This is a teaser episode of the Existential Hope Podcast with Nobel Laureate David Baker. David reveals how scientists are now inventing entirely new proteins—life's fundamental building blocks—to tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges. David shares his journey and his vision for a future where custom-built "molecular machines," an idea once explored by thinkers like Eric Drexler, could repair our bodies, clean up pollution, and create sustainable materials. He explains how breakthr...
Jun 16, 2025•5 min
This feed is now Foresight Institute Radio—your place for standout talks on frontier technology: from AI and neurotech to nanotech, longevity, and space. You’ll hear highlights from Foresight’s global conferences and seminars featuring top scientists and builders. For long-form interviews, follow our sister show: The Existential Hope Podcast , with guests like David Baker, Steven Pinker, and David Deutsch. Want the slides? Subscribe on YouTube and follow us on X @ForesightInst. 🎤 Featuring: All...
Jun 11, 2025•43 sec
What happens when parents can choose their children's genetic traits, and which selections benefit society versus harm it? In this talk, Jonathan Anomaly explores the emerging field of embryo selection for intelligence, disease prevention, and longevity. He covers how polygenic risk scores work to predict complex traits and why most diseases involve thousands of genetic variants rather than single genes. Jonathan Anomaly is a former professor who spent 15 years studying the intersection of game ...
Jun 11, 2025•11 min
What if you could diagnose stroke, treat cancer, and cure depression with a smartphone-sized device that costs $1,000 instead of millions? In this talk, Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrates her revolutionary handheld medical devices that use ultrasound and infrared light to selectively target diseased cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed. She covers how her team achieved 100% remission in deadly glioblastoma cancer in mice, moved nearly half of treatment-resistant depression patients into remissi...
Jun 11, 2025•10 min
What if a government agency could fund transformative health research with $200 million budgets and no bureaucratic committees? In this talk, Jean Hebert explores ARPA-H's – a research funding agency – unique mission to accelerate health breakthroughs, from 3D-printed organs to functional eye transplants. He covers how ARPA-H operates differently from traditional government funding through autonomous program managers, why it presents exceptional opportunities for longevity researchers, and how b...
Jun 11, 2025•9 min
How has the history of AI been shaped by the "bitter lesson" that simple scaling beats complex algorithms, and what comes next? In this talk, Irina Rish traces AI's evolution from rule-based systems to today's foundation models, exploring how scaling laws predicted performance improvements and recent shifts toward more efficient approaches. She covers the progression from GPT scaling laws to Chinchilla's compute-optimal training, the rise of inference-time computation with models like OpenAI's o...
Jun 11, 2025•12 min
Eric Gilliam studies how organizations like Bell Labs, early MIT, and the Rockefeller Foundation helped drive scientific progress — and what made them unusually effective. In this conversation, we explore how those models worked, why many of them disappeared, and what it would take to bring them back. Eric explains why fast-moving, engineering-driven labs like BBN (which built the first nodes of the internet) may be essential to accelerating progress in fields like AI, biotech, and beyond. We al...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Most AI discussions focus on its risks to democracy – disinformation, surveillance, centralization of power. But what if AI could make governance better? Glen Weyl, political economist at Microsoft Research and founder of RadicalxChange, argues that AI could be used to create more participatory, decentralized, and democratic systems, if we design it right. In this interview, he explores what AI governance could look like if we tried to use it for real pluralism. This interview is a guest lecture...
May 23, 2025•26 min
How can storytelling shape our visions of the future? Ada Palmer—historian, science fiction writer, and futurist—brings a unique perspective on how worldbuilding can be a powerful tool for exploring complex ideas. In this conversation with Beatrice Erkers, she shares her perspective on worldbuilding and storytelling, and her recommendations for how we can think in new ways about the future. This interview is a guest lecture in our new online course about shaping positive futures with AI. The cou...
May 16, 2025•43 min
How we develop AI will shape the future of society. In this interview, Anthony Aguirre explores the distinction between Tool AI and Replacement AI, and how this framing can inform AI policy, governance, and strategy. He shares insights on the risks and thresholds of AGI, the role of capability, agency, and autonomy in AI development, and what it means to keep the future human as AI systems become more advanced and integrated into society. Anthony Aguirre is a Professor in Physics, and the Execut...
May 09, 2025•27 min
Who makes the rules for AI? Right now, a handful of companies and governments are shaping its trajectory – but what happens behind closed doors? Helen Toner, Director of Strategy at Georgetown’s CSET and former OpenAI board member, has been inside some of the biggest AI governance conversations. In this conversation with Beatrice Erkers, she shares an insider’s take on AI policy, US-China dynamics, and what’s coming next in AI regulation. This interview is a guest lecture in our new online cours...
May 02, 2025•21 min
What if parenting held the keys to civilization’s long-term flourishing? In this deeply personal and philosophically rich episode of the Existential Hope podcast, we sit down with Dr. Aaron Stupple – physician, thinker, and author of The Sovereign Child . Drawing from the rationalist traditions of David Deutsch and Karl Popper, and grounded in the parenting philosophy of "Taking Children Seriously," Aaron explores what it means to treat children as full moral agents from birth. From screen time ...
Apr 25, 2025•56 min
The way we talk about the future of the planet often feels like a choice between denial and doomism. But what if we looked at the data? Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data, has dedicated her work to making complex global challenges—like climate change, energy, and sustainability—more understandable and actionable. In this conversation with Beatrice Erkers, she shares insights from her book Not the End of the World, exploring what the data actually tells us about humanity’s progres...
Apr 18, 2025•27 min
In this special “minisode” of the Existential Hope podcast, Allison and Beatrice from Foresight Institute sit down to discuss their newly launched, free worldbuilding course on Udemy: The AI Futures Worldbuilding course. This course—created in partnership with the Future of Life Institute—helps participants imagine and shape positive visions for AI’s impact on technology, governance, economics, and everyday life. Hear about expert guest lectures from leaders like Anousheh Ansari (XPRIZE), Helen ...
Apr 11, 2025•10 min
Zac Hatfield-Dodds is a member of the technical staff at Anthropic. In this episode he talks about Anthropic's responsible scaling policy. About Foresight Institute Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we have continued to evolve into a many-armed organization that focuses on several fields of science and technology that are too a...
Apr 04, 2025•11 min
In this episode of the Existential Hope Podcast , existential psychologist Clay Routledge explores how meaning and agency shape both individual well-being and societal progress. While material conditions have improved, many people—especially younger generations—report growing pessimism and disconnection. Clay argues that a lack of meaning, not just external barriers, often holds us back. By understanding how humans derive purpose and motivation, we can unlock new paths to flourishing. We discuss...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Cate Hall is the CEO of Astera. She’s a former Supreme Court attorney and the ex-No. 1 female poker player in the world. Before joining Astera, she co-founded and served as COO and later co-CEO of Alvea, a pandemic medicine company that set the record for the fastest startup to take a drug candidate to Phase I clinical trial. She received a BS in biochemistry and BA in philosophy from the University of Arizona, and a law degree from Yale Law School. About Foresight Institute Foresight Institute ...
Mar 21, 2025•11 min
Sam Rodriques is an inventor and entrepreneur. In 2023, he launched FutureHouse , a new research lab in San Francisco focused on building an AI Scientist. He previously ran the Applied Biotechnology Lab at the Francis Crick Institute. Before that, he did his PhD at MIT. Sam also proposed the Focused Research Organization model, which is now being used by a number of philanthropic funders and governments to facilitate scientific moonshots. About Foresight Institute Foresight Institute is a resear...
Mar 14, 2025•14 min
Tom Kalil is the CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy. Tom served in the White House for two presidents (Obama and Clinton) and in collaboration with his team worked with the Senate to give every federal agency the authority to support incentive prizes for up to $50 million. Tom also designed and launched dozens of White House science and technology initiatives, including the $40 billion National Nanotechnology Initiative , announced by President Clinton; The BRAIN Initiative , announced by President...
Mar 07, 2025•12 min
In this episode of the Existential Hope Podcast , cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker explores why, despite massive gains in human progress, many people remain pessimistic about the future—and why that matters for shaping what comes next. Steven argues that while progress isn’t automatic, it is real. By tracking long-term trends in violence, poverty, democracy, and innovation, we can see how human effort—driven by reason, science, and cooperation—has repeatedly pushed civ...
Feb 28, 2025•39 min
Jennifer Garrison , PhD, is Co-Founder and Director of the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (GCRLE) and an Assistant Professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. She also holds appointments in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC). She is a passionate advocate for women’s health and is pioneering a new ...
Feb 21, 2025•10 min
"We’ve saved the world so many times throughout history. Now we just have to do it again." What if speculative fiction could do more than entertain—what if it could reshape how we think about governance, technology, and societal progress? In this episode of the Existential Hope Podcast , historian and sci-fi author Ada Palmer discusses how we can harness lessons from both history and fiction to reimagine what’s possible for humanity. Ada argues that one of the most critical advantages we have ov...
Jan 31, 2025•1 hr
Abhishek Singh is a Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab. His research interests include collective intelligence, self-organization, and decentralized machine learning. The central question guiding his research is --- how can we (algorithmically) engineer adaptive networks to build anti-fragile systems? He has co-authored multiple papers and built systems in machine learning, data privacy, and distributed computing. Before joining MIT, Abhishek worked with Cisco for 2 years where he did research in Au...
Jan 24, 2025•54 min
Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. He writes popular science books with his wife Kelly, including the recent Hugo award-winning A City on Mars . His work has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes, Science Friday, Foreign Policy, PBS, Boingboing, the Freakonomics Blog, the RadioLab blog, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, CNN, Discovery Magazine, Nautilus and more. Key Highlights The future of s...
Jan 17, 2025•52 min
Jason Crawford is the founder of The Roots of Progress , a nonprofit dedicated to establishing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. He writes and speaks about the history and philosophy of progress, especially in technology and industry. Key Highlights About Foresight Institute Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we...
Jan 10, 2025•48 min
Beatrice Erkers and Allison Duettmann What if we could reimagine the future from a place of hope instead of fear? In this special episode of the Existential Hope Podcast , Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers turn the tables and interview each other instead of a guest, sharing insights into their journeys, hopes, and visions for humanity. Together, they explore big concepts like moral circle expansion, how neurotech could deepen empathy (even with animals!), and why worldbuilding in 2045 can he...
Dec 27, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Caleb Watney is the co-founder and co-CEO of IFP. He manages the metascience, high-skilled immigration, and emerging technology policy teams at IFP. His research focuses on policy levers the U.S. could use to rebuild state capacity and increase long-term rates of innovation. Previously, Caleb worked as the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Insitute, a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute, and a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center. Key Highlights Ab...
Dec 20, 2024•50 min
Zan Huang is a researcher with a passion for alternative computational models in artificial intelligence, mass social patterns, chaotic and emergent systems, and linguistics. Currently focused on scaling deep neural networks through neurologically inspired modularity, he explores critical questions around reducing parameter space, enhancing interpretability, and developing self-similar task divisions akin to brain functionality. Key Highlights Discussion of the adaptation of neurological structu...
Dec 06, 2024•55 min
Adam Marblestone is the CEO of Convergent Research. He is working with a large and growing network of collaborators and advisors to develop a strategic roadmap for future FROs. Outside of CR, he serves on the boards of several non-profits pursuing new methods of funding and organizing scientific research including Norn Group and New Science, and as an interviewer for the Hertz Foundation. Previously, he was a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow, a Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists ...
Nov 29, 2024•51 min
Michael Levin is an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. Levin is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Key Highlights Discussion of diverse intelligence in biological systems and its biomedical potential Insights into planarian regeneration and collective problem-solving Anatomical plasticity and the role of bioelectric interfa...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 1 min
