Latest Interviews
Showing 2716–2730 of 6,431 interview transcripts.
Clear all filters- 80,000 Hours1h 55m
The research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption | Seren Kell (2023)
This event addresses the urgent need to transition from animal agriculture to alternative proteins by highlighting the sector's role in mitigating climate change, reducing antimicrobial resistance, and overcoming consumer barriers driven by taste and price. It details significant technical progress across fermentation and cultivated meat, including a potential reduction in production costs to €4.68 per kilogram by 2030 and the development of circular economy feedstocks, while identifying a critical global funding gap of $40 billion that remains to be bridged. By emphasizing interdisciplinary career opportunities and the necessity of coordinated public and private investment, the discussion outlines a scalable roadmap to displace animal farming entirely.
Ara Mahdessian: ServiceTitan Would Not Be the Success if We Raised VC Earlier | E1175
Ara Mahdessian, Harry Stebbings
Ara Teklalian, an Armenian-American founder whose immigrant background drove his relentless work ethic, led Service Titan to a decade-long journey from bootstrapping to becoming a market leader in trade management software. By prioritizing quantifiable ROI over features and treating customer success as a core strategic driver, the company achieved premium pricing and deep loyalty within the contracting community despite initial struggles to secure institutional funding. Teklalian now evolves his leadership from a demanding style to one focused on inspiring confidence, while continuously refining hiring practices to align with the company's high-performance DNA.
- The Economist23 min
Change of heart surgeon: Iran’s reformist president
Jason Palmer, Rosie Bloor, Nicholas Pelham, Kerryyn Richmond-Jones, Anjani Trivedi
Reformist heart surgeon Massoud Pezeshkian secured the Iranian presidency with 16 million votes following the fatal helicopter crash of Ebrahim Raisi, promising social liberalization and Western negotiations while navigating deep public distrust and hardline security constraints. Simultaneously, Ukraine faces a critical $20 billion private debt deadline as a negotiation deadlock between proposed 60% and 22% write-downs threatens default amidst a shrinking economy and uncertain post-war outlook. In a contrasting shift of capital flows, over 7,000 global millionaires selected Dubai as their primary destination this year, drawn by tax advantages and regulatory transparency following the UAE's exit from the FATF grey list.
- All-In Podcast1h 14m
Jonathan Haidt: How to Help the Anxious Generation | The All-In Interview
Jonathan Haidt, Jason, Friedberg, Chamath
In a new interview format, Jonathan Haidt joins All-In hosts to diagnose how rapid technological shifts have rewired human behavior and destabilized liberal democracy by prioritizing algorithmic dopamine over biological evolution. He identifies the 2010–2015 era as a critical "great rewiring" where smartphones and social media replaced face-to-face socialization, creating a generation of anxious youth ill-equipped for adult resilience and prone to polarization. To reverse these trends, Haidt proposes four collective norms: banning smartphones before high school, delaying social media access until age 16, enforcing phone-free schools, and restoring independent free play to rebuild anti-fragility.
- Sequoia Capital1h 0m
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on How Far Scaling Laws Will Extend | Training Data
Kevin Scott, Pat Grady, Bill Coughran
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott outlined the company's strategic pivot to a comprehensive AI ecosystem driven by the belief that scaling data and compute will continue to yield exponential capability improvements despite market saturation. Through key partnerships like the one with OpenAI and a focus on hardware efficiency, the organization aims to transition from training-heavy infrastructure to cost-effective inference that augments human cognition across healthcare, education, and scientific research. Scott emphasized that while full autonomy remains a challenge, flexible architectural design and new economic models for data will enable widespread deployment to solve complex societal problems without forcing developers into proprietary traps.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
Oil’s extended reign? Adapting to a new era in oil markets
Daan Struyven, Nikhil Bhandari, Alison Nathan, Dan Stroivin
Goldman Sachs projects global oil demand will peak around 2034 rather than 2024, driven by emerging market growth in India and China where jet fuel and petrochemical consumption continue to rise despite stagnating EV sales in developed economies. The bank forecasts Brent crude to trade between $75 and $90 per barrel through 2026, supported by OPEC spare capacity, before supply risks intensify in the latter half of the decade due to underinvestment in long-cycle projects and structural tightness in the refining sector. Political outcomes in the 2024 US election may further influence prices through potential sanctions on Iran or changes to EV incentives, with the firm recommending gold over oil as a primary hedge against policy-driven inflation.
- The Economist23 min
Holey alliance: NATO’s worries at 75
Rosie Bloor, Anton Laguardia, Fraser McIlwraith, Andrew Knox
The NATO 75th-anniversary summit in Washington reaffirmed collective defense commitments against Russia while addressing critical vulnerabilities arising from leadership instability in the US and Europe and the potential threat of a Donald Trump presidency. Concurrently, the Scottish salmon industry faces a severe ecological crisis with mortality rates doubling since 2018 due to disease and warming waters, prompting urgent debates over costly offshore and onshore relocation strategies. Meanwhile, inter-Korean tensions have escalated as North Korea deploys over 2,000 balloons laden with refuse across the DMZ in retaliation for South Korean propaganda, creating a volatile environment where minor provocations risk rapid military escalation.
- 80,000 Hours2h 38m
Digital minds & how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe | Jeff Sebo (2023)
Jeff Sebo argues that by 2030, society should grant AI systems moral consideration and legal personhood if there is merely a 1-in-1,000 chance of their sentience, asserting that avoiding this outcome requires implausibly strong assumptions about biological necessity. He warns that failing to act now risks "sleepwalking" into widespread AI exploitation and highlights complex legal challenges regarding voting rights, mass replication, and interconnected digital minds. To address these issues, Sebo and the NYU "Mind, Ethics, and Policy" program propose slowing development for ethical maturation while cultivating AI values of equal consideration to prevent future suffering.
Pat Grady: Sequoia Partner on Investing Lessons from Doug Leone, Roelof Botha and Alfred Lin | E1174
Pat Grady, Doug Leone, Roelof Botha, Alfred Lin, Harry Stebbings
Pat and Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital prioritize founders with deep domain expertise and intense motivation, utilizing a "vector" assessment to select exceptional talent over favorable market conditions alone. The firm distinguishes its portfolio management through active value creation, exemplified by strategic interventions at companies like ServiceNow and HubSpot, while maintaining a "Day One" culture to mitigate internal arrogance. By combining rigorous due diligence with a specialized operator team and long-term harvesting strategies, Sequoia aims to compound returns by backing leaders who can navigate scaling challenges and unlock trillions in market value.
- The Economist25 min
Lurch in the left: France’s election shock
Jason Palmer, Sophie Pedder, Tom Gardner, Anne Rowe
French President Emmanuel Macron's dissolution gamble resulted in a hung parliament where the New Popular Front secured the most seats while the hard-right National Rally finished third, preventing an RN-led government but complicating coalition formation due to tactical resentments and a lack of political tradition. Simultaneously, the Basketball Africa League concluded its fourth season as a continent-wide professional endeavor aiming to retain local talent and drive economic growth, though it faces hurdles regarding infrastructure investment and consistent attendance. In a separate historical note, Ángeles Flores Peón, a 105-year-old Spanish Republican who survived fifteen years of Francoist imprisonment and decades of exile, passed away having spent her later years campaigning for historical memory and women's rights.
- The Diary Of A CEO2h 4m
Gender Expert: Men Are Emotionally Dependent On Women, We're Treating Them Like Malfunctioning Women
Addressing a crisis where male suicide rates have surged due to a psychological state of feeling unneeded, economist Richard Reeves argues that the erosion of traditional provider roles has left men without a clear societal script. By rejecting the pathologization of masculinity as "toxic" and highlighting biological and statistical realities, the discussion advocates for a "co-provider" model and new secular institutions to restore purpose and connection. Ultimately, the event calls for a strategic shift from alienating men to validating their unique needs, aiming to reverse the loneliness recession and improve mental health outcomes through community integration.
- Milken Institute22 min
A Conversation with OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap | Global Conference 2024
OpenAI is accelerating enterprise adoption through strategic partnerships with entities like Stack Overflow and major publishers while demonstrating tangible operational efficiencies, such as Klarna's reduction of support ticket resolution times by 82%. Despite rapid integration into 92% of Fortune 500 companies, leadership warns that energy supply chain constraints and regulatory caution pose significant hurdles to scaling the infrastructure required for future multimodal models. The organization is shifting toward an iterative deployment strategy to smooth the transition from text-based tools to collaborative AI teammates, aiming to foster workforce familiarity while mitigating the risks of insufficient economic growth.
- 80,000 Hours2h 21m
Government and society after AGI | Carl Shulman (Part 2)
Carl Shulman argues that AI-driven automation of research will expand the critical window for safety alignment, necessitating binding international agreements rather than premature voluntary pauses to prevent adversarial nations from gaining strategic advantage. He details how superhuman AI advisors could have revolutionized pandemic responses and political forecasting by overriding bureaucratic incentives, while warning that authoritarian regimes might weaponize similar technologies to entrench dogmatic control. Ultimately, Shulman advocates for "constitutional AI" principles and independent watchdog audits to ensure future security forces and economic systems remain truthful and aligned with democratic norms.
- Milken Institute30 min
Conversation with Federal Reserve Bank of New York President & CEO John Williams | Global Conference
Federal Reserve Chair John Williams characterizes the U.S. economy as transitioning toward a sustainable 2% inflation target, noting that restrictive monetary policy will persist until data confirms balanced progress on employment and price stability. While recent supply-side gains from labor participation and immigration supported 3.1% GDP growth, forecasts indicate a moderation to 2-2.5% as consumer spending diverges between affluent and lower-income households. Williams further warns that geopolitical volatility, potential labor market impacts from artificial intelligence adoption, and demographic shifts signal an end to the era of low economic uncertainty.
- The Economist30 min
Starming victory: Labour sweeps to power
Sir Keir Starmer, Rosie Bloor, Ed Carr, Duncan Robinson, Catherine Nixie, Matthew Holhouse
Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party secured a historic landslide victory, ending fourteen years of Conservative rule by winning approximately 410 seats while Rishi Sunak conceded defeat and former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her seat. The new administration immediately faces the challenge of governing within a restrictive fiscal framework while pursuing economic growth through planning reform, a green transition, and stabilized EU relations. As Starmer prepares for a ceremonial transition with the King and an urgent cabinet formation, the government aims to restore international reliability despite a governing style characterized as cautious and technocratic rather than populist.