In this episode of the Win Win Podcast, Liv and Igor sit down with Wait But Why creator Tim Urban to explore everything from his unexpected pet tortoise, Winston, to the mind-bending implications of superintelligent AI.We hear about his latest foray into book writing, and how he’s structured his workflow to overcome his damn procrastination monkey. The crew also discuss such classics as free will, parenthood and the current state of (un) freedom of speech in the UK. Fun stuff. Chapters:0:00 - In...
Mar 13, 2025•2 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast A deep dive into the game theory and exponential growth underlying our modern economic system, and how recent advancements in AI are poised to turn up the pressure on that system -- and our wider environment -- in ways we have never seen before. Not a conversation for the faint hearted, but crucial nonetheless. Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, a research organization aimed at improving public sense-making around global catastrophic risks and technology. Th...
Feb 21, 2025•2 hr 30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Win-Win podcast we are floating off the coast of Starbase, watching the live launch of Starship 6 with Bill Perkins. Bill is a founder of two satellite imaging companies that aim to address environmental issues by making satellite data—once inaccessible to the public—widely available, revolutionizing everything from climate monitoring to illegal fishing enforcement. We also see a rocket launch, and Liv cries (again). Something for everyone. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 2:17 - L...
Jan 29, 2025•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Explore the future of cooperation and technology in this thought-provoking episode of the Win Win Podcast ! Liv chats to Allison Duettman from the Foresight Institute about how to harness emerging technologies like AI, nanotechnology, and blockchain to create a freer, more coordinated world. They explore concepts like "existential hope," "multipolar active shields," and "Pareto-topia," along with strategies for fostering decentralized cooperation. Allison shares her...
Jan 23, 2025•2 hr 54 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast n case you missed it, Liv just won a record-breaking $2,800,000 in the World Series of Poker last month In this episode, she and Igor discuss her victory, why it represents a win-win for both her and animals... how to fix social media... Magnus Carlsen's jeans drama, a drunken game of backgammon and much more. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro and Backgammon 2:45 - Liv’s World Series of Poker Win 10:19 - Liv’s Charity Pledge & Cultivating Win-Wins 14:15 - The Physics of Women’s Feet 17:06 - Addressing ...
Jan 09, 2025•52 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast The Botez sisters are no strangers to competition. But how do they manage their competitive urges? How does it affect their relationship to one another, as sisters? These are just some of the many intimate topics we cover in today's Win-Win episode. Best known for their hilarious chess streaming videos, Andrea and Alexandra Botez are some of the world's most celebrated gamers - born into a household that demanded excellence, they both competed on the chess circuit to a high level before turning ...
Dec 22, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast How fast is the AI race really going? What is the current state of Quantum Computing? What actually *is* the P vs NP problem? - former OpenAI researcher and theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson joins Liv and Igor to discuss everything quantum, AI and consciousness. We hear about his experience working on OpenAI's "superalignment team", whether quantum computers might break Bitcoin, the state of University Admissions, and even a proposal for a new religion! Strap in for a fascinating con...
Dec 04, 2024•2 hr 25 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast How do we escape Moloch’s trap for good? In this special Burning Man edition of Win-Win, Liv forgoes the usual purple chairs for dusty playa to chat with Kristian Rönn. Kristian is the CEO and co-founder of Normative, a platform for helping industries strive for net zero emissions. With intellectual roots in Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and his own mission to create positive-sum solutions to climate change, Kristian has just launched a new book - The Darwinian Trap - and in this convers...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Can we still accurately model elections in such chaotic times? Are prediction markets the future of news? Nate Silver thinks so - Nate is a renowned election analyst, author and former professional poker player. He's the founder of FiveThirtyEight, whose statistical models revolutionized election forecasting, earning him national acclaim. His two books "On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything." and "Signal in Noise" are inspirations for today's Win-Win conversation with Liv and Igor. We discu...
Oct 03, 2024•2 hr 35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Open-source movements have historically been a great source of collaboration. Can we harness the power of open source software, science or AI to help solve the world's coordination problems? Or could it just make everything worse? This is the main topic covered in today's episode of the Win-Win Podcast. Liv is joined by Peter Wang, a physicist, computer scientist, and founder of Anaconda, one of the most widely used open source platforms for Python development. Peter leads Anaconda’s AI Incubato...
Sep 17, 2024•3 hr 40 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast What are the key ingredients of successful long-term relationships? How can couples better navigate conflict? What about jealousy? In this very personal Win-Win episode, professional poker couple Liv and Igor discuss what they've learned from the ten years of dating each other. Prepare yourself for plenty of strategy, anecdotes and smack talk! Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:29 - Secret Ingredient? 00:04:26 - Dumbbell Theory 00:07:59 - The Power of Banter & Radical Honesty 00:11:22 - Dealing...
Aug 16, 2024•50 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Is complexity the new frontier of physics? How should we approach metaphysical uncertainty? What makes a great Physicist? These are just some of the questions covered in this Win-Win episode with the incredible Sean Carroll. Sean is a theoretical physicist and philosopher who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and philosophy of science. Chapters 00:01:59 - New Discoveries of the Webb Telescope 00:11:05 - Complexity The New Frontier in Physics 00:16:42 - How Physicists See The World 00:...
Jul 25, 2024•2 hr 59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nihilism has become all too popular, and this man is on a mission to fix that! David is a philosopher and technologist focussed on understanding and healing what he calls the "Nihilism Crisis" - the crisis of meaning the world is currently suffering from, especially as it transitions into the AI age. If you're interested in AI alignment, game theory, incentive design, Moloch and competition, this is very much a conversation for you. 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:05 - Defeating Moloch 00:0...
Jun 27, 2024•2 hr 43 min•Transcript available on Metacast How literally should we take the US Constitution? What about the bible? Should we experiment with radical honesty with strangers? Those are just some of the questions human guinea pig A.J. Jacobs spends his life trying to answer. An author and journalist, he regularly immerses himself into extreme social experiments to understand the world better (and then usually writes a book about it). And this conversation does not disappoint -- we explore his discoveries on everything from love and relation...
Jun 21, 2024•2 hr 39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why did Rome fall? What can we learn from past civilization collapses to protect our own? How do we fix our Institutions? In this Win-Win episode I speak to Samo Burja - a leading geopolitical analyst and founder of the intelligence brief Bismarck Analysis. Samo is a prolific writer on nature of power, leadership, bureaucracy and governance. If you're worried about the health of our institutions and sense-making, this is the episode for you. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:40 - Common Themes of ...
May 29, 2024•2 hr•Ep 24•Transcript available on Metacast Polarization, echo chambers... how do we fix the problem of biased news? That's a problem today's Win-Win guest has dedicated her life to solving. Harleen Kaur is the founder of Ground News, a news aggregator platform that provides overviews of what different media outlets across the political spectrum report, so that consumers can get a clearer and more impartial perspective. We explore the deeper questions of WHY we’re so divided in the first place, and what are the most promising ways...
May 16, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is it possible to solve ocean pollution by turning the packaging industry into a closed-loop economy? Wes Carter thinks so. Wes is the Founder of a New Earth Project and President of Atlantic Packaging, on a personal mission to stop the significant pollution the packaging industry causes. In this episode we hear what it would take to close the loop on the economy via new types of biodegradable materials that could replace plastic and other common pollutants. We also discuss which types of recycl...
Apr 26, 2024•2 hr 34 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Sustainability. It's a buzzword that gets lots of headlines, but what if our definition of it is incomplete? That's the view of Hannah Ritchie - Hannah is the lead Environmental Scientist at OurWorldinData.org - a leading data science organization that analyses data to find out the true state of our world. In today's conversation we explore her findings on the planet's biggest issues. We discuss which problems are over-hyped, which ones are under-hyped, and most importantly: How ...
Apr 11, 2024•2 hr 36 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast What would life look like in a fully automated world? How would we derive meaning in a world of superintelligence? Today's Win-Win episode is all about utopias, dystopias and thought experiments, because I'm talking to Professor Nick Bostrom. Nick is one of the world’s leading philosophers - he's a leading thinker on the nature of consciousness, AI, catastrophic risks, cosmology… he’s also the guy behind the Simulation Hypothesis, the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment, the seminal AI book S...
Mar 29, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast What sacrifices does it take to be a pro tennis player? Is it possible to have a healthy mindset at the highest stakes? Marcus Daniell understands it all - he has played professional tennis for over 20 years, a career that has earned him an Olympic medal and a whole lot of wisdom around the nature of competition. He is also the founder of High Impact Athletes, a movement of professional athletes who donate to highly effective charities. Chapters 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:06:50 - Overlap of Tenn...
Mar 20, 2024•2 hr 1 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast What if we could harness the power of the internet to make kindness go VIRAL? That's the topic of this conversation with Chris Anderson -- Chris has run TED (of the famous TED talks) for the last twenty years, and recently wrote a book called "Infectious Generosity", which seeks to understand the nature of human kindness, and find ways to make it spread in the digital age. A crucial issue in these divisive times! Expect lots of evolutionary psychology, a dissection of why the media...
Mar 06, 2024•2 hr 43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The rate of AI progress is accelerating, so how can we minimize the risks of this incredible technology, while maximizing the rewards? Today I am speaking to leading AI researcher Dan Hendrycks — Dan is the founder of Center for AI Safety, and lead advisor to Elon Musk's X.AI. He was also the architect behind the "Mitigating Risks" letter that was signed by Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Yoshua Bengio and many others. In this conversation we discuss everything from immedia...
Feb 21, 2024•2 hr 41 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Most people want to give their children the best start in life, but what if that "best start" could be determined *before* birth? That's what today's guest Noor Siddiqui believes -- her Mom progressively lost her vision due to a degenerative retinal condition, which made her determined to find a way to prevent her own children from the same fate. A computer scientist by training, Noor has since founded Orchid, the world's first full-genome sequencing platform for embryos co...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast Magatte is an entrepreneur on a mission: to unleash the potential of Africa. She’s a well known speaker, author and researcher who has written extensively about economic structures in the developing world, and the urgent need to create fairer regulatory environments to give everyone on earth access to the power of markets. She is also the founder of various Senegalese companies including Adina drinks, Tiossan and SkinisSkin, and an advisor to various institutions including the Charter Cities Ins...
Jan 24, 2024•2 hr 39 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast Today's Win-Win episode is with Boyan Slat. Boyan is the founder and CEO of the Ocean Cleanup, the famous organization that's trying to rid our waterways of plastic for good. I ask him why plastic has become such a problem, the difference between effective and ineffective regulation (ahem Plastic Straw Ban!), the importance of mindset when solving hard problems, and of course, his relationship with competition. Good stuff. 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:25 - Origin Story 00:07:52 - How the Ocean...
Dec 20, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast In this Win-Win episode Liv chats to Tim Dodd a.k.a. the Everyday Astronaut about his upcoming mission to the Moon, the economies of space, the pros and cons of competition, rocketry, SpaceX, NASA and much more. We also hear his insights on what it takes to build a successful youtube channel in today’s hyper competitive creator environment. Not one to miss!
Dec 04, 2023•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this special Win-Win Podcast episode, Liv chats to Uma Valeti, founder and CEO of Upside Foods, about the meat industry and why cultivated meat may offer a solution to the growing environmental, health and ethical issues posed by current meat production methods.
Nov 23, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In today's episode I chat with one of my favourite thinkers and writers: Jamie Wheal. I got to know Jamie through our mutual interest in, well, the hot mess that our civilization seems to be going through, and I knew he'd make a great guest for Win-Win because he's one of those rare folks who can combine both intellectual rigor and a deep love for physicality and nature. So as well as discussing game theory and the meaning crisis and all that good stuff, we also get into his discover...
Oct 27, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode I speak with award-winning game designer Frank Lantz about the beauty of games and what we can learn from them. It goes without saying that games are an integral part of life and our personal development, but what is it that draws us to playing? And what role does playing games serve in society at large?
Oct 12, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this Win-Win Podcast Episode, Liv and Igor chat to one of the world’s most successful sports bettors: Haralabos ”Bob” Voulgaris. Revered for his hyper-analytical, data-driven approach to gambling, Bob soon became known as one of the most prolific NBA bettors in the history of the basketball, a reputation that even got him hired by Marc Cuban to run strategy for the Dallas Mavericks!
Sep 29, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
