Previous episodes

Every good conversation,
still worth your time.

One choice for each day. Nothing to catch up on — browse if you like, or wait for tomorrow.

14

August 9, 2026

Matthew Walker on sleep, Part I: the dangers of poor sleep

The Peter Attia Drive · Matthew Walker · 1 hr 58 min

Two careful scientists taking their time with a subject most of us treat casually. There is no hype here and no product at the end, which is exactly why it changes behaviour more reliably than a book summary would.

12

August 7, 2026

Most of the universe is missing

Unexplainable · Byrd Pinkerton and Noam Hassenfeld · 29 min

A show built entirely around what scientists do not know, applied to the largest gap of all. It models something rare: curiosity that is comfortable ending without an answer.

11

August 6, 2026

Byzantium: Last of the Romans

Fall of Civilizations · Paul Cooper · 2 hr 4 min

Paul Cooper writes history the way a novelist writes a slow ending, and this is his most patient work: an empire that took a thousand years to fall, told without hurry and without hindsight cleverness. It is the rare long episode that never asks for your patience twice.

10

August 5, 2026

Children of the Magenta (Automation Paradox, pt. 1)

99% Invisible · Roman Mars and Katie Mingle · 34 min

Long before anyone argued about AI, aviation had already learned what happens to human skill when the machine does most of the work. This episode turns one flight into a quiet, unforgettable argument about the cost of handing over control.

09

August 4, 2026

Daniel Kahneman on Cutting Through the Noise

Conversations with Tyler · Daniel Kahneman · 56 min

A conversation with one of the few thinkers who changed how we understand our own minds, held by an interviewer who refuses to ask the obvious questions. Kahneman is unusually willing to say what he still does not know, and that honesty is the reason this hour keeps its value.

08

August 3, 2026

Savage Landscapes (with Cal Flyn)

EconTalk · Cal Flyn · 1 hr 2 min

Cal Flyn walks through the places humans abandoned and found them teeming with life. It reframes what we mean by ruin without ever tipping into easy optimism.

07

August 2, 2026

Should this creepy search engine exist?

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.

06

August 1, 2026

Eyes Wide Open: Part 2

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.

05

July 31, 2026

Chaos and Complexity Economics (with J. Doyne Farmer)

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.

04

July 30, 2026

Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

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.

03

July 29, 2026

David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation

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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