This week on the Macroscience podcast: an interview with Jon Askonas, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and an assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America.

Inspired in part by “Technological Stagnation is a Choice” — Jon’s terrific review of Vaclav Smil’s Invention and Innovation — I wanted to have Jon on the show to think through the ideological underpinnings of the movement around progress and abundance.

We discuss metascience as a technocratic endeavor, the aesthetics of progress, the fundamental irrationality of breakthrough innovations, and why progress needs to bring greater moral force to its visions for the future.

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