PODCAST

The Students

Weapons-grade political philosophy.

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

01:36:28

Renan Santos — How We Built The Mission Party

The Students ·

2026/10/06

Renan Santos tells how he built the Free Brazil Movement and worked out the doctrine, mobilized it into Brazil's Mission Party, and how the lessons of building an outsider movement apply in America and around the world.

00:45:25

What Americans Should Learn From Brazil's Mission...

The Students ·

2026/10/01

The Mission Party has risen by mobilizing a young, sharp, online demographic which was traditionally checked out of politics. Victor Antoun explains how.

01:22:29

You Cannot Predict the Singularity

The Students ·

2026/09/29

Ben Landau-Taylor argues that techno-singularitarian predictions are unfounded, while Wolf Tivy defends his xenohumanism program. They cover why theology is inevitable, and why the dominant theology keeps predicting techno-apocalypses.

01:11:07

When AIs Pay Their Own Bills — DC Posch

The Students ·

2026/09/26

DC Posch and Wolf Tivy discuss the coming of economically self-sufficient AI—how these "digital replicants" could navigate the ecology of the digital market, the selection pressures on their reproduction, and how they could organize themselves.============================DC on Twitter: https://x.com/dcposchWolf on Twitter: https://x.com/wolftivyFollow The Students on Substack to receive email alerts for new episodes and events: https://www.thestudentsmedia.com/

00:38:47

How To Turn Your Research Obsession Into A Career —...

The Students ·

2026/09/22

Elizabeth Van Nostrand tells Ben Landau-Taylor how she turned her idiosyncratic interests into a career as a professional research hobo, and the business lessons she learned along the way.

01:35:23

We Need A Theory Of Consciousness To Navigate The...

The Students ·

2026/09/20

Michael Edward Johnson and Wolf Tivy get into the weeds on consciousness. What type of theory is the "theory of consciousness" that so many people are searching for, and what is it trying to explain? How will we know when we have it?

01:22:31

How Nations Fight Over Industry — Ian Fletcher

The Students ·

2026/09/15

Ian Fletcher describes the fundamentals of industrial policy, how economic theorists ignore the practice of successful businesses and successfully industrializing nations, and why the US has the institutions it needs for strong industrial policy.

00:32:22

Where New Industries Come From: Ben Landau-Taylor...

The Students ·

2026/09/13

Sober, risk-averse, rational businessmen make great captains of industry—in established industries which someone else already built. But the new industries which drive progress come from wild half-mad ideologues. This lecture covers the psychology of the men behind the major breakthroughs, from the steam engine to the large language model.

00:55:11

Samo Burja — How Bureaucracy Defeated Democracy

The Students ·

2026/09/12

Samo Burja and Ben Landau-Taylor cover bureaucracy—why the golden age of bureaucracies worked so well in the early 20th century, how bureaucratic class interest overcomes checks and balances, and bureaucracy's role in today's Western governments.

02:09:08

Richard Ngo — What Makes Hierarchy Legitimate (Human...

The Students ·

2026/09/08

Richard Ngo argues against Wolf Tivy’s xenohumanism lecture. (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XmEjgRaBpp3OxDrV3WXLD) What is the moral ground for cooperation and hierarchy? We need the answer to build a good society today, or to build a good AI future tomorrow.

01:46:10

Stop Waiting For AGI And Go To Space

The Students ·

2026/09/04

The long-awaited Marko Jukic episode. We all expect AGI to colonize the stars because it's the obvious thing any healthy expanding system does naturally. So why aren't we? Marko explains the elaborate cope keeping us on Earth.

00:46:35

Where "Open Source" Came From

The Students ·

2026/09/01

The internet can feel like a part of the landscape, but all our software was intelligently designed—and so were the social systems which produce that software. Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute tells Ben Landau-Taylor about the struggle to define "open source software".

01:12:03

The Problem Of Humanity: Wolf Tivy lecture

The Students ·

2026/08/30

Our concepts of "humanity" and "humanitarianism" are usually taken as the eternal bedrock of morality. Today, artificial intelligence raises the prospect of "posthumanity", and magnates and regulators discuss what “humanity should do” about this. But in fact, the concept of "humanity" is a relatively recent and flimsy creation of the postwar political order. We need to abandon it to find our place in the future.

01:15:48

Will Technocapital Outlive Our Civilization?

The Students ·

2026/08/28

Samo Burja and Wolf Tivy discuss the forces raising our civilization higher vs the forces pulling it down. Is techno-industrial progress made of social and intellectual components which will take it down when they go, or can it outgrow the decay?

02:08:08

Joscha Bach — Consciousness Builds the Mind

The Students ·

2026/08/25

Joscha Bach and Wolf Tivy discuss how consciousness may be a convergent strategy for organizing both human and machine minds, whether powerful AI minds will resolve conflicts by merging or by fighting each other, and much more.

01:16:35

The Dutch Revolt: Jonathan Wallis lecture

The Students ·

2026/08/23

In 1572 twelve Dutch cities - less than a million people - began a war for independence against a global superpower and won. Over the next century they went toe-to-toe with the Spanish, English, and French and built the institutions which have defined the modern world. Jonathan Wallis explains how.

00:50:02

Someone Had To Build Your Community — Jonathan Wallis

The Students ·

2026/08/21

Intellectual activity, like any complex activity, can only take place in a rich social fabric. Jonathan Wallis and Ben Landau-Taylor talk about how to build community and why it's worthwhile.

00:50:23

Why Science Slowed Down — Samo Burja

The Students ·

2026/08/18

Scientific breakthroughs are much rarer today than the glory days of the early 1900s. Samo Burja and Ben Landau-Taylor discuss how the WWII-era centralization of science divorced theorists from the ideological—if not outright mystical—cult of Truth.

01:23:21

We Can Do Better Than "Human Values" — Ginevra Davis

The Students ·

2026/08/17

Philosophers talk of aligning AI to “human values”. This supposes there is no objective value, only the arbitrary values that humans happened to land on. Ginevra Davis and Wolf Tivy argue there is a deeper well of value in material reality.

01:20:46

Oliver Habryka — Good Discourse Needs Leadership

The Students ·

2026/08/12

Oliver Habryka joins Wolf Tivy to tell how he revived LessWrong after it nearly died, built the Lighthaven campus, and launched his $35m/quarter project to reform grantmaking.

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