Topical Storm
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Join Alex and Eli as they tackle interesting intellectual and philosophical topics with engaged excitement and commute-friendly brevity. New episodes every week with topics ranging from the study of consciousness to the economics of addiction.

28 | Existential Risk

We take on the harrowing topic of existential risk and examine the many ways that things could go very badly for humanity. On the bright side, Nick Bo...
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27 | Hyperbolic Discounting

It’s widely known that humans tend to sacrifice long term rewards for smaller, more immediate gains. We tackle a less widely disseminated model of beh...
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26 | Death and Cryonics

We’re back! Today we tackle cryonics, the movement that suggests cryo-preserving the body moments after legal death will enable humanity to one day gr...
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25 | Roko’s Basilisk

We have a wacky one for you today! Roko’s Basilisk, a thought experiment grounded in decision theory, suggests that a future AI could be incentivized ...
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24 | All About Jazz

We take a break from heavy philosophy to discuss a fun topic: Jazz! This serves as a good introduction to the genre for any novice jazz listener or pl...
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23 | The Doomsday Argument

We continue our discussion of anthropic reasoning from last episode by examining a very troubling thought experiment. Can we logically deduce that hum...
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22 | Anthropic Reasoning

We return from our hiatus to discuss the Anthropic Principle and its applications to statistical reasoning. How should we think about probability when...
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21 | The Philosophy of John Rawls

Today we take a look at the political philosophy of one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers: John Rawls. We discuss his notion of an ideal...
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20 | Microexpressions

We discuss the fascinating interaction between voluntary facial expression and involuntary, fleeting movements known as microexpressions. 
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