Previous episodes
One choice for each day. No ranking, no infinite feed — just past conversations that earned our attention.
02
August 2, 2026
Search Engine · Kashmir Hill · 61 min
PJ Vogt and journalist Kashmir Hill trace the strange, largely unregulated rise of facial search engines back to one mysterious first builder. It's an investigation that manages to be gripping without sensationalism, and it leaves you with a genuinely unresolved ethical question rather than an easy verdict. This is narrative journalism at its most patient.
03
August 1, 2026
Hidden Brain · Matthew Walker · 36 min
Sleep scientist Matthew Walker explains why the average adult's habit of trading sleep for productivity is a quiet act of self-sabotage. The conversation moves past generic advice into what actually happens in a dreaming brain and why it matters for memory, mood and health. It's the rare health segment that changes behavior without moralizing.
04
July 31, 2026
EconTalk · J. Doyne Farmer · 65 min
Physicist J. Doyne Farmer argues that standard economic models miss what chaos theory and agent-based simulation can capture about real human behavior. Russ Roberts pushes back throughout, which keeps the conversation honest rather than one-sided. It's a genuine debate about what economics is even trying to predict.
05
July 30, 2026
Acquired · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal · 119 min
Long before Nvidia became a trillion-dollar AI bellwether, it was a scrappy graphics chip company that nearly died more than once. Ben and David trace those near-collapses and the stubborn technical bets that eventually paid off, which makes today's AI boom look far less inevitable and far more earned. It's a masterclass in how founders survive years of being almost wrong.
06
July 29, 2026
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · David Chalmers · 82 min
David Chalmers coined the term 'the hard problem of consciousness,' and here he and Sean Carroll spend an unhurried hour testing where physicalist explanations of the mind actually break down. The conversation is rigorous without being dense, and it treats simulation theory seriously rather than as a gimmick. Few philosophy-of-mind conversations manage to be both this careful and this fun.
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