Bretton Goods

I spoke to Pramit Bhattacharya an independent data journalist about India's statistical system. We talked about How did Indian statisticians adapt their statistical methods to account for India's informal sector? How are India's GDP numbers constructed? Why it's so hard to outright manipulate GDP numbers The case for optimism

I talked with Harry Law of the University of Cambridge and Google DeepMind about AI regulation We talked about Me vs Harry on open source AI regulation Being humble when regulating AI Why a "Manhattan Project for X" is overrated

I spoke with Derek Wong about the adaptive markets hypothesis, macro investing and investing in cryptocurrency markets We talk about Why investors should consider the financial markets as a complex adaptive system How investing in China is very different from investing in the West How he invests in crypto without fundamental anchors

I spoke with Devashish Dhar, the author of the excellent book India's Blind Spot which talks about India's urbanisation crisis and solutions to it. We talk about Why does India have a much lower reported rate of urbanisation than the rest of the world? Explaining the global bias against cities “Extremely high levels of traffic is caused by poor land policy” Why are there so many floods in Indian cities? How to climate-proof Indian cities “India’s biggest unfulfilled promise is local government” and much more!

I interviewed one of the most interesting thinkers today, Tyler Cowen. We talked about Why there are such few Singaporean famous people What Singapore can do to get more weird Why he's sceptical of an AI-driven singularity What happens to kids in a post-GPT world What happens to public intellectuals in a post-GPT world Why he's optimistic on Kenyan economic growth And so much more!

I spoke to Rohit Krishnan the author of the blog Strange Loop Canon about why he is sceptical about the idea that AI will kill us all We talked about Why he’s sceptical of AI regulation proposals Why AI “timelines” are not as meaningful as you think AI deployment is harder than you think! The value of incrementalism in AI policy Why he thinks instrumental convergence is unlikely to happen

I spoke to Soham Sankaran who runs PopVax, an Indian mRNA vaccine company. Their goal is to build low-cost broadly-protective vaccines to protect against the entire sarbecovirus species. Read Soham's experience here (https://chronicles.popvax.com/p/three-meetings-and-six-million-funerals) as a complement to this episode. Also check out their jobs page (https://jobs.popvax.com/) for opportunities. This episode includes How he started PopVax and (went bankrupt in the process) Why there hasn't been a successful Indian mRNA vaccine yet Why developing countries can't afford drugs for rare diseases What they're doing to fix it Their biggest constraints

I talked to Dwarkesh Patel of the Lunar Society Podcast about many topics. We talked about: Why do AI researchers and rationalists disagree about existential risk? What would happen if Robert Moses ran San Francisco? Is localism overrated? What does Effective Altruism get right and wrong? Which politicians would he like to interview

I talked to Faris Abdurrachman about Indonesia and it's nickel boom. We talked specifically about Why Indonesia banned exports of raw nickel Who gets the value from nickel exports Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund

I spoke to Kartik Akileswaran who runs Growth Teams - an initiative which helps build state capacity for economic growth in developing countries. We talked about - Why implementation is a binding constraint for economic policy - How industrial policy helps reduce information constraints for investors - Underrated growth reforms

I talked to Anupam Manur, a professor of economics about India's trade policy before 1991. We talked about: The scarcity mindset about foreign exchange reserves The controversial 1966 devaluation How did the pre-1991 import licensing system work? “The financial account was almost non existent” “Hindustan Motors and Toyota were set up at the same time but in 15 years Toyota sold 280 times the cars” “Productivity growth was almost absent before 1991”

I spoke to Professor Richard Jones, about how science funding in the UK could improve. Some interesting questions we talked about are “Penny wise, pound foolish” in science funding Creating markets for technological advances How he’d invest a billion £ to accelerate scientific innovation?

I talked to Tiago Santos, a diplomat, about his book Why Not Parliamentarism. Tiago and I explore some questions here What makes parliamentary democracies superior to presidential ones? The creeping presidentialisation of parliamentary democracies The optimal rate of constitutional amendments

I talked to Amit Varma who runs one of my favourite podcasts - The Seen and the Unseen about politics, economics and public policy. We talked about Libertarianism within the Indian canon Cultivating your audience  Being a public intellectual The differences between generations 

I spoke to Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress about the new movement of Progress Studies. We talked about Building a culture of economic progress Why are developed countries more averse to progress? Is there a tradeoff between economic progress and existential risk? What is the main constraint for the movement today?

I talked with Mayank Seksaria of Liberty Mutual Investments about investing on macroeconomic views. We talked about Translating macro views into investing allocations A bottom up view of the macroeconomy Evaluating macro talent Why does institutional research cost so much?

I spoke to Mary Childs who is the author of the exceptional book The Bond King. We talked about How finance became an interesting profession How do you build institutions that succeed at investing? Can we automate the Fed? Financial history being undervalued

I spoke to Steven Hamilton professor of Economics at George Washington University about Australian economic policy, and their upcoming elections. We talk about Why was Australian COVID policy so strict? Australia as a nation of prison guards Economic issues of the Australian election “Australia is a mine with a parliament” Dutch disease in Australia Swimming, intermittent fasting and other personal habits

What is the labour market like? What are the largest barriers in the labour market? Nathan Young and I spoke to economist Bryan Caplan about his new book Labor Econ Versus The World. We also talk about Censorship and dictatorships Bets he is willing to take Malengo and international migration DALLE-2 and writing graphic novels The literature on education Why he is not an experimental economist The effect of AI on jobs Bets Bryan is willing to take No important disruption to the politics of countries where Ukrainian refugees immigrate Poland will gain over 3x of the GDP Ukraine loses with regards to immigration Less than 20% chance of humanity ending by 2100 Less than 60% chance that he will consider misaligned AI to be a problem in 20 years If >5% of people immigrate to a developed nation there will be no civil wars Upper bounds on religious fundamentalism in the EU What are the odds that mainstream psychiatry accepts his view of mental illness? Papers referenced in the podcast Mankiw, Romer and Weil Where has all the Education gone? Eric Hanusheck on test scores and GDP

I spoke to David Manehim who works on reducing existential threats to humanity at the Technion. We talked about The biggest threats to humanity Preventing all future pandemics Is working on X-risk even tractable? How you can work on reducing existential risk Very fun on an underrated topic!