Last year, when columnist Paul Krugman left the NYT, it seemed like yet another example of the traditional media crumbling. But Krugman, as it turns out, is doing great. His popular substack now re...
Ep 386: Was 2025 a Great or Terrible Year for AI? (w/ Ed Zitron) 2025 was a year that was saturated in AI news, from Deep Seek, through claims of economic “bloodbaths,” to GPT-5, Sora, and Cha...
In this replay of a classic episode from March 2024, Cal discusses his transformative experience using a small analog notebook to tackle a complicated problem in his life. He makes the broader argu...
In our annual holiday episode, Cal tackles one of the questions he’s asked most often: What should I read? But with a twist. He recommends six books that are not from the self-help or advice genre ...
Earlier this fall, the activist, novelist, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth published an anti-technology polemic called “Against the Machine.” To say it hit a nerve is an understatement. In the months ...
Last month, Derek Thompson published an intriguing essay that made waves in technology criticism circles. It was titled: “Everything is Television.” In today’s episode, Cal takes a closer look at t...
In today’s episode, Cal reviews some of his favorite advice from legendary writers (plus a bonus piece of advice from his own craft). Within each suggestion, he finds a general idea that can apply ...
There has been a lot of loose talk online recently about the capabilities of existing AI tools. In this episode, Cal reacts to a specific recent clip from the Joe Rogan podcast in which the guest a...
When companies began instituting return-to-office plans after the pandemic, a disproportionate number of women chose instead to leave the workforce. Why? The obvious answer is that they wanted the ...
We often talk on this show about how digital devices undermine our ability to consume more complicated and meaningful ideas. But what about our ability to produce such ideas from scratch? In this e...
Techno-philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky recently went on Ezra Klein's podcast to argue that if we continue on our path toward superintelligent AI, these machines will destroy humanity. In this episode...
How do you escape a world where constant digital distractions and darkness threatens to pull you down? Maybe take a page out of Abraham Lincoln’s life. In this episode, Cal argues that Lincoln face...
Ep. 375: Did OpenAI Just Kill Social Media?OpenAI has been making waves recently with their release of their Sora 2 video generation model, which they have launched alongside a TikTok-style social ...
It’s hard to cultivate a deep life when you cannot go more than a few minutes without checking your phone. In this episode, Cal looks closer at the precise neural mechanisms at play that make the p...
In 2023, I published an episode about resetting your life that became one of my most popular. In the years since, multiple major podcasters and YouTubers have done their own videos on the same them...
Last week, it was announced that Oracle would take over operation of TikTok in the US. One of the primary reasons proposed for this deal is that it was in national interests for us to take over con...
In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal is joined by Dr. Brian Keating, the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSD, and one of the most prolific popularizers of science around (you may ha...
We seem to be stuck in a purgatory when it comes to the worst of the social media platforms. We know they’re not great, but it’s hard to muster enough motivation to bother to leave. In today’s epis...
A recent study called into question a core assumption about the generative AI revolution: that these tools, at the very least, will make us more productive. In this episode, Cal dives deep into the...
IQ scores had been steadily rising since WWII. But, more recently, this phenomenon has stopped. Since 2010, we’ve actually been getting dumber. In this episode, Cal gets into the common theor...
