Interesting Times

The Trump administration wants to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence for scientific discovery. But can its plan succeed without prioritizing universities?
Guest host Tyler Cowen speaks with Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s top science and technology adviser, about the White House’s new blueprint for American innovation and what it means for the next generation of scientists.
00:00 Intro
00:54 Why American Science Is Broken
02:49 The Case for A New Model
04:49 Kratsios’s Funding Priorities
08:52 Kratsios’s Silicon Valley Background
10:53 The Role of Universities
16:31 Immigration’s Effect on Scientific Research
18:57 Who Controls Grantmaking?
25:20 A.I. Regulation and Safety Tools
36:03 Testing Models Before Release
39:19 Ten-Year Vision and Risks
43:21 A New Golden Age for Science
45:53 Closing and Credits
Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.



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Dwarkesh Patel is one of the most important voices in the artificial intelligence world. Deeply embedded in San Francisco’s tech community, he has interviewed nearly every tech chief executive at length.
This week’s guest host, Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, sits down with Mr. Patel to discuss why researchers are resigning, whether A.I. could become conscious and if he’ll ever get an A.I. girlfriend.
Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.
00:00 Intro
01:31 What Inspired the “Dwarkesh Podcast”
02:47 Documenting Wild Human History
04:18 What The Public Doesn’t Understand About A.I.
06:25 The Mood in San Francisco
06:51 Dwarkesh Didn’t See This Coming
09:08 Should More A.I. Researchers Resign?
11:09 Unreleased Frontier Models
13:26 Pausing A.I.
15:45 A.I. Psychosis & Consciousness
21:14 What Tech Bros Do for Fun
23:50 Bay Area Culture
24:06 A.I. Boyfriends v. Girlfriends
26:02 Are A.I. Therapists Good?
26:54 What Dwarkesh Got Wrong
27:44 What’s The Next Big Thing?
29:13 Robot Predictions
30:26 What Jobs Are Safe?
35:21 The Speed of A.I. Adoption
37:12 Milestones To Watch
42:58 What If 2035 Looks Normal?
44:39 Dwarkesh In 2045
46:27 Skepticism On A.I. Revenue
48:01 How Podcasting Has Changed Dwarkesh
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book?
As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, “The New Dark Ages.” He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world.
Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.
00:00 Intro
00:52 What Is Post-Literacy
02:05 The Data Behind the Decline
05:21 The Shift Toward Video
09:44 Why Reading Is Hard
10:45 Walter Ong on Oral vs. Literate Cultures
14:27 Tribal Politics and Emotion
18:21 The Reading Revolution
21:14 Literacy as an Engine for Democracy
25:15 Medieval Literary Culture
27:27 What We Can Learn the Medieval Era
30:13 Remembering Everything and Nothing
33:49 How Bukele Communicates Visually
37:04 Monarchy vs. Dictatorship
41:38 Is Postliteracy a Right-Wing Phenomenon?
43:29 Can We Resist the Slide?
46:33 Closing
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.


Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Nick Bostrom rose to prominence for predicting artificial intelligence doom more than a decade ago — garnering support from figures like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Bill Gates. But now he’s retreating from those warnings, focusing his attention on a more complex question: What if A.I. succeeds beyond humanity’s wildest imaginations? Will we be bored out of our minds? Are we too infantile to understand what’s coming?
Guest host Spencer Klavan, the associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books, presses Bostrom on the potential uses and abuses of superintelligence, rationalist ethics and what makes us human.
Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.
00:00 Intro
01:07 What is P(doom)?
04:44 Bostrom’s Doomsday Scenarios
06:14 Vulnerable World Hypothesis
08:27 The Best-Case Scenario of Superintelligence
12:37 The Problems We Can’t Solve in Utopia
14:47 Paths to Superintelligence
17:02 What Kind of Utopia Do We Want to Live In?
21:56 The Values Worth Keeping in Utopia
32:42 Bostrom’s Influence on Effective Altruism
38:04 Are Existential Warnings Helpful?
43:52 The Trajectory of Humanity
46:51 Why Bostrom Wants Utopia
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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There’s a saying that comes to mind these days: May you live in interesting times. It’s understood to be a curse, even though it sounds like a blessing.
“Interesting Times With Ross Douthat” is a new weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion. Every Thursday, he will map the new world order through interviews and conversations. Answering questions like: What does our new political era really look like? What is the future of democracy around the world, with American empire in retreat? What happens to movies and books — all of culture — in our digital and A.I.-dominated age?
Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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