As we’ve crossed three years since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 2022, AI technologies have gone from a curiosity among academic scientists to one of the most popular products ever shipped. Billions of people now use AI for everything from sundry amusements to mission-critical applications, and it has started to diffuse into nearly every industry imagi…

Everyone loves a good Renaissance man or woman, but it’s hard to do it all with tenacity and verve. There’s also the constant balance between perfectionism and dilettantism — how long should you keep refining a project versus just bringing it to a close? For those of us prone to procrastination, even asking that question might prompt a delay.That’s…

Tinkered Thinking is the pseudonym of the author behind White Mirror, a collection of stories that explore the implications of artificial intelligence and advances in computing—while offering a more optimistic lens than much of contemporary science fiction. In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Tinkered Thinking about the origins of these st…

We hosted an epic one-day festival to human expression in New York City a few weeks ago called the Lux AI Summit, bringing together hundreds of founders, artists, engineers and visionaries who are redefining the future of media. Two of our speakers, Kirby Ferguson and Ale Matamala Ortiz joined us on the Riskgaming podcast to talk about the future o…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks again with Alec Nevala-Lee. Arbesman previously hosted Nevala-Lee to discuss his biography of Buckminster Fuller; this time, Nevala-Lee returns to talk about his new book, Collisions, a biography of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez. Alvarez’s career ranged across particle physics, the Manhattan Proj…

While relations between the United States and China have reached a detente in the past week after APEC, it’s the long-term decline of relations between the European Union and China that is worth a deeper look. Over the past two decades, Europe and China cooperated across science, technology and economic development, helping fuel China’s vast labs a…

Last week, Lux convened about 300 AI engineers, scientists, researchers and founders in New York City to discuss the frontiers of the field under the banner of “the AI canvas.” The idea was to move the conversation away from what can be built, to what should be built and why. AI tools have made extraordinary progress since the launch of ChatGPT in …

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Nick Foster, a designer and futurist who has worked with numerous major companies imagining a variety of futures—from Nokia and Dyson to Google. Foster is also the author of the new book Could Should Might Don’t, which explores the many ways we do and can think about the future. Arbesman and Foster discu…

Riskgaming is part of the broader movement known as wargaming, playful experiences designed to improve decision-making across domains like defense planning, business leadership and competitive analysis. It’s a burgeoning field, and it has now attracted its very own publication in the form of the Substack newsletter Wargaming Weekly. This week, I ta…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with David Edmonds, cohost of the Philosophy Bites podcast and bestselling author of numerous books on philosophy, including his most recent work, Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, A Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need. In this delightful book, Edmonds explores Peter Singer’s famous “shallow pond” tho…

n this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Rohit Krishnan, one of the most playful and insightful thinkers in the world of ideas. Rohit writes Strange Loop Canon, a newsletter devoted to exploring delightfully wide-ranging concepts—including artificial intelligence. He also recently collaborated with Jon Evans on Walter, a project that trained an …

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Linda Liukas, author of the beloved Hello Ruby children’s book series about computers, as well as a new Finnish-language book for adults on computing. Liukas also recently designed a playground in Helsinki that introduces children to foundational ideas in computer science through play. Together, Arbesman…

In this episode, Danny Crichton and Laurence Pevsner do a special outdoor recording from Carmel, where they reflect on the successful launch of their latest game, Gray Matter, at multiple locations, including the Lux Leaders retreat. The hosts discuss the emergent gameplay that surprised them, from spontaneous character-driven debates to unexpected…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Molly Mielke. Despite her youth, Molly has already built a fascinating career across tech—spending time at Notion, Figma, Stripe, and the Browser Company—before launching her own venture fund, Moth Fund. Along the way, she’s learned a great deal about herself and thought deeply about the role of technolo…

Wargaming (of which Riskgaming is but one example) has a long and global history, from Europe and Asia into the Americas. Yet, its utility is increasingly being recognized by business, military and political leaders as a more authentic way to understand the behavior of people across all kinds of contexts. Competition, incentives, risk and decision-…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Daniel Temkin, a writer and artist working in the digital art space who has been creating strange and provocative programming languages for years. These “esoteric languages” or “esolangs” [esso] explore the limits and breadth of what programming and code can be. Temkin recently released a book collecting…

One of the best parts of running a game studio and policy shop here at Riskgaming at Lux Capital is the actual public launch of a new game. That day is today, because we are dropping Southwest Silicon to the world. It’s a game that models the tensions between residents, farmers as well as old and new industries in the context of the rise of chip fa…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Parker Owens, whose passion for Lego has grown into something remarkable. In addition to working as an attorney, Parker runs Parker’s Brick Builds, a company where he designs and sells custom Lego creations. His sets range from vehicles and a siege tower to even a Lego “dumpster fire” that fans can build…

The launch of OpenAI’s GPT-5 has ushered in a panoply of views on the future of AGI and end-user applications. Does the platform’s aggressive router presage a future of lobotomized AI responses driven more by compute efficiency than quality? Will new chip models be able to make up the difference? And how will OpenAI, which recently hired Fidji Simo…

Samuel Arbesman is joined once again by Kristoffer Tjalve. The two previously spoke about the poetic web and the delightful aspects of the internet. This time, Kristoffer shares his new project: the Internet Phone Book—a physical book that lists personal websites alongside essays about the internet. After selling out its first run, the book is now …

It’s fun to play a game of superlatives with China. From the awe-inspiring and cyberpunk scale of the metro trains cruising through apartment blocks in Chongqing to the stupendous rate of its shipbuilding, housing construction and waterworks, China has shown that it can build like no other. That includes the just-announced Medog Hydropower Station,…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Edward Ashton. Edward Ashton is a science fiction writer and the author of numerous novels, including Mickey7, which became the basis for the movie Mickey 17. His most recent novel is The Fourth Consort, a fascinating first contact story that touches upon many different topics, from humanity’s uniqueness…

Few agencies have been more central to global affairs than the aptly-named Central Intelligence Agency. Often shrouded in mystique both cultivated and unasked for, the agency has been at the center of some of the most important foreign policy successes of the United States — such as the search for bin Laden — and also some of the country’s gravest …

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Neal Agarwal. Neal has been building online playthings for most of his life. He runs neal.fun, which many listeners may already be familiar with, home to such games and internet toys as Infinite Craft and Internet Roadtrip. For example, Infinite Craft begins with the four elements of earth, air, fire, an…

Building great Riskgaming scenarios is far more of an art than science. The designer needs to understand the players — what they know and what they don’t — and then carefully construct a landscape of decisions that has fidelity to the real world while not being overwhelming. Parsimony is key, and that means a designer really has to grok the fundame…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Julian Gough — a writer, musician, and now researcher in cosmology. Julian was part of Toasted Heretic, an Irish rock group, has written novels for both children and adults, and even composed Minecraft’s end poem. More recently, he has turned his attention to cosmology, exploring ideas at the intersectio…

By now, we’re all familiar with the crisis that has faced America’s chip manufacturing industry. Intel remains the last bastion of homegrown chips (if we exempt new developments from TSMC and Samsung). Yet, Intel’s stock has been bludgeoned, down more than 55% over the past five years as Nvidia skyrocketed about 1,475% in the same period. What woul…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Étienne Fortier-Dubois, a writer and programmer whose work has appeared in publications such as Asterisk Magazine and Works in Progress. He also authors the newsletter Hopeful Monsters. With a vast and eclectic set of interests—from the intricate details of technological history to the sweeping arcs of h…

Andrew Markoff joins ANOMALY to discuss military command and control systems, lessons from urban warfare, and preparing for potential conflict with China. Some highlights: His background as a Marine Corps infantry officer and Marine Raider at MARSOC, including his role as operations officer during the Battle of Mosul against ISIS How Mosul revealed…

There has been a massive influx of defense funding into Europe since Putin’s war on Ukraine started in early 2022. A sea change is underway, with Germany loosening its debt brake and countries from Poland and the United Kingdom to the Baltics all reseting their expectations for defense this century. But after several years, it’s time to take a retr…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Chris Ferrie, an associate professor of quantum information at the University of Technology Sydney and the author of an impressive range of books for audiences of all ages — from adults and children to even babies. Ferrie is best known for Quantum Physics for Babies, but his prolific output spans titles …

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Evan Armstrong, the writer behind The Leverage, a newsletter devoted to exploring and explaining the rapid changes in technology markets. Before launching his own publication, Evan was the lead writer at Every, where he helped grow the platform to over 100,000 subscribers. Samuel and Evan discuss Evan’s …

Science feels under attack. The Trump administration has proposed budget cuts of up to one-third of all basic research funding, breaking a generations-long, bipartisan consensus that what is good for science is good for America. Even if not fully enacted by Congress, even the hint of cuts has already had an extraordinary effect on the perceptions o…

AI and education seem like a match made in heaven, and certainly, much work and dollars are being spent trying to bring the two together. As more and more people eschew reading and outsource deep thought to Deep Research though, do we still have a chance to build up our critical thinking skills? It’s an open question, and one that host Danny Cricht…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman sits down with writer Gabe Henry, whose latest book Enough is Enuf delves into the long-running crusade to simplify English spelling (note the purposeful “ENUF” in the title). Everyone senses that English orthography can feel downright irrational, yet spelling-reform campaigns often make readers bristle. Henry unpac…

In this episode, host Samuel Arbesman sits down with novelist Daryl Gregory, celebrated author of numerous science-fiction and fantasy works—including the newly released When We Were Real. Set seven years after humanity discovers that reality is a vast computer simulation, Gregory’s novel follows a cross-country bus tour of Americans seeking out th…

Our guest today, Mike Sexton, believes that the AI singularity has arrived, and somehow, it ended up “on page C3 in the newspaper.” What he’s getting at is that the tools we have at our fingertips today like ChatGPT, NotebookLM and others are already so diversely capable, we have reached a point of no return when it comes to future societal change.…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with Kenneth Stanley, a renowned computer scientist and AI researcher whose career spans academia, industry, and startup innovation. Stanley has been a professor, a cofounder of multiple companies, and a researcher at both OpenAI and Uber. He currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Open-Endedness at …

Over the past few decades, an astonishing pattern has taken place: Americans no longer migrate. From a peak of roughly one third of the country moving cities in a single year, today, migration rates have declined and are now in line with the Old Continent of Europe. The dynamism of the American economy was predicated on all kinds of people seeking …

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman speaks with journalist and author Clive Thompson. Known for his thoughtful writing on science and technology—particularly in the realms of computing and programming—Clive contributes to Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, and more. He is also the author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remak…

Estonia is a nation of 1.3 million people, situated in a dangerous neighborhood on the Baltic Sea. It gained its independence early in the 20th century, only for the Soviets to take the country by force. Estonia gained its independence again in 1991, and has since become one of the most digital-native countries in the world. How did a nation with a…

In this episode, Samuel Arbesman sits down with Alec Nevala-Lee, author of numerous books, including Inventor of the Future, a definitive biography of Buckminster Fuller. Buckminster Fuller was an architect, designer, and public intellectual whose influence stretched far beyond blueprints and prototypes. Later in life, he became a lodestar for the …

Abundance has become the word of the year in politics, led by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book and a slew of articles and podcasts trailing in its wake. Everyone loves growth and prosperity of course, but what ultimately matters in local politics is organizing. To build the future in America’s cities, you’ve got to secure petitions, representat…

In this episode of The Orthogonal Bet, host Samuel Arbesman welcomes back return guest Eliot Peper. Eliot is a science fiction writer and the author of numerous books, and is currently collaborating with the tech company Portola, which is developing Tolans — AI friends and companions that blur the line between lore and code. Samuel and Eliot delve …

In this episode, host Samuel Arbesman speaks with Anna Gat, founder and CEO of Interintellect. Described as “a curated marketplace of high-quality events hosted by intellectual seekers from all walks of life,” Interintellect is reimagining the salon for the digital age. Arbesman and Gat discuss the origins and evolution of Interintellect, as well a…

It’s not every day that we get to fete the launch of a new book by one of our colleagues at Lux Capital, so today is a very special day. Lux’s scientist-in-residence, ⁠Samuel Arbesman⁠, just published his new book,⁠ “The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World―and Shapes Our Future.”⁠ It’s a deep dive into the wonderful c…

It’s not every day that we get to fete the launch of a new book by one of our colleagues at Lux Capital, so today is a very special day. Lux’s scientist-in-residence, Sam Arbesman, just published his new book, “The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World―and Shapes Our Future.” It’s a deep dive into the wonderful conjurin…

Food is one of the great bedrocks of human existence. Given its primacy to survival, it has also increasingly become a locus for conflict, either due to famine or as an exploitable vulnerability of even the most powerful countries. Russia’s war on Ukraine made it clear that grain could be fought over in the battle for supremacy, with the whole worl…

In this episode, host Samuel Arbesman speaks with Michael Rosen, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a lawyer focused on technology and intellectual property. Rosen is the author of Like Silicon From Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI, a provocative new book that offers a framework for understand…

Since the launch of Project Stargate by OpenAI and the debut of DeepSeek’s V3 model, there has been a raging debate in global AI circles: what’s the balance between openness and scale when it comes to the competition for the frontiers of AI performance? More compute has traditionally led to better models, but V3 showed that it was possible to rapid…