This episode is the sixth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 26, 2025. I speak with Sam Roggeveen—Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, and a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments—about why the United States won’t fight China for dominance in Asia, and what that means for an Australia long reliant on American protection. We explore the limits of America’s resolve in Asia, wh...
Apr 02, 2025•2 hr 55 min•Season 9Ep. 168
This episode is the fifth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 12, 2025. I speak with Peter Tulip—Chief Economist at the Centre for Independent Studies, and a former senior researcher at both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the US Federal Reserve. We go deep into what's driving Australia's housing crisis, the problems with heritage rules and height restrictions, critiques of both NIMBY and YIMBY thinking, the sobering 10–20-year timeframe t...
Mar 25, 2025•2 hr 45 min•Season 9Ep. 167
Australia stands alone among English-speaking democracies with its compulsory, preferential voting system. But why? This episode is the fourth instalment of my Australian policy series. It was recorded in Melbourne on March 6, 2025. I speak with Judith Brett—Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and author of the canonical history of Australia's electoral system, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage —about how Australia became an electoral trailblazer. We trace the...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 26 min•Season 9Ep. 166
This episode is the third of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on February 5, 2025. We explore the concept of state capacity—the ability of governments to achieve their policy goals—and ask why Australia outperforms almost every other country in the world in this domain. For the conversation, I'm joined by two of Australia's great public policy economists. Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School and president of the Academy of the Social Scienc...
Mar 04, 2025•2 hr 58 min•Season 9Ep. 165
This episode is the second of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on January 29, 2025. What is the relationship between economic equality and egalitarianism in the cultural sense? Where does Australia's egalitarian tradition come from? Are we too egalitarian? Is economic inequality increasing? What's been driving it? And does it even matter? We sit down with Andrew Leigh to discuss these questions and more. Dr. Andrew Leigh MP is Australia’s Assistant Minister for Competition,...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 29 min•Season 9Ep. 164
This episode is the first of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Melbourne on January 23, 2025. In this salon, we go deep into Australia's immigration policy with Abul Rizvi, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. Abul managed Australia’s migration program from 1995 to 2007 and played a crucial role in the 2001 policy changes that massively increased the intake of skilled migrants—most notably by expanding pathways for overseas students. If you’d ...
Jan 31, 2025•2 hr 42 min•Season 9Ep. 163
This episode is a little different: I’m the one being interviewed—and my interlocutor is Andy Matuschak , an independent applied researcher focused on "tools for thought" (ways to augment human intelligence). Andy founded and led Khan Academy’s Research and Development Lab, and prior to that, he was a senior engineer at Apple where he helped build iOS. I first discovered Andy’s work in 2021, and it was a game changer for me and the podcast. We spoke on the show in 2022 . ...
Jan 25, 2025•2 hr 43 min•Season 9Ep. 162
Eugene Fama is a 2013 Nobel laureate in economic sciences, and is widely recognised as the "father of modern finance." He is currently the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago. Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/eugene-fama-156/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 31, 2024•55 min•Season 8Ep. 161
Richard Butler AC is a retired Australian diplomat. He served as Australia's first Ambassador for Disarmament (1983-1988), Australian Ambassador to the United Nations (1992-1997), and Chair of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (1997-1999). He also served as Chair of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Earlier in his career, he was Chief of Staff to Leader of the Opposition, and former Prime Minister, Gough Wh...
Nov 29, 2024•3 hr 32 min•Season 8Ep. 160
Larry Summers is a former US Treasury Secretary (1999-2001), Chief Economist at the World Bank (1991-1993), and Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama (2009-2010). He also served as President of Harvard University (2001-2006). Currently, he is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, and he sits on the board of directors at OpenAI, one of the fastest-growing companies in history. Full transcript and video available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com...
Oct 21, 2024•49 min•Season 8Ep. 159
Nassim Taleb is trader, researcher and essayist. He is the author of the Incerto , a multi-volume philosophical and practical meditation on uncertainty. Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/nassim-taleb-158/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sep 19, 2024•2 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 158
Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson are anthropologists based in America. Their partnership was central to the development of Dual-Inheritance Theory , a framework that applies Darwinian evolution to culture and explains how genes and culture have intertwined to shape our species. This is their first ever joint interview. Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/boyd-and-richerson/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Aug 13, 2024•2 hr 24 min•Season 8Ep. 157
Lucy Turnbull is an urbanist, businesswoman and philanthropist. She was the first female Lord Mayor of Sydney, from 2003-4. From 2015-20, she was the inaugural Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission, tasked with delivering strategic planning for the whole of metropolitan Sydney. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 30, 2024•47 min•Season 8Ep. 156
Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University. A bestselling author, his books include The Case Against Education , Open Borders , and Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Deregulation . Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/bryan-caplan-155 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 13, 2024•2 hr 50 min•Season 8Ep. 155
In this special episode, the tables are turned as I'm interviewed by a listener of the show, DJ Thornton from Sydney. We reflect on the progress of the show in 2023, what I learned from this year's guests, and what's in store for 2024. Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dec 29, 2023•2 hr 48 min•Season 7Ep. 154
At a time when the Enlightenment is under attack from without and within, I bring together two of the most thoughtful defenders of progress and reason, for their first ever public dialogue. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I think of him as providing the strongest empirical defence of the Enlightenment (as seen in his book Enlightenment Now ). David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and the father of quantum computing. I thin...
Dec 19, 2023•2 hr 56 min•Season 7Ep. 153
Shruti Rajagopalan is an Indian-American economist. She leads the Indian political economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She also hosts the Ideas of India podcast. Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nov 28, 2023•3 hr 45 min•Season 7Ep. 152
What were the deep causes of the global financial crisis and great recession? Has unconventional monetary policy in the wake of the crisis done more harm than good? And should monetary policy target financial stability? I discuss these questions and more with Indian economist and Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Raghuram Rajan. Raghuram Rajan was chief economist at the IMF from 2003 to 2006, and from 2013 to 2016 he was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As RBI Governor, he ...
Nov 01, 2023•2 hr 52 min•Season 7Ep. 151
Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as the world's most influential living philosopher. Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com Episode recorded on 26 April 2023. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sep 19, 2023•2 hr 55 min•Season 7Ep. 150
Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist and one of the founders of cliodynamics — a new, cross-disciplinary field that applies mathematics and big data to test historical theories. Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aug 30, 2023•2 hr 42 min•Season 7Ep. 149
Stephen Wolfram is a physicist, computer scientist and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and the author of A New Kind of Science . Full transcript available at: jnwpod.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aug 16, 2023•4 hr 24 min•Season 7Ep. 148
Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist. She is one of the inventors of mRNA technology. Full transcript available at: thejspod.com. Episode recorded on 15 February 2023. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aug 01, 2023•2 hr 4 min•Season 7Ep. 147
Richard Rhodes is an American historian and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb . Full transcript available at: thejspod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jul 25, 2023•4 hr 42 min•Season 7Ep. 146
Dr Ken Henry is an Australian economist who served as Secretary of Australia's Treasury from 2001 to 2011. He was instrumental in helping Australia avoid recession during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — Australia was the only major advanced economy to do so. Full transcript available at: thejspod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 09, 2023•5 hr 35 min•Season 7Ep. 145
Palmer Luckey is an American tech entrepreneur and billionaire. He has founded two companies: Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014), and Anduril (recently valued at $8.5 billion). He has been described as the real-life Tony Stark. Full transcript available at: www.thejspod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apr 25, 2023•2 hr 39 min•Season 7Ep. 144
Daniel Kahneman is widely regarded as the most influential psychologist alive. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002) for his work on judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, much of it done jointly with his late collaborator Amos Tversky. He is the author of the bestselling books Thinking, Fast and Slow and Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein). Full transcript available at: thejspod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 13, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 7Ep. 143
In the long run, talent allocation is almost everything. But as a society, we're not actually very good at it. The question of how to reliably match people with jobs they are well suited for is one of the big unsolved problems of our times. Joe catches up with return guest Tyler Cowen to discuss the art of identifying talent. Tyler is a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler . He is also the co-author of a new book, Talent: How to Ident...
Dec 31, 2022•48 min•Season 6Ep. 142
From language and writing to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, computers and Adobe Photoshop, our species has a history of inventing tools for augmenting our own intelligence. But what comes next? Andy Matuschak is a developer and designer. He helped build iOS at Apple, founded and led Khan Academy's R&D lab, and now works as an independent researcher investigating 'tools for thought' — that is, technologies that can transform human cognition and creativity. Full episode transcript available ...
Dec 23, 2022•2 hr 9 min•Season 6Ep. 141
How rational are we? How can a species smart enough to set foot on the moon also be prone to conspiracy theories that the moon landing was fake? Joe speaks with Steven Pinker to discuss rationality — and its opposite. Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, an elected to the National Academy of Sciences and one of Time ‘s 100 Most Influential People . Full episode transcript available at: thejspod.com See omnystudio....
Dec 14, 2022•53 min•Season 6Ep. 140
Bayesianism, the doctrine that it's always rational to represent our beliefs in terms of probabilities, dominates the intellectual world, from decision theory to the philosophy of science. But does it make sense to quantify our beliefs about such ineffable things as scientific theories or the future? And what separates empty prophecy from legitimate prediction? David Deutsch is a British physicist at the University of Oxford, and is widely regarded as the father of quantum computing. He is the a...
Apr 24, 2022•2 hr 39 min•Season 6Ep. 139
