I sit down with Chris Paxton and Michael Cho, the hosts of the @RoboPapers podcast, to geek out on all things robotics. We dive deep into the massive data gap, the pain of real-world evaluation, and what it will really take to power decentralized production with robots.

Chris and Michael break down the pros and cons of different training methods, why physics is brutal, and why timelines are probably overhyped in the short term and underhyped in the long term.

In this episode, we discuss:

+ The RoboPapers podcast

+ Biggest bottlenecks in robotics

+ Pros/cons of different training methods

+ Michael’s plan to use crypto incentives to gather robotics data

+ The surprising first viable market for robots: Entertainment

+ Why Chris is skeptical of “perfect” robot videos

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Recording date: October 25, 2025

Chapters:

00:00 Meet The Hosts Of Robopapers

04:00 Chris Paxton’s Robotics Journey

06:30 Michael Cho’s Robotics Journey

11:33 Two Main Bottlenecks Holding Robotics Back

16:40 Views On Training Methods: Teleoperation

18:39 Views On Training Methods: Reinforcement Learning

21:02 Views On Training Methods: Learning from Human Video

28:20 Views On Training Methods: Sim-to-Real

30:12 Solving The Training Gap

35:02 Importance Of Robots In The Field

39:47 Entertainment As A Gateway For Robotics

41:27 Why Start the RoboPapers Podcast?

43:43 Most Interesting Areas Of Robotics Research

46:17 Egocentric Data Explained

47:47 Michael’s Crypto Incentive Structure For Data

51:34 Rapid Fire

Follow Jordan on X:

https://x.com/jrwolfe

Links to Chris & Michael’s Work:

RoboPapers Podcast – https://youtube.com/@robopapers?si=NOwQb-rFLeW5mBp1

Chris Paxton on X – https://x.com/chris_j_paxton

Chris Blog - https://cpaxton.github.io/

Chris Substack -

Chris LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-paxton-41aba958/

Michael Cho on X – https://x.com/micoolcho

BitRobot - https://bitrobot.ai/

Michael’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-chung-yeung-cho/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goingdirect.substack.com