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Jim talks with Anders Indset about his book The Singularity Paradox: Bridging the Gap Between Humanity and AI, co-authored with Florian Neutkart. They discuss the “final narcissistic injury of humankind,” Freud’s three historical narcissistic injuries, machine consciousness vs human consciousness, the “undead” state, human cognitive limitations, game theory dynamics & multipolar traps, Artificial Human Intelligence vs AGI/ASI approaches, consciousness preservation, chess AI & human cognition, coevolutionary dynamics between AHI & AGI/ASI, “playing to win” vs “playing to become,” organizational design for anticipatory leadership, trust & friction as progress drivers, the three pillars of forging & investment & efficiency, reactive vs reflective societies, technical hygiene, “zombie apocalypse” scenarios, the role of agency, questions of identity & authenticity in an AI world, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• Wild Knowledge: Outthink the Revolution, by Anders Indset
• The Quantum Economy: Saving the Mensch with Humanistic Capitalism, by Anders Indset
• The Viking Code: The Art and Science of Norwegian Success, by Anders Indset
• Ex Machina: The God Experiment, by Anders Indset and Florian Neukart
• The Singularity Paradox: Bridging the Gap Between Humanity and AI, by Anders Indset and Florian Neukart
• Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, by Paul Bloom
• The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch

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Jim talks with Samuel Arbesman about the ideas in his book The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future. They discuss Sam’s motivation for writing the book, the wondering vs. utilitarian stances toward computing, early personal computing experiences, scale in programming, AI as a “hinge of history” moment, the democratization of code through AI tools, the dual nature of code as text & action, analogies between code & magic/mysticism, HyperCard as an early programming tool, the evolution of web development & protocols, layers of abstraction in computing, code golf, imperative vs. functional languages, recursion in programming, tools for thought & note-taking software, numeric modeling & world simulation, agent-based modeling & artificial life, the simulation hypothesis, research into “glitches in the matrix,” and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension, by Samuel Arbesman
• The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date, by Samuel Arbesman
• The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future, by Samuel Arbesman
• The Orthogonal Bet podcast
• “As We May Think,” by Vannevar Bush
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Martin Henz, Tobias Wringstad
• The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald E. Knuth
• Network Wars
• Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing

Samuel Arbesman is Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital. In addition, he is an xLab senior fellow at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of The Magic of Code, Overcomplicated, and The Half-Life of Facts, and his writing has appeared in such places as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Wired, where he was previously a contributing writer. He lives in Cleveland with his family. The first computer he used was a Commodore VIC-20.

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Jim talks with Mark Stahlman about the new Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church’s evolving role in a digital age. They discuss Trump as an avatar of the digital paradigm shift, the significance of Leo XIV’s name choice, Francis as a thug, Francis’s background as chemical engineer and bouncer, Synodality & Church decentralization, the exterior vs interior personas of Pope Francis, Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, the three pillars of Catholic social teaching, financial system reforms and new settlement currencies, the role of Dubai in blockchain/crypto development, multipolar traps & solidarity, generational changes & media consumption, the growth of Catholicism in France despite overall European decline, the Catholic Church’s diplomatic efforts and interfaith outreach, the future of global systems, and much more.

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Jim talks with Daniel Mezick on the theme of games and their relationship to governance. They discuss Jane McGonigal’s four properties of games, the nature of authority, position-based vs role-based authority, formal vs. informal authority structures, finite & infinite games, mutable games, the paradox of self-amendment, the U.S. Constitution as a game, progress tracking in governance systems, roles, artifacts, rules, events, Constitutional reforms, problems with a two-party system, unintended consequences in rule design, game theory & system design, gaming virtue, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• JRS EP151: Daniel Mezick on Ritual and Hierarchy
• JRS EP219: Katherine Gehl on Breaking Partisan Gridlock
• Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal
• Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm
• Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan
• “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” by Jo Freeman
• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, by James Carse
• “The Paradox of Self-Amendment,” by Peter Suber
• “Designing the Future,” by Jay Forrester
• Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, by Johan Huizinga

Coaching executives and teams in Agile since 2006, Daniel Mezick leads Improving Agility. Daniel has guided dozens of organizations in the art and science of Agile improvement. An author and co-author of three books on organization change, Daniel is a frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences and events. He is the originator of OpenSpace Agility, an engagement model for enabling authentic and lasting organizational improvement. He is also an Advisory Board member and co-Founder of The Open Leadership Network, a certification body and community of practice dedicated to implementing Open patterns and practices inside business enterprises worldwide.

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• Episode Transcript
• JRS EP 289 – Adam Levine on AI-Powered Programming for Non-Developers

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Jim talks with Ryan Blosser about the ideas in his book Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship, co-authored with Trevor Piersol. They discuss the motivation behind writing a permaculture book, the human sector in permaculture design, financial challenges of permaculture farming, 8 forms of capital, food forest design principles, plant guild functions & relationships, persimmons, hunting stories, willows, redbuds, bourbon, black locust properties, rhubarb as a barrier plant, spring bulbs, garlic, Hawaiian adventures, the benefits of tulsi, growing cannabis, uses of comfrey, beets for deer plots, burdock as medicine, community, climate considerations, water management, soil fertility, aesthetics in design, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• Mulberries in the Rain: Growing Permaculture Plants for Food and Friendship, by Ryan Blosser and Trevor Pearsall
• Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins

Ryan Blosser is a farmer, educator, permaculture designer, writer, and mental health professional. He is co-founder of the Shenandoah Permaculture Institute and owner/operator of Dancing Star Farm. In addition, he holds a teaching license in the State of Virginia and earned an MA and Ed.S. in clinical mental health counseling from James Madison University. Ryan served as Executive Director of Project GROWS, an educational non-profit farm dedicated to growing healthy communities. He also taught permaculture design and gardening in Staunton Public Schools before accepting a position with Waynesboro School, where he directs the continued development of the Waynesboro Education Farm. The intersection of his twin passions for growing food and helping people fuels his unique perspective on building community health and resilience through permaculture design. Ryan lives in Churchville, VA.

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Jim talks with Sara Walker about the ideas in her new book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence. They discuss Sara’s path from theoretical physics to astrobiology, the biggest scientific questions, philosophy of science & theory development, historical approaches to origin of life research, Schrödinger’s negative entropy concept, Prigogine’s dissipative systems, information as a causal force at life’s origin, emergence as a scientific concept, constructor theory of information, Assembly Theory as a framework for detecting life, assembly index & copy number as measurable properties, complexity vs randomness, the physical nature of time in complex systems, how Assembly Theory redefines life beyond Earth-centric definitions, planetary-scale perspectives on life’s origins, measurements of exoplanet atmospheres, addressing the error catastrophe problem, Sara’s collaboration with Lee Cronin, the application of Assembly Theory to minerals & planetary atmospheres, the Fermi Paradox & observational horizons, constraints on Drake equation parameters, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence, by Sara Walker
• JRS Currents 100 – Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object
• The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold Morowitz
• The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, by Stuart Kauffman

Sara Walker is a theoretical physicist interested in the origins of life and discovering alien life on other worlds. She is Deputy Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, a Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and an External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Her recognition as a leading scientist includes a Stanley Miller Early Career award, and a Schmidt Sciences Polymath award. Her research team at ASU is internationally regarded for their work at the forefront of building fundamental, and testable theory for understanding what life is. She is also widely regarded for her public intellectual work advancing our understanding of life, which includes her popular science book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence and appearances on podcasts such as Star Talk with Neil de Grasse Tyson, the Joe Rogan Experience, and the Lex Fridman podcast.