Palladium Podcast

Palladium Podcast 36: Isaac Wilks and Natalia Dashan on Ivy League Stagnation

Isaac Wilks and Natalia Dashan join Ash Milton to discuss the Ivy Leagues and elite culture. Topics include the future of Yale, the death of Skull and Bones, how universities maintain their power, and why ritual is a necessary part of education.

Isaac Wilks is an undergraduate at Yale University, studying political science and the Chinese language. He is interested in institution building, geopolitics, and urbanism. He can be found on Twitter at @wilks_isaac.

Natalia Dashan is an associate editor at Palladium Magazine. She graduated from Yale in 2016 with a B.S. in psychology. Follow her on Twitter at @nataliadashan.

Digital Salon with Jaan Tallinn: The Big Risks in AI

Founder, investor and philanthropist Jaan Tallinn joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss the frontier of artificial intelligence research and what an A.I. future means for humanity.

Jaan Tallinn is a founding engineer of Skype and Kazaa. He is a co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Future of Life Institute, and philanthropically supports other existential risk research organizations. Jaan is on the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, member of the High-Level Expert Group on AI at the European Commission, and has served on the Estonian President's Academic Advisory Board. He is also an active angel investor, a partner at Ambient Sound Investments, and a former investor director of the AI company DeepMind.

Palladium Podcast 35: Jeremiah Johnson on the Neoliberal Project

Jeremiah Johnson and Ash Milton discuss the Neoliberal Project. Topics include democratic peace theory, housing maximalism, the roots of institutional decay, and why the west coast is bad at politics.

Jeremiah Johnson is the co-founder of the Neoliberal Project, a partner organization of the Progressive Policy Institute. He also hosts discussions on policy and economics at the Neoliberal Podcast. The Neoliberal Project tweets @ne0liberal.

Digital Salon with Michael Shellenberger: Nuclear Power Is the Real Green Energy

Award-winning environmentalist and author Michael Shellenberger joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss ecomodernism, the history of the atomic age, and why nuclear is the real green energy.

On June 30, Harper Collins will publish Michael Shellenberger’s timely new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, which is available for pre-order on Amazon and has received strong pre-publication praise from Harvard’s Steven Pinker, Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes, and climate scientists Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley. Apocalypse Never is a comprehensive debunking of environmental misinformation about everything from climate change and rainforest destruction to nuclear energy and renewables.

Digital Salon with John Vervaeke: The Meaning Crisis

Professor John Vervaeke joins Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton to discuss the contemporary crisis of social meaning. We explore the specter of death during pandemic, how to surpass self-deception, and the role of community in creating meaning.

John Vervaeke is an assistant professor in cognitive psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto. His work centers around the relationship between science and spirituality and the meaning crisis. He is on Twitter at @vervaeke_john.

Palladium Podcast 34: Samuel Hammond on China, Tech Optimism, and America's Future

Ash Milton and Samuel Hammond discuss America, China, and the future. Topics include tech optimism, whether the Bay Area can remake American politics, whether China thinks like Confucius or Marx, and more.

Samuel Hammond is the director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center. He can be found on Twitter @hamandcheese.

Digital Salon 3: Coronavirus Insurance with Robin Hanson

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton hold a digital salon with Robin Hanson to discuss possible coronavirus insurance mechanisms, prediction markets, and ideology

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and influential writer. He is known for his challenging views on human motivations and biases, futurism and artificial intelligence, and information markets. He previously worked at Lockheed and NASA. He is the author of The Elephant in the Brain, about human cognitive biases, and the Age of Em, on the prospects for society after the development of computer-emulated human minds.

Palladium Podcast 33: Bitcoin as a Disciplinary Force

Fiat currency has made it easy for states to get away with unbalanced spending and hidden inflation. Nic Carter joins Wolf Tivy to discuss how Bitcoin disciplines monetary policy and can benefit American power.

Nic Carter is the founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on public blockchain projects. Prior to Castle Island, Nic Carter worked as Fidelity's first cryptoasset analyst. He holds an MSc in finance and investment from the University of Edinburgh and an MA in philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. He can be found on Twitter at @nic__carter.

Digital Salon 2: Here's How We Get to Mars

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton hold a digital salon with Robert Zubrin and a few select audience guests to discuss how humanity can settle Mars.

Robert Zubrin is President of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace R&D company located in Lakewood, Colorado. He is also the founder and President of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. Formerly a Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, he holds a Masters degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington. 

Zubrin is the inventor of several unique concepts for space propulsion and exploration, the author of over 200 published technical and non-technical papers in the field, and was a member of Lockheed Martin’s “scenario development team” charged with developing broad new strategies for space exploration. In that capacity, he was responsible for developing the "Mars Direct" mission plan, a strategy which by using Martian resources, allows a human Mars exploration program to be conducted at a cost 1/8th that previously estimated by NASA.

In addition to his many technical publications, Dr. Zubrin is the author of seven books, including The Case for Mars: How We Shall Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization, Mars on Earth: Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic, Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror, the humorous How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet, and Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

Palladium Podcast 32: We Need a Holistic Political Economy

Palladium editors Wolf Tivy, Ash Milton, and Matt Ellison discuss Ash's recent article on decentralization. They contemplate a new paradigm of renewed functionality in government and industry.