre of coronavirus? 9:50 •How does the situation in Veneto compare to that in Lombardy? 11:06 •How did Andrea become involved in the Vo experiment? 11:51 •What is the process for identifying infection people in Veneto? 17:20 •What is the R0 for asymptomatic people? 20:25 •What is the strategy employed at Vo? 24:32 •Is there still time for Australia and the US to implement the strategy used at Vo? 25:21 •Does the Vo strategy need to be implemented in full in order to be successful? 28:05 •Why have some Asian countries been better at controlling the virus than Western countries? 28:47 •Is the Vo strategy scalable? 29:43 •How should we think about the prospects of future waves of the virus? 30:34
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Peter Singer is the world's most influential living philosopher.
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Yaneer Bar-Yam is a physicist and the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Yaneer: Website | Twitter •Endcoronavirus.org •Dynamics of Complex Systems, by Yaneer Bar-Yam •Making Things Work, by Yaneer Bar-Yam •'Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)', research by Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie •Powers of Ten YouTube video •'An Introduction to Complex Systems Science and Its Applications', 2019 paper by Alexander Siegenfeld and Yaneer Bar-Yam •'The Architecture of Complexity', 1962 paper by Herbert Simon •'Science and Complexity', 1948 paper by Warren Weaver •'More is Different', 1972 paper by Phil Anderson •Scale, by Geoffrey West •Johns Hopkins University coronavirus interactive map •'Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens -- Coronavirus: Note', January 2020 note by Nassim Taleb, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Joe Norman •The Square And The Tower, by Niall Ferguson •'Long-range interaction and evolutionary stability in a predator-prey system', 2006 paper by Erik Rauch and Yaneer Bar-Yam •'Transition to Extinction', 2016 article by Yaneer Bar-Yam •'Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic', 2007 paper by Howard Markel et al •'Strategies for mitigating an influenza pandemic', 2006 paper by Neil Ferguson et al •Join the fellowship of the doers: necsivolunteers@gmail.com
Topics discussed
•Yaneer's background and parents. 11:39 •Powers of Ten. 12:06 •Highlights from Yaneer's time as an MIT student. 15:29 •The role of chance in our lives. 21:28 •What is "complexity"? 25:42 •Complex systems. 30:23 •Emergence. 37:06 •Phase transitions. 44:26 •Self-organization. 49:48 •Universality. 55:12 •Applying complex systems science to the Arab Spring. 1:03:13 •Taking stock of the coronavirus epidemic. 1:12:47 •What is the current best estimate for th...
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Kevin Rudd was Australia's 26th Prime Minister and is the President of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow Kevin: Website | Twitter •Mike Pence's Hudson Institute Speech (October 4, 2018) •'The Sources of Soviet Conduct', 1947 article by "X" (George Kennan) •Henry Kissinger's talk at Bloomberg's New Economy Forum (November 21, 2019) •'Chinese Communist Party Influence at Australian Universities', lecture by Clive Hamilton •'High Tide? Populism in Power, 1990 - 2020', report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change •'Going to Extremes: Politics after Financial Crises, 1870 - 2014', paper by Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch •'The Complacent Country', article by Kevin Rudd
Topics discussed
•Wuhan. 3:56 •What has the coronavirus revealed about the limits of the CCP's competence? 4:30 •Is the CCP underreporting coronavirus figures, as it did for SARS figures in 2003? 6:57 •Are China and the US in a new cold war? 8:44 •Would a new cold war have any hidden upsides? 11:56 •Chinese influence in Australian universities. 13:51 •How should Australia deal with Chinese influence? 17:58 •Cross-cultural communication between China and the West. 23:40 •How does the Left reformulate itself in the face of electoral defeats around the world? 27:51
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David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist.
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Freelancer.com and by Blinkist. You can find the Blinkist deal exclusive to listeners of this podcast at www.blinkist.com/swagman.
Show notes Selected links
•Follow David: Website | Twitter •The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins •River Out Of Eden, by Richard Dawkins •The Descent Of Man, by Charles Darwin •Animal Dispersion In Relation To Social Behavior, by Vero Wynne-Edwards •Adaptation And Natural Selection, by George C Williams •'Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences', 1994 paper by David Sloan Wilson & Eliot Sober •The Meaning Of Human Existence, by E O Wilson •'Gender and Politics Among Anthropologists in the Units of Selection Debate', 2014 survey by Yaworsky, Horowitz & Kickham •The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit, by Sloan Wilson •Sociobiology, by E O Wilson •Governing The Commons, by Elinor Ostrom •Animal Species And Evolution, by Ernst Mayr •Simpson's paradox •'The False Allure of Group Selection', Steven Pinker's Edge.org article •'Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition', 2005 article by Mike Tomasello et al •Dave's conversation with Jonathan Birch •Darwin's Cathedral, by David Sloan...
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Eric Weinstein is a mathematician and the Managing Director of Thiel Capital.
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Ian Macfarlane was Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia from 1996 to 2006. He is the author of The Search For Stability and Ten Remarkable Australians.
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Thank you Swagmen and Swagettes for making 2019 the best year since 2018.
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Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
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Dr Andrew Leigh MP is a member of the Australian federal parliament. He is currently Labor's Shadow Assistant...
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William Dalrymple is an acclaimed historian and travel writer. He lives nine months of the year on a...
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David Tuckett is a psychoanalyst, Professor, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at...
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Kate McClymont is Australia's most awarded journalist. An investigative reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald, she is famous...
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Robert J. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and one of the 2013 recipients of...
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Adele Ferguson is an award-winning investigative journalist best known for her work exposing misconduct and fraud in the...
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This is a rerun of a conversation I recorded in May 2018 with legendary short seller Marc Cohodes....
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John Hempton is a renowned short seller and the Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Australian-based hedge fund...
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This is an episode about a rising superpower (China) and its ruler (Xi Jinping). It's also a conversation...
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Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale, where he directs the Human...
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Richard Nixon once said, "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in twenty-five...
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This episode is about why housing busts cause recessions. Few understand their nexus better than Ed Leamer. Ed...
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The logic is inevitable: credit is as much a feature of housing bubbles as the moon is of...
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Bubbles are everywhere today — or so we're told. But what are they really? I speak with behavioural...
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Chris Joye manages $3 billion as the Co-Chief Investment Officer at Australian fixed-income manager Coolabah Capital Investments, and...
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Timur Kuran is a Turkish American economist.
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We all know that real estate is the best long-term investment for capital gains...
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I speak with Dean Baker, US economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research...
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I announce 'Housing Bubble Week' and share a speech I gave in Sydney in September 2018.
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Will MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
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Bret Weinstein came to public prominence as the professor at the centre of the 2017 Evergreen State College...
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Sadly, Angus is stepping down as co-host, to focus on bigger and better things. Joe, your regular host...
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Signature moments from some of our crazy conversations in the year sandwiched between 2017 and 2019.
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This is a conversation with renowned moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
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Andrew Charlton is a Rhodes Scholar, economist, author and former prime ministerial adviser.
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Which US and Australian industries are the most concentrated? How did Standard Oil inspire the Nazis? Why are...
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Joe speaks with the 26th Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. Kevin led Australia from December 2007 to...
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Joe speaks with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the man who defied Europe to save Greece -...
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Picture a Giant Anaconda, sitting in the corner of the room. Very still, observing everything - after a...
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How many people do you know who have created a verb? We 'google' things, we 'uber' to places,...
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David Rose is the most infamous Angel Investor in America. He is a serial entrepreneur, avid investor and...
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Critical technological and societal changes of the last century have been spearheaded by entrepreneurs and the investors who...
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The universe is 13.8 billion years old and humans have existed for only 200,000 years. If that time...
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Most people want to help others with their career, but what's the best way to do that? Become...
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Brendan Eich is widely regarded as a 'Father of the Web'. He is the creator of JavaScript and...
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For thirty-seven years, Marc Cohodes has bet big money against bad companies. Due to his success, he is...
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Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch professor of Theoretical physics at Stanford University. He is widely regarded as...
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Harry Crane is a scholar who specialises in statistics and probability. He is currently a professor of statistics...
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In 2016, a Florida court delivered an astounding $140 million verdict against Gawker media for publishing a sex...
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What are human existential risks and why does Artificial Intelligence rank as one of the most menacing? At...
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Dr Jemma Green is the Co-founder and Chair of Power Ledger. Dr Green began her career as an...
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You only have 150 friends. How do we know that? Because that is Dunbar's number. Robin Dunbar is...
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Pete Evans is a world-renowned chef, restauranteur and co-host of hit TV show, My Kitchen Rules - he...
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The Hon Kim Beazley AC is a former Leader of the Australian Labor Party and Leader of the...
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Dr Gordian Fulde AO is Australia's leading emergency medicine specialist. He founded the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine...
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Dr Andrew Leigh MP is a federal Labor politician with a brilliant background. A promising lawyer and associate...
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If you're interested in improving your negotiation, whether that's to buy a used car or bump up your...
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Hashgraph is a new distributed ledger technology which many experts believe will supersede the blockchain itself. Founded by...
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Peter Singer is widely regarded as the world's most influential living moral philosopher. From kickstarting the animal rights...
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Will cryptocurrency replace the financial system as we know it? What if that is only the start? In...
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We feel ourselves lucky. Twenty-six years of continuous economic growth breeds a certain complacency. But our prosperity belies...
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Former guests and F.O.T.P*, Luigi ZIngales (#24) and Richard Holden (#26), joined us at the inaugural Jolly Swagmen Christmas...
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Stoicism, an ancient philosophy invented by the Greeks and developed by the Romans, is back in fashion. From...
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Charles Spence is the world's leading expert in 'Gastrophysics' - the science of food and how our senses...
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Alan Belford Jones has dominated Sydney's airwaves for more than 30 years. Australia's most popular radio broadcaster, he...
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James Leibold is a deep expert in Chinese history and society. Educated in the US, he is now...
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Welcome to Part 4 of our Property Special. Fraud is a hallmark of bubbles, as mania turns to...
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In Part 3 of our Property Series we consult the 'housing bubble whisperer', Jonathan Tepper (@jtepper2). He is the founder of research house Variant...
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Welcome to part 2 of our Property Series! The term "bubble" gets bandied about a lot these days,...
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Welcome to episode 1 of our 4-part series on the Australian property market. In this episode, Mortgage Choice...
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Trump. Cronyism. Inequality. Monopolies. Weren't we promised better than this? What happened to a "new nation, conceived in...
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Christine Forster is currently the only Liberal party member of the City of Sydney Council, having left a...
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Andrew Baker is an INCREDIBLY successful self-taught investor based in Sydney. During the day he specialises in building...
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Dave Oliver is Australia's first openly gay premiership rugby coach. Throughout his school and sporting career spanning the...
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Professor Anne Twomey is one of Australia's leading constitutional law experts. She has practiced as a solicitor at...
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Would you like the ability to reliably experience those "breakthrough moments"? We've found your guru. William Duggan teaches...
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Former Google Senior Software Engineer now martyr to political correctness and hero of the alt-right, James Damore is...
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Australia is in the midst of debating whether to legalise same-sex marriage, with a national postal vote underway....
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John Tsilimparis MFT is a celebrity psychologist based in LA, where he runs his own private clinic in...
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Gareth Evans AC, QC was Australia's greatest ever Foreign Minister. Holding that position from 1988-96, he also held...
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Peter Fitzsimons is the current Chair of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) - fighting to move Australia from...
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Peter Luc Bossaerts is the world's leading expert in experimental finance and pioneered the field of "neuroeconomics". He...
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Queen Elizabeth II has ruled as Britain's monarch for 65 years. At the age of 91, her reign...
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Patrick Sweeney is making a career as an adventurer and fear guru. Whether it's cycling the seven summits...
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Charlie Thompson served in Canada's elite Close Protection Unit, completing two tours of Afghanistan in 2006 and 2008....
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Chris Raine is CEO and Founder of Hello Sunday Morning, a charity that challenges people to give up...
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Ian Elliot is Australia's advertising guru. Former CEO and Chairman of George Patterson, he worked his way from...
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Dart Sultan: enigma, humourist, meme king. An anonymous Melbourne man on the rise, having amassed 185,000 Facebook followers...
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Few people saw the Global Financial Crisis coming. Steve Keen was one of them. He is a ferocious...
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Matt Moran is well known on the Australian restaurant scene. Raised on a dairy farm in Sydney's West,...
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Outside of their day jobs, Australian couple Ben and Laura Darlington are irrepressible adventurers. Ben, who runs his...
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Don Watson was Prime Minister Paul Keating's speechwriter from 1992-1996. Don's work included the Unknown Soldier Speech, and...
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Bob Lehrman was Chief Speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1993-95. An accomplished author and novelist, he...
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