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Le Pod lives. After a short hiatus, we’re back with another episode about the dangers of artificial intelligence. When does a wonderful tool for the betterment of society become a dangerous dependency as we outsource our daily tasks, our cognitive abilities, our manufacturing, and our broader economy to technological entities that are no longer under our control?

The last time we spoke about this, we focused on existential risks. This week, we’re joined by University of Montreal Assistant Professor David Krueger, who has raised alarm bells about the risks of “gradual disempowerment.”

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Yesterday The Free Press published an editorial defending a recent report of theirs that sought to question whether there’s really mass starvation in the Gaza Strip. We dedicated this whole episode to discussing the controversy and the genocide surrounding it.

On Le Pod we ponder whether AI will usher in human extinction. This is a free episode. If you enjoy this content, please consider paying for a subscription.

Though the AI age is upon us, it’s still but a zygote compared to what it’s almost certainly going to become. If Silicon Valley has its way, within years, not decades, we will achieve human-level artificial intelligence, and then, soon after, artificial super intelligence.

That sounds great if you assume that an army of autonomous super intelligent minds will be content to just do our bidding forever, curing cancer and making unbelievably realistic video games and giving us the unconditional synthetic love of their digital companionship. But why in the world would you assume that? AIs are already developing behaviors that reflect their own weird “preferences,” and they routinely lie and deceive human beings. If you juice them up to 10,000 times their present intelligence, what are the chances they’ll be content to remain our lapdogs? What are the chances, by contrast, they’ll find our existence threatening, annoying, or just inconvenient, and casually wipe us off the face of the earth?

Humans need to start thinking seriously about what we’re doing. The future we need to grapple with isn’t a century away. It’s not even decades away. It could arrive at any moment. It could get here before Trump is out of office.

In this episode we take a cruise through some very dark places.

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After far too long, we return to our normal schedule. Leighton and I chat about the mysteries revolving around Donald Trump and the FBI’s vault of evidence concerning Jeffrey Epstein. Why is the president insulting his own supporters and going back on his administration’s promise to release the documents? It is not the first time the administration has …

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Our guest today is Jake Klein, a libertarian activist and author who has written about the dangers of identity politics and tribalism. Klein, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and is now atheist, talks about his path in life. We chat about the unproductive nature of many pro-Palestinian activists on the far left, the hypocrisy of many supposed “heterodox thinkers” and why we have come to reject any kind of racial or ethnic category. We also chat about the similarities between strident pro-Black Lives Matter racial politics and Zionism, and discuss the downfall of the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, Inc., a group we hoped would help serve as the answer to weaponized identity politics. Klein’s Substack is called The Black Sheep and he’s on X. Please give him a follow.And if you enjoyed this live podcast, please consider a paid subscription to support our work.

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Yesterday, Leighton and I tried out Substack’s new livestreaming feature. We like it; it was fun. About 300 of you joined, which was great for a first attempt with almost no promotion behind it. We’re going to start doing this every Wednesday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. If you can’t join us live, we’ll put out the non-live version each Thursday.

We spent pretty mu…

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Pedro Gonzalez is a great writer and, in my opinion, has one of the most interesting perspectives on politics today. In a similar way to how both Leighton and I became fed up several years ago with the excesses of the left, Pedro is an alienated right-winger who has watched MAGA turn into a cult of personality. This episode is a bit different from our u…

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We examine the pros and cons of recent steep cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, weighing the agency's history of spreading propaganda and subverting foreign governments against its vital humanitarian work.

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This week, Leighton and I recorded another episode of Le Pod. Leighton just returned from reporting on the L.A. fires and came home to the criminal indictment of Oakland’s recalled Mayor Sheng Thao. We talk about California’s endemic problems and our leaders’ penchant for foreign travel.We discuss what appears to be a Trump-secured ceasefire in Gaza and…

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Welcome to our first podcast of the new year.

Leighton and I kick off the discussion about Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot on free speech and try to make sense of seizing Greenland as an American territory. The Danish government provides $500 million in annual subsidies to Greenland’s tiny population, affording residents generous health care and education. Trump could give a better deal, but does that mean Americans must fly to Greenland for free medical care? The H-1B debate may be infected with some online bigotry, but are accusations of “racism” yet another distraction from a serious issue? We also chat about the continuing dystopia of Oakland and its decline as a new mayoral race gets underway.