My guest today is Melanie Moses , a Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chair of the New Mexico AI Consortium . Melanie's work spans a wide range of disciplines all unified by her deep understanding of complexity theory. In our conversation, Melanie and I explore how scaling theory reveals surprising patterns across nature, technology, and society. We discuss what decentralized systems like ant colonies can teach us ab...
Jul 29, 2025•51 min
My guest today is Melanie Mitchell, a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, author of "Complexity: A Guided Tour" and "Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans." Melanie studied under the legendary John Holland and has become one of the leading voices bridging complexity science with research in artificial intelligence. In our conversation, Melanie and I explore the fundamental nature of intelligence and why today's AI systems might not be as intelligent as they appear. We discuss the...
Jul 07, 2025•42 min
Welcome back to Scaling Theory. Today, we are taking on a surprising but deeply relevant topic: religion . We are not entering the realm of theology, but rather looking at religion the way an economist might look at a multinational corporation or a digital platform. Think of it this way: in the U.S. alone, faith-based organizations generate more annual revenue than Apple and Microsoft combined. So when we ask how religions scale , we are really asking how some of the world’s most enduring (and p...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 16 min
Today’s episode is different from all the previous ones, as for the first time on Scaling Theory , we focus on research methodology, exploring how AI is reshaping the very process of doing research and what that shift means for science and society at large. I sat down with James Evans , Professor of Sociology, Computational and Data Science at the University of Chicago, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Faculty Member at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, to explore how AI is ...
May 07, 2025•41 min
My guest today is Eric von Hippel, Professor of Technological Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Eric is the author of numerous academic articles and books, including Free Innovation, Democratizing Innovation, and The Sources of Innovation, all published by MIT Press and available for free. Eric has accumulated over 90,000 citations on Google Scholar and has received many awards, including the Schumpeter School Prize (2017)—a particularly interesting recognition given his work on ...
Mar 24, 2025•36 min
David Krakauer is an American evolutionary biologist. He is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. As you will hear in today’s episode, David's research centers around a series of fundamental questions, such as: How did life and intelligence evolve in the universe? How do ideas evolve and how do they encode natural and cultural life? In this conversation, David and I explore the evolving landscape of complexity science. We discuss its foundati...
Feb 27, 2025•52 min
My guest today is Larry Lessig , Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Larry is the author of numerous influential books and articles, including Code 2.0 (2006), which we discuss at length in this episode. If you have been listening to Scaling Theory since the very beginning, you probably remember that I cited a couple of books that changed my perception of everything in the first episode. Code 2.0 is one of these books. Larry Lessig develops what he calls the “pathetic dot theo...
Feb 03, 2025•47 min
My guest today is Eric Beinhocker , Professor of Practice in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and the founder and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University’s Oxford Martin School. Eric is the author of numerous academic articles and books, including The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (2007). In our conversation, Eric and I contrast traditional economics (neoclassical th...
Jan 13, 2025•47 min
My guest today is Kevin Kelly , the author of 14 books, a public speaker who has delivered TED talks with tens of millions of views, and a technology expert. In 1983, Kevin was hired by Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand to edit several later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog , the Whole Earth Review , and Signal . He later on served as the founding executive editor of the magazine Wired . In our conversation, Kevin and I talk about the scaling laws behind all technologies, but also how these l...
Dec 19, 2024•35 min
My guest today is Rory Linkletter , a professional athlete who recently ran the Paris Olympic Marathon and the New York Marathon. Rory’s current personal best in the marathon is an impressive 2:08:01, which makes him the top Canadian marathon runner and the third-best Canadian performance ever. This episode, as you might guess, is different from the others. I wanted to talk to Rory because he inspired me greatly when I went to Paris to watch the race. Most importantly, I am convinced that there ...
Nov 28, 2024•48 min
My guest is Stefan Thurner , A Professor of theoretical physics, and the President of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. Stefan has published over 240 scientific articles and he was elected Austrian Scientist of the Year 2017. He is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In our conversation, we first delve into the scaling laws of everything. We explore social, financial, biological, and economic dynamics—for example, how to make the economy more resilient by targeting some uni...
Nov 08, 2024•34 min
My guest today is Allison Stanger . Allison is a Middlebury Distinguished Endowed Professor; an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University; the Co-Director (with Danielle Allen) of the GETTING-Plurality Research Network, Harvard University; founding member of the Digital Humanism Initiative (Vienna); and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Allison’s next book, Who Elected Big Tech? is under contract with Yale University Press. In this convers...
Sep 26, 2024•49 min
My guest is Arvind Narayanan , a Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, also at Princeton. Arvind is renowned for his work on the societal impacts of digital technologies, including his textbook on fairness and machine learning, his online course on cryptocurrencies, his research on data de-anonymization, dark patterns, and more. He has already amassed over 30,000 citations on Google Scholar. In just a few days, in...
Aug 26, 2024•49 min
My guest today is Sara Hooker , VP of Research at Cohere, where she leads Cohere for AI, a non-profit research lab that seeks to solve complex machine learning problems with researchers from over 100 countries. Sara is the author of numerous research papers, some of which focus specifically on scaling theory in AI. She has been listed as one of AI’s top 13 innovators by Fortune. In our conversation, we first delve into the scaling laws behind foundation models. We explore what powers the scal...
Aug 05, 2024•55 min
My guest today is Michael Mauboussin (@ mjmauboussin ), one of the world’s leading experts in finance. Michael serves as Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global, Morgan Stanley. He has authored three books and regularly appears in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, and other publications. Since 1993, Michael has been an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School and is also the chairman emeritus of the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute. I...
Jul 15, 2024•47 min
My guest is Glen Weyl , an influential economist and social technologist known for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of economics, computer science, sociology, and political science. He is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, a co-author of the books “Radical Markets” and the recently published “ Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy” which he co-authored with Audrey Tang, who has served as the 1st Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan. Glen co-fou...
Jun 20, 2024•46 min
My guest is Yann LeCun, a pioneering French-American computer scientist, known for his groundbreaking work in machine learning, computer vision, and neural networks. Yann is the Silver Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and serves as the Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at Meta. Yann is one of the world’s most influential computer scientists. He has accumulated over 350,000 citations on Google Scholar, he is one of the founding figures in the ...
May 27, 2024•51 min
J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, a Professor at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, we explore Doyne’s latest book, “Making Sense of Chaos.” We focus on the relationship between chaos and scaling theory, and more specifically, how chaos can be factored into scaling theory. By the end of this conversation, y...
May 06, 2024•46 min
Thomas Wolf is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Hugging Face, the company at the center of the open-source AI ecosystem. He has a Ph.D. in statistical & quantum physics. In this episode, we explore why open-source (“OS”) AI may be preferable to closed-source, whether OS has a real chance to take over the space, the challenges OS developers must overcome to scale their foundational models, the role of data and infrastructure in scaling dynamics, how big tech companies are positioni...
Apr 15, 2024•43 min
Geoffrey West is a physicist, former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. His book, “ Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Businesses ” (2017), is a masterpiece. In this episode, we talk about the power laws behind living organisms, cities, businesses, and technologies. By the end of this episode, you will know more about the power law behind the heartbeat of all mammals, the number of patents and crime in big cities compared ...
Mar 25, 2024•55 min•Ep. 2
In this first episode, Dr. Thibault Schrepel (@ ProfSchrepel ) introduces “Scaling Theory”, a podcast dedicated to the power laws behind the growth of companies, technologies, legal and living systems. *** References : ➝ Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859) ➝ Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (2011) ➝ Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (2019) ➝ John H. Miller & Scott Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Comput...
Mar 16, 2024•7 min•Ep. 1
