Category: General Interests

Physicist and entrepreneur Dr. Steve Hsu has done extensive research in the field of computational genomics. He joins us to talk about the present and future of genetic engineering, as well as the thorny ethical questions raised by this line of work.

Joel Sercel is an expert in engineering. Today he is the president and CEO of Trans Astronautica, where he works to make asteroid mining and manufacturing in space a reality.

Thomas and Trent look back on 100 episodes of the Futurati Podcast--and turn the video on for the first time ever! Listen to the end for a lightning round on questions that have come up often in the past 3 years.

Money has a long history, beginning with barter and leading all the way to your credit card. Kirk Hutchison founded Volt Protocol because he believes the next era of money is deflationary and disintermediated.

Whether it's pondering the mysteries of life while watching a sunrise or reasoning in great detail about how a new technology will change the world, there is something unique about the human capacity to imagine the future. Byron Reese has just written a book exploring where this capacity come from and what it means.

It's become commonplace to hear politicians and commentators bemoaning the energy expenditure of bitcoin mining, but an emerging group of scholars has begun arguing that bitcoin mining has certain properties that make it ideal for subsidizing renewable energies. Troy Cross is one of these scholars, and he walks us through his reasoning.

Like many others, Jack Ronaldi was originally dismissive of bitcoin because of his background in economics, finance, and banking. But gradually he became a true believer, and today he writes and thinks about bitcoin's transformative potential, as well as the ways in which its vulnerabilities can be fixed.

Robin Hanson is associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has pioneered concepts like futures markets, the great filter, and grabby aliens which have shaped thinking on problems ranging from the Fermi Paradox to governance.

Steven Kotler is one of the world’s foremost experts on human peak performance and the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books. He joins us to discuss his latest novel, "The Devil's Dictionary."