Competition page here: 

https://josephnoelwalker.com/prize/

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One bacterium causes roughly 1 in 20 cancer cases worldwide. It’s the most cancer-causing pathogen we’ve found—and the main cause of peptic ulcers. Its discovery overturned an ironclad medical dogma that the stomach was sterile.

Despite infecting about half of humanity, Helicobacter pylori wasn't discovered until 1979 and shown to cause gastritis and peptic ulcer disease in the early 1980s. Why did it evade detection for so long—and what finally broke through the consensus?

I went to Perth, Australia—where H. pylori was first discovered—to chat with Barry Marshall, gastroenterologist and co-recipient (with Robin Warren) of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering H. pylori and proving that it causes gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Marshall famously infected himself with the bacterium to demonstrate causality and later helped develop clinical diagnostics like the urea breath test, which we demo live in the episode.

We discuss:

• the rise and fall of stomach cancer in the West;

• whether Darwin’s dyspepsia and Napoleon's stomach cancer trace to H. pylori;

• the ulcer–cancer paradox;

• Correa’s cascade: what H. pylori eradication reverses—and what it doesn’t;

• the “H. pylori enigmas” (Africa, India, Costa Rica);

• eradication prospects and an oral vaccine timeline;

• how the field missed the discovery;

• how the primitive internet enabled the discovery;

• what the H. pylori discovery teaches us about how knowledge diffuses;

• lessons from manufacturing millions of tests in Perth;

• and much, much more.

 

Episode sponsors:

• Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
• Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".

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Stagnation! The 2010s witnessed Australia’s weakest productivity growth in six decades.

How much of the slowdown is homegrown? How much reflects the broader “great stagnation” plaguing the West?

How much is simply an artefact of the way “productivity” is measured?

And what would a credible new growth model for Australia—with its distinctive reliance on mining over manufacturing—actually look like?

To answer these questions and more, I’m joined by two of Australia’s smartest economists.

Greg Kaplan is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also the cofounder and chairman of e61, a non-partisan economic economic research institute in Australia.

Michael Brennan is the CEO of e61. He was previously chair of Australia's Productivity Commission and a Deputy Secretary of the Australian Treasury.

We discuss the forces behind falling construction productivity; how to think about “Australia’s most productive company”; where to find quality gains in the services sector; what we can learn from the stunning innovativeness of Australia’s agricultural industry; why we need new economic engines beyond the Sydney–Melbourne duopoly; and much, much more.

Episode sponsors:

• Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
• Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Francis Fukuyama is a Stanford political scientist and the author of (among many other works) The End of History and the Last Man—arguably the most influential work in political science of the past half-century.

If “History” is driven by technology, how does Fukuyama now view biotech and AI—and their potential to usher in a new, post-human history?

These are difficult questions, but I wanted to ask Frank about topics that are both important and (at least for AI) on which he has spoken little until now.

We also get a sneak peek at his forthcoming book and discuss his ideas on bureaucracies, delegation, and state capacity.

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Laura Deming is a technologist and venture capitalist focused on anti-ageing and life extension. At 17, she founded The Longevity Fund (followed by age1), the first VC firm dedicated to longevity biotech, after being selected in the initial cohort of Thiel fellows (2011). Today she is also CEO and co-founder of Cradle, a startup pursuing human whole-body reversible cryopreservation.

I speak with Laura at Cradle’s San Francisco office. We start with the philosophical question of personal identity, and ask a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, do we want to preserve? From there we explore what a “more humane transhumanism” might look like, the game-theory of 200-year lives, scientific awe as a research tool, embodied thought-experiments to see inside the cell, how the FDA could shave years off longevity-drug timelines, the anti-memetic qualities of reversible cryopreservation, and why it might be the most leveraged problem in longevity.

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I share the 8 biggest things I learned from my Australian policy series. The conversations totaled more than 12 hours of discussion.

Grateful to my guests and to everyone who attended the live events. Was really fun to meet and hang out with you all!

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This episode is the seventh instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on April 29, 2025. 

I speak with Ken Henry—former Treasury Secretary and chair of the landmark Henry Tax Review—about why Australia hasn’t achieved major economic reform since the GST, and what must change to restart it. 

We discuss how AGI could reshape the public service, intergenerational unfairness in the tax system, the collapse in business investment, how to build a new Australian city, and the roots of Australia's long-standing policy complacency.

Video available here:

Transcript available here:

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This episode is the sixth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 26, 2025.

I speak with Sam Roggeveen—Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, and a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments—about why the United States won’t fight China for dominance in Asia, and what that means for an Australia long reliant on American protection.

We explore the limits of America’s resolve in Asia, why an alliance with Indonesia should be the top priority of Australian statecraft, whether new technologies like drones are reversing the long-held advantage of the defender, the possibility that Australia might one day acquire nuclear weapons, and how Sam’s “echidna strategy” could let us defend ourselves from a major Asian power without substantially boosting defence spending.

Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9n62A07mE

Transcript available here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/sam-roggeveen-aus-policy-series/ 

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This episode is the fifth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 12, 2025.

I speak with Peter Tulip—Chief Economist at the Centre for Independent Studies, and a former senior researcher at both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the US Federal Reserve.

We go deep into what's driving Australia's housing crisis, the problems with heritage rules and height restrictions, critiques of both NIMBY and YIMBY thinking, the sobering 10–20-year timeframe that even an “extremely ambitious” supply plan might require, and the cultural shift needed to reach a new equilibrium where housing is truly abundant.

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Australia stands alone among English-speaking democracies with its compulsory, preferential voting system. But why?

This episode is the fourth instalment of my Australian policy series. It was recorded in Melbourne on March 6, 2025.

I speak with Judith Brett—Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and author of the canonical history of Australia's electoral system, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage—about how Australia became an electoral trailblazer.

We trace the accidental adoption of near-universal manhood suffrage in the 1850s, the political calculations that led to compulsory voting and preferential voting, and why bureaucratic efficiency is so deeply woven into our electoral culture.

Along the way, we explore how Benthamite thinking and low taxation in the colonial era combined to create a voting system that is unique among English-speaking democracies.

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