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PODCAST

Riskgaming

A podcast by venture capital firm Lux Capital on the opportunities and risks of science, technology, finance and the human condition. Hosted by Danny Crichton from our New York City studios.

technology

All Episodes

00:48:53

Intel, chips and America’s future

Riskgaming ·

2025/08/13

By now, we’re all familiar with the crisis that has faced America’s chip manufacturing industry. Intel remains the last bastion of homegrown chips (if we exempt new developments from TSMC and Samsung). Yet, Intel’s stock has been bludgeoned, down more than 55% over the past five years as Nvidia skyrocketed about 1,475% in the same period. What would it take to rebuild America’s chip capacity? Do we have a chance to build our own TSMC?That’s the question that Kyle Harrison has been asking. He’s a

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00:44:27

What’s next for European defense autonomy

Riskgaming ·

2025/08/07

There has been a massive influx of defense funding into Europe since Putin’s war on Ukraine started in early 2022. A sea change is underway, with Germany loosening its debt brake and countries from Poland and the United Kingdom to the Baltics all reseting their expectations for defense this century. But after several years, it’s time to take a retrospective look and ask, “What’s next?”To do that, host Danny Crichton talks with Eric Slesinger today. Eric is general partner of 201 Ventures, an

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00:51:32

The future of science in an age of spending cuts

Riskgaming ·

2025/07/30

Science feels under attack. The Trump administration has proposed budget cuts of up to one-third of all basic research funding, breaking a generations-long, bipartisan consensus that what is good for science is good for America. Even if not fully enacted by Congress, even the hint of cuts has already had an extraordinary effect on the perceptions of higher education and science leaders on America’s stability. Lux recently hosted a dinner with a group of these luminaries, and the general conclusion

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00:20:31

Can AI teach us critical thinking?

Riskgaming ·

2025/07/24

AI and education seem like a match made in heaven, and certainly, much work and dollars are being spent trying to bring the two together. As more and more people eschew reading and outsource deep thought to Deep Research though, do we still have a chance to build up our critical thinking skills?It’s an open question, and one that host Danny Crichton has been exploring this summer. In this episode, he narrates excerpts on the concepts of the psychology of decision making, risk-taking and dopamine to

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00:35:27

Finding a Third Way on the AI singularity

Riskgaming ·

2025/07/16

Our guest today, Mike Sexton, believes that the AI singularity has arrived, and somehow, it ended up “on page C3 in the newspaper.” What he’s getting at is that the tools we have at our fingertips today like ChatGPT, NotebookLM and others are already so diversely capable, we have reached a point of no return when it comes to future societal change. We need to get ahead of those changes, embrace them, and offer new paths for everyone to take advantage of these tools.Mike serves as the Senior Policy

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00:47:56

How Jane Jacobs got Americans stuck

Riskgaming ·

2025/07/09

Over the past few decades, an astonishing pattern has taken place: Americans no longer migrate. From a peak of roughly one third of the country moving cities in a single year, today, migration rates have declined and are now in line with the Old Continent of Europe. The dynamism of the American economy was predicated on all kinds of people seeking out work and building families, but now that mobility is gone — and we need to find out why.Yoni Appelbaum, a senior editor at The Atlantic, just

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00:35:35

What America can learn from the rebooting of Estonia

Riskgaming ·

2025/06/27

Estonia is a nation of 1.3 million people, situated in a dangerous neighborhood on the Baltic Sea. It gained its independence early in the 20th century, only for the Soviets to take the country by force. Estonia gained its independence again in 1991, and has since become one of the most digital-native countries in the world. How did a nation with a feared secret police become so open to the government digitizing data on every one of its citizens? And why did other former Soviet Republics not follow

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00:47:54

The relevant axis of political conflict is change...

Riskgaming ·

2025/06/20

Abundance has become the word of the year in politics, led by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book and a slew of articles and podcasts trailing in its wake. Everyone loves growth and prosperity of course, but what ultimately matters in local politics is organizing. To build the future in America’s cities, you’ve got to secure petitions, representation and votes, and that’s the subject of today’s show.Joining host Danny Crichton and Riskgaming director of programming Laurence Pevsner are Ryder

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00:41:36

Samuel Arbesman on his new book, The Magic of Code

Riskgaming ·

2025/06/10

It’s not every day that we get to fete the launch of a new book by one of our colleagues at Lux Capital, so today is a very special day. Lux’s scientist-in-residence, Sam Arbesman, just published his new book, “The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World―and Shapes Our Future.” It’s a deep dive into the wonderful conjuring that comes from coding computers, and Sam explores programming languages, spreadsheets, and how code bends reality all in a taut narrative. At its

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00:35:05

Can we ever defend against agricultural warfare?

Riskgaming ·

2025/06/06

Food is one of the great bedrocks of human existence. Given its primacy to survival, it has also increasingly become a locus for conflict, either due to famine or as an exploitable vulnerability of even the most powerful countries. Russia’s war on Ukraine made it clear that grain could be fought over in the battle for supremacy, with the whole world dependent on the outcome.Today, we have a special episode of the podcast. Our Riskgaming designer Ian Curtiss hosts Alicia Ellis, an Air Force veteran

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00:39:02

For America, is big or open best for AI models?

Riskgaming ·

2025/05/30

Since the launch of Project Stargate by OpenAI and the debut of DeepSeek’s V3 model, there has been a raging debate in global AI circles: what’s the balance between openness and scale when it comes to the competition for the frontiers of AI performance? More compute has traditionally led to better models, but V3 showed that it was possible to rapidly improve a model with less compute. At risk in the debate is nothing less than American dominance in the AI race.Jared Dunnmon is highly concerned about

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00:38:39

It’s really hard to get DC to understand Silicon Valley

Riskgaming ·

2025/05/23

The U.S. Congress and the executive branch have an extraordinary level of influence over all aspects of business. Yet, as businesses have become ever more complex, the gap in knowledge between legislators and regulators has dramatically increased. That pattern is even more evident when it comes to high-scale startups and the venture capital industry, a weird niche of the investment world that even other financiers often struggle to grok. So what do you do to help DC understand our little

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00:27:00

Remembering Daniel Kahneman on optimism and...

Riskgaming ·

2025/05/16

Last week, we recirculated one of my favorite episodes in the entire archive, our May 2022 lunch debate on risk, bias and decision-making with Nobel Prize Winner Danny Kahneman, World Series of Poker champion Annie Duke, legendary investment strategist Michael Maubaussin of Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, and our own founding managing partner Josh Wolfe. In last week’s episode, the group discussed the value of premortems, the possibility or impossibility of humans changing their minds and

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00:26:11

How to turn around America’s tech-industrial decline,...

Riskgaming ·

2025/05/08

Reindustrialization has been a persistent theme in Silicon Valley circles the past few years, and now it’s having its moment in the sun in Washington DC too. More and more policymakers, legislators and administrators have come to terms with a stark reality: America has left the means of production behind, and in the process, has surrendered some of the country’s most powerful advantages to its adversaries, namely China.This decline wasn’t inevitable, and neither will its renaissance. But with the

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00:25:53

Remembering Daniel Kahneman on Risk, Bias and...

Riskgaming ·

2025/04/30

This is a big week for us, since we officially re-launched the newsletter on our gorgeous new web address Riskgaming.com, which we are now hosting on Substack. You’ll find all of our archives there, as well as much easier tools to manage your subscription to our Dispatches, Event Announcements, our edited Interviews and after almost a decade, Lux Recommends.We’ve had thousands of new people subscribe and follow us over the past two years, and so I figured this re-launch week was also an opportune

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00:45:00

Europe needs national champions, now

Riskgaming ·

2025/04/25

Europe faces an existential crisis. Long an innovation, technology and manufacturing hub, its greatest companies and wider industries have been hit hard by competition from American tech giants like Google and Chinese manufacturing powerhouses like BYD. Multiple prominent reports have circulated about how the European Union can rapidly respond before its economy struggles even more (this week, Germany announced that its economy will not grow in 2025, for the third year in a row).Today, Marko Papic

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00:34:17

How can we make the internet fun again?

Riskgaming ·

2025/04/19

Something is rotten in the state of the internet. Social networks that were once meant to be entertaining diversions have become riven with vituperative political combat that leaves all but the most blinkered acolytes running for the safety of a funny YouTube channel. Bots swarm through the discourse, as do trolls and other bad actors. How did we let such a crucial communications medium become enshittified and can we build something else in its stead?Joining host Danny Crichton and Riskgaming

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00:49:04

Making shoes isn’t the right strategy

Riskgaming ·

2025/04/12

The markets have massively gyrated the past few weeks as hourly pronouncements from the White House and Mar-a-Lago seize investors with terror or relieve them of stress. At the heart of the vociferous debate around tariffs and trade is nothing less than the future economy of the United States. What should be built here? What should we outsource? Who pays for that new economic structure?Joining host Danny Crichton and Riskgaming director of programming Laurence Pevsner is Josh Zoffer. Josh was

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00:32:37

The hyper-competition of U.S.-China trade relations

Riskgaming ·

2025/04/04

With the launch of President Trump’s trade war this week, few countries are more at risk than China. Faced with a sudden and massive expansion of tariffs as well as changes to the de minimis parcel rule, the export-led development model that has led China to great wealth is now under serious threat. What should we learn from the past of U.S.-China relations in order to understand their future?Joining host Danny Crichton and Riskgaming director of programming Laurence Pevsner are Neil Thomas and Kate

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00:41:56

“You can cause a lot of havoc with a cell phone and a...

Riskgaming ·

2025/03/28

Chaos is the rule of the day, with markets, companies, governments and individuals being rapidly buffeted by events and change. Technology is exacerbating that chaos by offering asymmetric leverage to more people. On the positive side, technologies like AI and drones can drastically improve the productivity of workers and artists to perform their craft, benefiting us all. But there is a dark side as well: extremists are early adopters of new technologies that afford them the ability to maximize

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184 results

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