The JSP is a weekly exploration of questions that are both important and overlooked. Joe Walker, a former political speechwriter helping to build a Y Combinator-backed startup, hosts refreshingly in-depth conversations. Topics cover capitalism, science, business, culture and politics. Guests include Nobel laureates, former prime ministers, authors, entrepreneurs, investors and thought-leaders. Australia's best long-form podcast. A space for curious contrarians.
2023 Retrospective — A Listener Interviews Me
In this special episode, the tables are turned as I'm interviewed by a listener of the show, DJ Thornton from Sydney. We reflect on the progress of the show in 2023, what I learned from this year's guests, and what's in store for 2024.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
12/29/2023 • 1 hour, 47 minutes, 47 seconds
David Deutsch & Steven Pinker (First Ever Public Dialogue) — AGI, P(Doom), & The Enemies of Progress
At a time when the Enlightenment is under attack from without and within, I bring together two of the most thoughtful defenders of progress and reason, for their first ever public dialogue.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I think of him as providing the strongest empirical defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book Enlightenment Now).
David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and the father of quantum computing. I think of him as having produced the most compelling first principles defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book The Beginning of Infinity).
Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/153-deutsch-pinker-dialogue.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
12/19/2023 • 1 hour, 55 minutes, 40 seconds
Shruti Rajagopalan — On Spotting Underrated Talent, And Making Sense of Rising India
Shruti Rajagopalan is an Indian-American economist who leads the Indian political economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at Mercatus. She hosts the Ideas of India podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
11/28/2023 • 2 hours, 45 minutes
Monetary Iatrogenesis — Raghuram Rajan
What were the deep causes of the global financial crisis and great recession? Has unconventional monetary policy in the wake of the crisis done more harm than good? And should monetary policy target financial stability?
I discuss these questions and more with Indian economist and Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Raghuram Rajan.
Raghuram Rajan was chief economist at the IMF from 2003 to 2006, and from 2013 to 2016 he was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As RBI Governor, he notably introduced India's inflation-targeting scheme, among many other achievements.
Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/151-raghuram-rajanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
11/1/2023 • 1 hour, 51 minutes, 50 seconds
Moral Truths and Moral Secrets — Peter Singer
Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as the world's most influential living philosopher.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com
Episode recorded on 26 April 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
9/19/2023 • 1 hour, 54 minutes, 40 seconds
#149: Why Societies Fall Apart (And Why the US May Be Next) — Peter Turchin
Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist and one of the founders of cliodynamics — a new, cross-disciplinary field that applies mathematics and big data to test historical theories.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
8/30/2023 • 1 hour, 41 minutes, 45 seconds
#148: Constructing the Computational Paradigm — Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram is a physicist, computer scientist and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and the author of A New Kind of Science.
Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
8/16/2023 • 4 hours, 24 minutes, 6 seconds
#147: Forging the mRNA Revolution — Katalin Karikó
Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist. She is one of the inventors of mRNA technology.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.com.
Episode recorded on 15 February 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
8/1/2023 • 2 hours, 3 minutes, 50 seconds
#146: The Making of the Atomic Bomb — Richard Rhodes
Richard Rhodes is an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
7/25/2023 • 3 hours, 42 minutes, 20 seconds
#145: An Economic Odyssey — Ken Henry
Dr Ken Henry is an Australian economist who served as Secretary of Australia's Treasury from 2001 to 2011. He was instrumental in helping Australia avoid recession during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — Australia was the only major advanced economy to do so.
Full transcript available at: thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
5/9/2023 • 4 hours, 35 minutes, 9 seconds
#144: The Fine Line Between Science and Fiction — Palmer Luckey
Palmer Luckey is an American tech entrepreneur and billionaire. He has founded two companies: Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014), and Anduril (recently valued at $8.5 billion). He has been described as the real-life Tony Stark.
Full transcript available at: www.thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
4/25/2023 • 1 hour, 39 minutes, 19 seconds
#143: Dyads, And Other Mysteries — Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman is widely regarded as the most influential psychologist alive. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002) for his work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, much of it done jointly with his late collaborator Amos Tversky. He is the author of the bestselling books Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein).
Full transcript available at: thejspod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
