PODCAST

Dwarkesh Podcast

Dwarkesh Patel

Deeply researched interviews www.dwarkesh.com

technology

All Episodes

68:05

The surprising economics of the meat industry – Lewis...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/08/07

A deep dive with Lewis Bollard, who leads Open Philanthropy’s strategy for Farm Animal Welfare, on the surprising economics of the meat industry.Why is factory farming so efficient? How can we make the lives of the 23+ billion animals living on factory farms more bearable? How far off are the moonshots (e.g., brainless chickens, cultivated meats, etc.) to end this mass suffering? And why does the meat industry have such a surprising amount of political influence?For decades, innovation in the meat

115:37

Sarah Paine: How Imperial Japan Defeated Tsarist...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/07/25

After my last lecture series with Sarah Paine ended, I still had so many questions. I knew we’d only scratched the surface of Sarah’s scholarship, so I immediately invited her back for another series: she graciously agreed, and we’ll be releasing the results online over the coming weeks and months!This first lecture is focused on the balance of power in East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Specifically, how did Japan (population 47M) defeat China (400M) and Russia (130M) to become Asia's

132:41

Stephen Kotkin — How Do We Explain Stalin?

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/07/10

The Stephen Kotkin episode. Kotkin is arguably the world’s foremost expert on Joseph Stalin and has written a massive 2-volume biography of Stalin (with a 3rd volume in the works).No other individual had more of a profound impact on the 20th century than Stalin. He held the power of life and death over every single person across 11 time zones, and he killed tens of millions of people, utterly consumed by an ideology aimed at building paradise on Earth.And, he was one half of the biggest and most

14:01

Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/07/03

I’ve had a lot of discussions on my podcast where we haggle out timelines to AGI. Some guests think it’s 20 years away - others 2 years. Here’s an audio version of where my thoughts stand as of June 2025. If you want to read the original post, you can check it out here. Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

93:45

Godfather of Synthetic Bio on De-Aging,...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/06/26

George Church is the godfather of modern synthetic biology and has been involved with basically every major biotech breakthrough in the last few decades.Professor Church thinks that these improvements (e.g., orders of magnitude decrease in sequencing & synthesis costs, precise gene editing tools like CRISPR, AlphaFold-type AIs, & the ability to conduct massively parallel multiplex experiments) have put us on the verge of some massive payoffs: de-aging, de-extinction, biobots that combine the best of

146:43

China’s Manufacturing Dominance: State Directives &...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/06/19

Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Dragonomics, and author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know." It's the most useful, detailed resource I've found of how China actually works.On this episode, we discuss how China achieved high-tech manufacturing dominance, and where they'll go from here. By Arthur’s account, the Chinese government is like a giant VC fund: they decide on key priorities and then spend hundreds of billions of

96:04

“China’s digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/06/12

Ken Rogoff is the former chief economist of the IMF, a professor of Economics at Harvard, and author of the newly released Our Dollar, Your Problem and This Time is Different.On this episode, Ken predicts that, within the next decade, the US will have a debt-induced inflation crisis, but not a Japan-type financial crisis (the latter is much worse, and can make a country poorer for generations).Ken also explains how China is trapped: in order to solve their current problems, they’ll keep leaning on

89:09

Xi Jinping’s paranoid approach to AGI, debt crisis, &...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/05/29

On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local debt crisis, the CCP’s views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more.Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or

144:01

How Does Claude 4 Think? — Sholto Douglas & Trenton...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/05/22

New episode with my good friends Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken. Sholto focuses on scaling RL and Trenton researches mechanistic interpretability, both at Anthropic.We talk through what’s changed in the last year of AI research; the new RL regime and how far it can scale; how to trace a model’s thoughts; and how countries, workers, and students should prepare for AGI.See you next year for v3. Here’s last year’s episode, btw. Enjoy!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or

10:18

The Last Human CEO

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/05/01

Based on my essay about AI firms.Huge thanks to Petr and his team for bringing this to life!Watch on YouTube.Thanks to Google for sponsoring. We used their Veo 2 model to make this entire video—it generated everything from the photorealistic humans to the claymation octopuses. If you’re a Gemini Advanced user, you can try Veo 2 now in the Gemini app. Just select Veo 2 in the dropdown, and type your video idea in the prompt bar. Get started today by going to gemini.google.com.To sponsor a future

75:23

Mark Zuckerberg – Llama 4, DeepSeek, Trump, AI...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/04/29

Zuck on:* Llama 4, benchmark gaming* Intelligence explosion, business models for AGI* DeepSeek/China, export controls, & Trump* Orion glasses, AI relationships, and preventing reward-hacking from our tech.Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.----------SPONSORS* Scale is building the infrastructure for safer, smarter AI. Scale’s Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, while their public leaderboards help assess model capabilities. They

83:28

Why Rome Actually Fell: Plagues, Slavery, & Ice Age —...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/04/24

800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the population in many areas.Also, back-to-back volcanic eruptions caused a mini Ice Age, leaving Rome devastated by famine and disease.I chatted with historian Kyle Harper about this and much else:* Rome as a massive slave society* Why humans are more disease-prone than other animals* How agriculture made us physically smaller (Caesar at 5'5" was considered tall)Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or

188:28

AGI is Still 30 Years Away — Ege Erdil & Tamay Besiroglu

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/04/17

Ege Erdil and Tamay Besiroglu have 2045+ timelines, think the whole "alignment" framing is wrong, don't think an intelligence explosion is plausible, but are convinced we'll see explosive economic growth (economy literally doubling every year or two).This discussion offers a totally different scenario than my recent interview with Scott and Daniel.Ege and Tamay are the co-founders of Mechanize, a startup dedicated to fully automating work. Before founding Mechanize, Ege and Tamay worked on AI

184:26

2027 Intelligence Explosion: Month-by-Month Model —...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/04/03

Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion.Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten. Daniel Kokotajlo resigned from OpenAI in 2024, rejecting a non-disparagement clause and risking millions in equity to speak out about AI safety.We discuss misaligned hive minds, Xi and Trump waking up, and automated Ilyas researching AI progress.I came in skeptical, but I learned a tremendous amount by bouncing my

49:33

AMA ft. Sholto & Trenton: New Book, Career Advice...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/03/25

I recorded an AMA! I had a blast chatting with my friends Trenton Bricken and Sholto Douglas. We discussed my new book, career advice given AGI, how I pick guests, how I research for the show, and some other nonsense.My book, “The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025” is available in digital format now. Preorders for the print version are also open!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Book launch announcement(0:04:57) - AI models not making connections

112:59

Joseph Henrich – Why Humans Survived and Smarter...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/03/12

Humans have not succeeded because of our raw intelligence.Marooned European explorers regularly starved to death in areas where foragers thrived for 1000s of years.I’ve always found this cultural evolution deeply mysterious.How do you discover the 10 steps for processing cassava so it won’t give you cyanide poisoning simply by trial and error?Has the human brain declined in size over the last 10,000 years because we outsourced cultural evolution to a larger collective brain?The most interesting part

19:31

Notes on China

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/03/05

I’m so excited with how this visualization of Notes on China turned out. Petr, thank you for such beautiful watercolor artwork. More to come!Watch on YouTube.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:00:32) - Scale(0:05:50) - Vibes(0:11:14) - Youngsters(0:14:27) - Tech & AI(0:15:47) - Hearts & Minds(0:17:07) - On Travel Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

76:10

Satya Nadella – Microsoft’s AGI Plan & Quantum...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/02/19

Satya Nadella on:- Why he doesn’t believe in AGI but does believe in 10% economic growth,- Microsoft’s new topological qubit breakthrough and gaming world models,- Whether Office commoditizes LLMs or the other way around,Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.SponsorsScale partners with major AI labs like Meta, Google Deepmind, and OpenAI. Through Scale’s Data Foundry, labs get access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you’re an

134:43

Jeff Dean & Noam Shazeer – 25 years at Google: from...

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/02/12

This week I welcome on the show two of the most important technologists ever, in any field.Jeff Dean is Google's Chief Scientist, and through 25 years at the company, has worked on basically the most transformative systems in modern computing: from MapReduce, BigTable, Tensorflow, AlphaChip, to Gemini.Noam Shazeer invented or co-invented all the main architectures and techniques that are used for modern LLMs: from the Transformer itself, to Mixture of Experts, to Mesh Tensorflow, to Gemini and many

108:14

Sarah Paine Episode 3: How Mao Conquered China

Dwarkesh Podcast ·

2025/01/30

Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy!Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency?And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history’s worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"?In her

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