Best Alan Shulman Podcasts (2025)

1
#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it 3:16:32

4d ago3:16:32

3:16:32

When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don't grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office — is the problem the people, or the structure they work in? Today's guest, political journalist Ian Dunt, studies the systemic reasons governments succ…

1
Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests 2:18:41

12d ago2:18:41

2:18:41

How do you navigate a career path when the future of work is uncertain? How important is mentorship versus immediate impact? Is it better to focus on your strengths or on the world’s most pressing problems? Should you specialise deeply or develop a unique combination of skills? From embracing failure to finding unlikely allies, we bring you 16 dive…

1
#215 – Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power 3:22:44

20d ago3:22:44

3:22:44

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally shifted the balance of power in society. The Industrial Revolution created conditions where democracies could flourish for the first time — as nations needed educated, informed, and empowered citizens to deploy advanced technologies and remain competitive. Unfortunately there’s every …

1
Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys 1:47:10

25d ago1:47:10

1:47:10

"We are aiming for a place where we can decouple the scorecard from our worthiness. It’s of course the case that in trying to optimise the good, we will always be falling short. The question is how much, and in what ways are we not there yet? And if we then extrapolate that to how much and in what ways am I not enough, that’s where we run into trou…

1
#214 – Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway 2:16:03

1M ago2:16:03

2:16:03

Most AI safety conversations centre on alignment: ensuring AI systems share our values and goals. But despite progress, we’re unlikely to know we’ve solved the problem before the arrival of human-level and superhuman systems in as little as three years. So some are developing a backup plan to safely deploy models we fear are actively scheming to ha…

1
15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI 2:35:54

1M ago2:35:54

2:35:54

"There’s almost no story of the future going well that doesn’t have a part that’s like '…and no evil person steals the AI weights and goes and does evil stuff.' So it has highlighted the importance of information security: 'You’re training a powerful AI system; you should make it hard for someone to steal' has popped out to me as a thing that just …

1
#213 – Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” – and how we're completely unprepared 3:57:36

2M ago3:57:36

3:57:36

The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, third-wave feminism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang theory, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years. That’s the future Will MacAskill — philosoph…

1
Ep 10: Steve Nettles discusses why it was important to pay his employees more than himself 32:33

2M ago32:33

32:33

Steve Nettles, the founder of Tax Pros Plus and the co-founder of the North Charleston Chamber Of Commerce, sits down and discusses why it was so crucial for his business to pay his employees more than himself. In his discussion, Steve’s passion for empowering others and his belief in the power of equitable compensation shines through. He is a firm…

1
Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui) 36:50

2M ago36:50

36:50

When OpenAI announced plans to convert from nonprofit to for-profit control last October, it likely didn’t anticipate the legal labyrinth it now faces. A recent court order in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company suggests OpenAI’s restructuring faces serious legal threats, which will complicate its efforts to raise tens of billions in investment…

1
#139 Classic episode – Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value 3:41:31

2M ago3:41:31

3:41:31

A casino offers you a game. A coin will be tossed. If it comes up heads on the first flip you win $2. If it comes up on the second flip you win $4. If it comes up on the third you win $8, the fourth you win $16, and so on. How much should you be willing to pay to play? The standard way of analysing gambling problems, ‘expected value’ — in which you…

1
Ep 9: Frank AuCoin Went From A Sixth Grade Dropout To A Best Selling Author 1:03:26

2M ago1:03:26

1:03:26

Today on Evolving Waves, we sit down with Frank AuCoin, who has one of the most fascinating stories we've ever heard. After dropping out of sixth grade and being illiterate until his 30's, Frank was determined to make the most out of the rest of his life. Fast forward to today, and Frank is now a best-selling author. But what about all that work he…

1
#143 Classic episode – Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons 2:40:52

3M ago2:40:52

2:40:52

America aims to avoid nuclear war by relying on the principle of 'mutually assured destruction,' right? Wrong. Or at least... not officially. As today's guest — Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies — explains, in its official 'OPLANs' (military operation plans), the US is com…

1
#212 – Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway 2:44:07

3M ago2:44:07

2:44:07

Technology doesn’t force us to do anything — it merely opens doors. But military and economic competition pushes us through. That’s how today’s guest Allan Dafoe — director of frontier safety and governance at Google DeepMind — explains one of the deepest patterns in technological history: once a powerful new capability becomes available, societies…

1
Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui) 57:29

3M ago57:29

57:29

On Monday Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission. For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI’s unique structure — a nonprofit foundatio…

1
AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out 3:12:24

3M ago3:12:24

3:12:24

Will LLMs soon be made into autonomous agents? Will they lead to job losses? Is AI misinformation overblown? Will it prove easy or hard to create AGI? And how likely is it that it will feel like something to be a superhuman AGI? With AGI back in the headlines, we bring you 15 opinionated highlights from the show addressing those and other questions…

1
#124 Classic episode – Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions 3:10:21

3M ago3:10:21

3:10:21

If someone said a global health and development programme was sustainable, participatory, and holistic, you'd have to guess that they were saying something positive. But according to today's guest Karen Levy — deworming pioneer and veteran of Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, and Y Combinator — each of those three concepts has become…

1
If digital minds could suffer, how would we ever know? (Article) 1:14:30

3M ago1:14:30

1:14:30

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer’s interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world. Few exp…

1
#132 Classic episode – Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems 2:41:11

3M ago2:41:11

2:41:11

If a business has spent $100 million developing a product, it’s a fair bet that they don’t want it stolen in two seconds and uploaded to the web where anyone can use it for free. This problem exists in extreme form for AI companies. These days, the electricity and equipment required to train cutting-edge machine learning models that generate uncann…

1
#138 Classic episode – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter 2:25:43

3M ago2:25:43

2:25:43

What in the world is intrinsically good — good in itself even if it has no other effects? Over the millennia, people have offered many answers: joy, justice, equality, accomplishment, loving god, wisdom, and plenty more. The question is a classic that makes for great dorm-room philosophy discussion. But it’s hardly just of academic interest. The is…

1
#134 Classic episode – Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us 3:40:53

4M ago3:40:53

3:40:53

Wind back 1,000 years and the moral landscape looks very different to today. Most farming societies thought slavery was natural and unobjectionable, premarital sex was an abomination, women should obey their husbands, and commoners should obey their monarchs. Wind back 10,000 years and things look very different again. Most hunter-gatherer groups t…

1
#140 Classic episode – Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn’t in decline 2:48:03

4M ago2:48:03

2:48:03

Is war in long-term decline? Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature brought this previously obscure academic question to the centre of public debate, and pointed to rates of death in war to argue energetically that war is on the way out. But that idea divides war scholars and statisticians, and so Better Angels has prompted a spirited deba…

1
Ep 8: How To Build An Online Empire with Neil Shulman 52:07

4M ago52:07

52:07

Neil Shulman, the creator and founder of the Florida Gators multimedia entity In All Kinds of Weather, stops by to give his insights on what it takes to build an enormous following across several online platforms.By Stingray Branding

1
2024 Highlightapalooza! (The best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year) 2:50:02

4M ago2:50:02

2:50:02

"A shameless recycling of existing content to drive additional audience engagement on the cheap… or the single best, most valuable, and most insight-dense episode we put out in the entire year, depending on how you want to look at it." — Rob Wiblin It’s that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each…

1
#211 – Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work 3:25:46

5M ago3:25:46

3:25:46

Rich countries seem to find it harder and harder to do anything that creates some losers. People who don’t want houses, offices, power stations, trains, subway stations (or whatever) built in their area can usually find some way to block them, even if the benefits to society outweigh the costs 10 or 100 times over. The result of this ‘vetocracy’ ha…

1
Ep 7: The Pirate Hunter; The story of Justin Myers 57:32

5M ago57:32

57:32

When your nickname is "The Pirate Hunter," you're sure to have a captivating story. Justin Myers does, and then some. In today's episode, we talk about the delicate balance of serving your country and preserving life with a man who has done both in spades. Justin has a tremendous career as a Gunner in the US Navy, running businesses, and leading te…

1
Ep 6: Alan Thompson Embodies the American Success Story 36:31

5M ago36:31

36:31

The host of Evolving Waves, Alan Thompson, switches seats and takes center stage as a guest to walk us all through his story of becoming a self-made business success. The path to successful entrepreneurism is an up-and-down roller coaster. Alan launched multiple businesses over the last 2 decades and learned numerous lessons along the way that he s…

1
#210 – Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals 3:21:03

5M ago3:21:03

3:21:03

"I really don’t want to give the impression that I think it is easy to make predictable, controlled, safe interventions in wild systems where there are many species interacting. I don’t think it’s easy, but I don’t see any reason to think that it’s impossible. And I think we have been making progress. I think there’s every reason to think that if w…

1
#209 – Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit 1:22:08

5M ago1:22:08

1:22:08

One OpenAI critic calls it “the theft of at least the millennium and quite possibly all of human history.” Are they right? Back in 2015 OpenAI was but a humble nonprofit. That nonprofit started a for-profit, OpenAI LLC, but made sure to retain ownership and control. But that for-profit, having become a tech giant with vast staffing and investment, …

1
#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world 2:22:03

6M ago2:22:03

2:22:03

"I think stories are the way we shift the Overton window — so widen the range of things that are acceptable for policy and palatable to the public. Almost by definition, a lot of things that are going to be really important and shape the future are not in the Overton window, because they sound weird and off-putting and very futuristic. But I think …

1
More Evolving Waves coming soon... 8:02

6M ago8:02

8:02

Evolving Waves host Alan Thompson and producer Neil Shulman give a quick update on the show, and tease some of the fascinating stories to come.By Stingray Branding

1
#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead 2:58:39

6M ago2:58:39

2:58:39

"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I’m going to take a bunch of bets. I’m going to take some risky bets that have really high upside.” And this is a winning strategy in life, but maybe it’s not a winning strategy for any given hand. So …

1
Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests 1:35:39

6M ago1:35:39

1:35:39

With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to them. Links to learn more and full transcript. After hearing 8 former guests’ insights, Luisa and Rob chat about: Which of these resonate the most with…

1
#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness 2:33:50

6M ago2:33:50

2:33:50

"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw [white and gold]. It turns out there’s individual differences in how brains take into account ambient light. Colour is one example where it’s pretty clear that what we experience is a kind of inference: it’s the brain’s best guess about what’s going…

1
How much does a vote matter? (Article) 32:32

6M ago32:32

32:32

If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote: The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome. How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others. He then discusses a couple of the best arguments against voting in…

1
#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do 3:11:05

6M ago3:11:05

3:11:05

"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue triangle, this fish will receive food, but nothing will be delivered in the other tank. So we have a prosocial choice and antisocial choice. When there is …

1
#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism 1:57:48

7M ago1:57:48

1:57:48

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transcript. On the Edge explores a cultural grouping Nate dubs “the River” — made up of people who are analytical, competitive, quantitatively minded, risk…

1
#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation 1:25:09

7M ago1:25:09

1:25:09

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you sort of sum to try to work out the total… And I came to think that something like that will be applicable in some of the animal cases as well… There …

1
Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame 1:36:00

7M ago1:36:00

1:36:00

In this episode from our second show, 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Keiran Harris chat about the consequences of letting go of enduring guilt, shame, anger, and pride. Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript. They cover: Keiran’s views on free will, and how he came to hold them What it’s like not experiencing sustained guilt, sh…

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#202 – Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science 2:20:26

8M ago2:20:26

2:20:26

"For every far-out idea that turns out to be true, there were probably hundreds that were simply crackpot ideas. In general, [science] advances building on the knowledge we have, and seeing what the next questions are, and then getting to the next stage and the next stage and so on. And occasionally there’ll be revolutionary ideas which will really…

1
#201 – Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet 2:01:43

8M ago2:01:43

2:01:43

"Perception is quite difficult with cameras: even if you have a stereo camera, you still can’t really build a map of where everything is in space. It’s just very difficult. And I know that sounds surprising, because humans are very good at this. In fact, even with one eye, we can navigate and we can clear the dinner table. But it seems that we’re b…

1
#200 – Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks 2:49:24

8M ago2:49:24

2:49:24

"It’s very hard to find examples where people say, 'I’m starting from this point. I’m starting from this belief.' So we wanted to make that very legible to people. We wanted to say, 'Experts think this; accurate forecasters think this.' They might both be wrong, but we can at least start from here and figure out where we’re coming into a discussion…

1
#199 – Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy 1:12:37

8M ago1:12:37

1:12:37

"I do think that there is a really significant sentiment among parts of the opposition that it’s not really just that this bill itself is that bad or extreme — when you really drill into it, it feels like one of those things where you read it and it’s like, 'This is the thing that everyone is screaming about?' I think it’s a pretty modest bill in a…

1
#198 – Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects 3:48:12

8M ago3:48:12

3:48:12

"This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people. So people have pet…

1
#197 – Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task 2:29:26

9M ago2:29:26

2:29:26

The three biggest AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind — have now all released policies designed to make their AI models less likely to go rogue or cause catastrophic damage as they approach, and eventually exceed, human capabilities. Are they good enough? That’s what host Rob Wiblin tries to hash out in this interview (recorded May 30) w…

1
#196 – Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter 2:01:50

9M ago2:01:50

2:01:50

"In the 1980s, it was still apparently common to perform surgery on newborn babies without anaesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic. This led to appalling cases, and to public outcry, and to campaigns to change clinical practice. And as soon as [some courageous scientists] looked for evidence, it showed that this practice was completely indefensib…

1
#195 – Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them 2:08:29

9M ago2:08:29

2:08:29

"Computational systems have literally millions of physical and conceptual components, and around 98% of them are embedded into your infrastructure without you ever having heard of them. And an inordinate amount of them can lead to a catastrophic failure of your security assumptions. And because of this, the Iranian secret nuclear programme failed t…

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#194 – Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government 3:04:18

9M ago3:04:18

3:04:18

"If you’re a power that is an island and that goes by sea, then you’re more likely to do things like valuing freedom, being democratic, being pro-foreigner, being open-minded, being interested in trade. If you are on the Mongolian steppes, then your entire mindset is kill or be killed, conquer or be conquered … the breeding ground for basically eve…

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Ep 5: Capturing Empowerment: Diandra's Journey to Boudoir Photographer 36:32

10M ago36:32

36:32

Diandra McNaire's inspiring journey from automotive to self-employed boudoir photographer in Charleston showcases how passion and perseverance can lead to success. Overcoming industry challenges through a focus on unique style and branding, she pivoted during COVID to meet a surge in demand by transitioning her studio. Diandra's work not only empow…

1
#193 – Sihao Huang on the risk that US–China AI competition leads to war 2:23:34

10M ago2:23:34

2:23:34

"You don’t necessarily need world-leading compute to create highly risky AI systems. The biggest biological design tools right now, like AlphaFold’s, are orders of magnitude smaller in terms of compute requirements than the frontier large language models. And China has the compute to train these systems. And if you’re, for instance, building a cybe…

1
EP 4: Pixie Paula, a Spirited Success: Leading Women in the Distillery Industry 50:35

10M ago50:35

50:35

Pixie Pala, a trailblazing leader in the spirits industry, shares her journey of revitalizing a struggling distillery in Charleston amidst gender challenges. She underscores the value of financial empowerment for women and sheds light on her charitable initiatives. Emphasizing the significance of women-owned businesses, Pixie discusses her path in …

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